October 25, 2018
DENHAM SPRINGS HS vs Central HA…
Denham Springs returns to action this Friday night, September October 26, as the Jackets face arch-rival Central HS. You can catch all of the action on Family Radio, 91.9 FM and on the net at JonFineProductions.com. 6pm is Sport N Center Jackets Warm-Up, with Josh Ward, Andy Duckworth and yours truly, Jon Fine
Brusly HS vs Mentorship Academy
Brusly faces Mentorship Academy this Friday night and you can tune in on KBRS, 106.9 or on the net at Jon FineProductions.com… Lionel Franklin will be calling play-by-play, with Jason Manola on color commentary. Airtime 6:30pm
SULPHUR HS at New Iberia HS… Tomorrow night with Bruce Merchant on play by play, with Patrick Frey on color commentary on SportsRadio, 1310AM—KEZM—Lake Charles and on the internet at KEZMonline.coM.
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BATON ROUGE AREA BROADCASTING SCHEDULE:
FRIDAY, 10/26, 6pm… Denham Springs HS Football vs Central HS… Family Radio, 91.9 FM and on the net at JonFineProductions.com…
Josh Ward, Andy Duckworth, Jon Fine
FRIDAY, 10/26, 6:30PM… Brusly HS vs Mentorship Academy… KBRS,106.9 FM…
Jon Fine Productions.com
Lionel Franklin and Jason Manola
SPORTSRADIO-1310-KEZM-LAKE CHARLES (AND KEZMONLINE. COM) BROADCASTS
Friday, 10/26, 6:45pm… Sulphur HS at New Iberia HS, Bruce Merchant, Patrick Frey
Friday, 10/26 10am—Noon… Pigskin Preview… Patrick Frey and Scott Holtzman
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Assistant Basketball Coach and Head Swimming Coach at Central High
Have you noticed the pattern? Which pattern? This pattern.
Going into LSU football games the other team has a great blank. Fill in the blank with whatever you want. Miami had the great defense and pass rushers that forced turnovers. Same with Auburn, Florida, and Mississippi State. Ole Miss, Miami, and Georgia had the great receivers. You get the point that everyone LSU plays has a great blank.
Somehow and often lacking style points, LSU handles the blank well enough to win the game. Then suddenly, after LSU wins, the blank that was so good before the game, is downplayed.
I admit, I have been guilty of the this thinking. I don’t want to give Mississippi State’s credit for how bad LSU’s offense looked in the first half even though I know the Bulldogs have one of the best defenses in the country.
I think we all are missing out on a great quality of this year’s football team because we often look at stats from the whole game. I understand LSU had only 230 yards of total offense. But look closer. With about 5 minutes left in the first half, LSU had about 30 yards of offense. LSU found a way to right the ship and gain 200 yards of offense the last 2 quarters and 5 minutes. LSU scored points on four of its last six drives of the game. Four in a row at one point. The team and coaches deserve credit. That kind of turn around shows grit.
I have been asking myself, why are LSU fans and media keep downplaying LSU’s success? I think I have figured it out and it has to do with the blanks. Since Saban started this era of LSU football, we are used to LSU having something that is dominant or overwhelming.
Under Saban, LSU had a dominating defense. When LSU had its greatest success under Miles, LSU had a dominating defense. A few times, LSU had a dominating running game. More often than that, LSU had overwhelming talent.
JaMarcus Russell was a once in a generation talent at throwing the football. Beckham, Landry, Fournette, and others had overwhelming talent. LSU was the team with the great blank, and at the end of the game observers would wonder how the other team stayed in the game or won the game.
Now, LSU is the other team. Sure, LSU still has talent. Delpit, White, and Greedy are at the top of the draft talents. And yes, LSU is improving each week. But, outside of the place kicking, LSU has not been dominant in any area. Consequently, LSU fans are mystified by the success. I will explain.
What you are witnessing is called a “gritty team.” LSU fans have seen it before, but usually in basketball. It is what happens when the sum of the parts is better than the individual parts. Certain qualities defy stats. It is the result of good coaching combined with great belief and character from players. It is revealed when one part of the team struggles, another part picks up the slack. Bad football teams do the opposite. When the offense struggles, the defense gets frustrated and underperforms.
This team believes in their coaches enough not to panic when things don’t go well at some point in the game. They stick together and put together a great drive before the half and then make necessary adjustments at halftime as the offense did against Mississippi State. In the press conferences, the players echo what the coaches preach.
Tiger fans should take the week to enjoy the 7-1 start and how well this group has played as a team. When taking all factors into account, location of the game, talent, whether one team is coming off a bye, LSU has played 5 games when the other team had the advantage. Miami had the better off season and more experience. Auburn and Florida had the home field. Georgia had the talent and hype. Mississippi State had the bye week and all the stats. LSU won 4 of those 5 games. Enjoy it, and we will speculate how LSU can shock the world and decide if beat Alabama next week.
In case you are wondering, no I am not going to entertain the obvious contradiction of Devin White’s ejection and Mack Wilson’s non ejection. I will point out that the SEC once again lacks leadership as it did during the hurricane situation between LSU and Florida.
Back to football, the Saints are becoming a good “team” as well. Against the Ravens, wthey played complimentary football. If the defense can figure out a way to slow down an opponent in the last 2 minutes of halves, the Saints may be able to stay atop the NFC West after facing the Vikings, Rams, and Eagles.
I said it before the season and I will say it again. The Saints will go as far as the pass rush from Rankins, Onyemata, Jordan, Davenport and Okafor take them. I know Saints fans were holding out hope for Patrick Peterson, but the Saints didn’t have the assets to pull that one off. I am glad they are trying something because it appears that Crawley has completely lost his swagger. At some point, the Saints have to be able to match teams with more than one quality receiver. That starts this week with Minnesota.
I doubt Eli Apple will be able to make much of an impact this weekend. Entering the year, I was hoping for a split from playing at Baltimore and Minnesota. Fortunately, the Saints got the first one, because this one will require something from the defense we have yet to see. A great pass rush and tight coverage.
HEY REF
As everyone knows all too well this writer will never say “I told you so”. In fact I’ve been working extra hard in keeping that promise to all my readers and fans. This writer will not get caught up in all the controversy, if you will, when the subject is LSU’s Devin White and his well-deserved suspension for the hit he delivered in last week’s game against Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald. This whole affair never would’ve happened if someone on Coach “O’s” staff had given him a copy of last week’s “Hey Ref’s” column.
To refresh those that didn’t get a chance to read it, I took time out to address a very serious POINT OF EMPHASIS. Beginning with last year’s football season, at every level of play, in every league, those charged with writing the rules decided in an effort to make their game safer a major POINT OF EMPHASIS was placed on eliminating unnecessary contact between players. Out of this edict came the rule on “targeting”. Targeting an opponent is different than spearing because a spearing foul occurs to an opponent’s body while targeting is the intentional contact to an opponent’s head. Two different rules and both are intended to help protect players.
As promised every official was instructed that there will be no, none, zero, nadda, don’t ask for any, don’t expect any grey area. With this type of contact/hit/foul we are told it’s either black or white. We will not be allowed to give even the slightest bit of leeway in how we’ll enforce this type of contact. No warning at all, when an official rules a hit above the shoulderstargeting will be called and the offending player will be ejected from that night’s contest PLUS serve a one game suspension. In fact that’s the only difference you’ll see from conference to conference, level to level, is the number of quarters/game(s) and the length of the suspension.
I wanted to make it very clear that as we get closer to the start of the playoffs coaches would head my warning simply because we as officials have no other way of dealing with a targeting foul than to remove the player and report him to the LHSAA to insure that player does sit out a specified amount of time. The overriding reasoning in this rule, its implementation and the reasoning behind it is very simple; the SAFETY of the players!
Football no matter the level of competition is a violent game and injuries are an accepted part of the game. The game in itself is under attack from all four sides and those wanting to abolish it altogether are beginning to make noise in every state’s legislature. If it were left up to these groups the game many of us love would go the way of the dinosaur. Strides are being made in the hopes of making the game safer but if we don’t police the game and players we’ll see an end to the game many just can’t live without. And I for one don’t want that to happen and I bet the 100,000 fans that crowd into Tiger stadium each game day don’t want that to happen either.
The 2018 Federation (High School) rule book states; “Defensive players MUST make a definite effort to avoid charging into a passer who has thrown the ball from in or behind the neutral zone (Line of scrimmage) after it is clear that the ball has been thrown”. The rule is the same for all players, if you deliver a hit to the head of your opponent that action can bring a targeting foul and ejection from that night’s contest.
The SEC along with every other conference I’m aware of have a protocol to follow whenever targeting is called. Once reviewed by the officials in the booth and a targeting call is confirmed it’s then that there will be no further debate on whether the call has merit. Targeting has been part of the game for far too long. Each school, program and conference must clean up its act and abolish targeting and all other DIRTY plays/players or we’ll continue to see players with devastating injuries and some of these injuries are permanent.
The best thing LSU athletic director Joe Alleva can do is be the point man in the continued battle to make rules and games safer for all the players. No young 18 to 20 year old kid needs to suffer for the rest of his life because somebody decided to use their helmet as a sledgehammer hoping to spread a little pain. As an official my job isn’t just calling penalties I can grant you that. The biggest part of an official’s job is trying to keep each and every player safe. As parents too we want each and every player to go home after the game without a side trip to the local E. R.
Till next week…
This week I want to address all of the high school football coaches in Louisiana. If you’ve never heard or read a single column of “Hey Ref” then this should be your first! I want to make it very plain now before we start another playoff season this year the officials working your Friday night games (and all others) have been and will still be concentrating on the elimination of personal fouls and unnecessary late hits.
It’s not just in high school games but every level of play the need for making the game safer is paramount. The National Federation has always taken player safety as the number one goal in any rewriting of their rules. From the opening kickoff our priority has been to curb any hint of excessive aggression and it will not be just against quarterbacks.
High school officials and the L. H. S. A. A. have made it very clear that we will be working on eliminating all unnecessary aggressive play. Football in itself is a very physical game and we walk a very fine line between good hard play and excessive violent tendencies on each and every play. As hard as we try there is no possible way to insure every player will finish a game injury free. The rules in which we operate on any given Friday night have been thought through with just goal in mind; the safety of all the players. With that said I can only hope that our coaches understand there will be no grey area when it comes to “targeting” an opposing player.
During this last off-season the focus has been how best to make the high school game safer. You can be sure rules makers held meeting after meeting in the hopes of keeping injuries to a minimum. Our association spent many hours understanding the intent of these new rules aimed at lowering the number of injuries to high school players that are between 16 and 18 years old. Technology has given us a great tool in which we are able to review films of legal and illegal hits and know exactly what we as officials are expected to watch out for. One of the “biggies” we’ve been told to watch out for is when one player intentionally acts to PUNISH an opponent. That of course is what the term “targeting” is and it will be met with an immediate ejection.
This means ANYTHING to ANY PLAYER that is meant to punish will be rigorously enforced. So please coaches do everybody a favor and get rid of any player that refuses to abide by these strict guidelines. You’ll be doing your school a huge favor because there will be times this fall where I’ll hear coaches say “Hey Ref; that sure was close”. And I won’t argue with any coach that says that because he’ll be correct.
The buzz word in every level of football these days is TARGETING. To many officials, including myself, we aren’t about to take this targeting thing as a rule change since we’ve already been dropping a flag for these “cheap” shots intended to do but one thing; injure or punish an opponent. In our world we’ll allow a hold without calling it (if it doesn’t influence the play or its outcome), we’ll let a guy slide if he’s just inside the neutral zone, again his actions do NOT influencing the outcome of the play. That has always been the number one factor in throwing your flag or leaving it tucked away where nobody can see it. At the high school level of play that’s the major thing we consider when we decide to call a foul or not since these 16 to 18 year olds aren’t professional players.
But what I won’t let go is anything I feel is a cheap shot no matter if the whistle was blown an hour ago. Some coaches feel it’s part of the game but I can’t look a parent in the eyes if I didn’t flag someone that took a cheap shot at their son and now he’s being carted off the field. I’ll close for now because this week there isn’t another issue in “Hey Ref’s” world more important than making crystal clear to all the coaches, players and parents that we’ll be calling TARGETING on those types of plays you feel are close, borderline and “cheap”. Of course you’ll be correct but you should know by the time we get to the stadium that keeping players as safe as humanly possible is at the forefront of every official.
Till next week…
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