July 18, 2019
DENHAM SPRINGS HS FOOTBALL ON RADIO!!
Denham Springs HS Football Radio Broadcasts return to the airwaves for the 24th year as a Jon Fine Production in 2019. Josh Ward calls the play-by-play, Andy Duckworth provides color commentator and yours truly, Jon Fine, will contribute to the pre-game, half-time and post-game shows. The broadcasts can be heard 6pm Friday nights, on Family Radio, 91.9 FM, Baton Rouge and on the Internet at JonFineProductions.com… The first broadcast will be Friday, September 6, when Denham Springs plays host to Hahnville HS.
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
That Jon Fine is a tough boss. Even on vacation he has me working for him (just checking to see if he reads what I write).
Seriously, while driving across America and riding on trains, I have had time to check out some preseason football magazines. Since I don’t receive any endorsement money from these publications, I am not going to mention any publications by name.
Instead, I am going to point out some tidbits of information that jumped out to me and you may not already know as we are under around two weeks from the beginning of the NFL training camps and college football teams reporting for fall practice.
Starting with the NFL:
● Oh, how I miss the days of the Saints being in a bad division. The NFC West is the Rams and nobody. The AFC East should be disbanded. The Dolphins still haven’t gotten over Marino and Shula retiring and have completely stopped trying. The Bills haven’t gotten over losing four Super Bowls in a row, and are stuck in just below average mode. Meanwhile, the Jets fans are excited because they might not be completely terrible this year.
● I don’t usually pay much attention to the AFC North, which is why I didn’t realize something. Yes, the Browns are talented. I noticed that. What I didn’t realize is the talent on the Ravens and Steelers rosters is closer to the talent on the Bengals than the Browns. This could be the worst division in the NFL. The NFC North teams are lucky to be matches with the two awful divisions I mentioned above. What are the odds?
● The last two points are reasons to jump on the Browns bandwagon. They have three built in wins against the AFC East not in New England, and three wins against three NFC West teams not named the Rams. The Bengals are terrible and should be two easy wins. A simple 50-50 split against Pittsburgh and Baltimore leaves them 4-2 in division. Because they finished in the bottom of their division last year, the other two games are against Tennessee and Denver who are average at best. Do the math and you realize, even if they drop one or two games against inferior teams, they will have 10 wins. If they had a tougher schedule, I would warn against how this team would respond to adversity with so many new players, a large number of oversized egos, and a first time head coach. But with this schedule, go crazy Cleveland fans.
On to college football:
● Everyone seems to be predicting the same teams in the playoff, but I sense a setup. Clemson is so good on offense and the ACC is so weak, they will make the playoff, but this team is nowhere close to what is was last year. Georgia has been recruiting really well, but they only return 5 starters on offense and 6 on a defense that wasn’t all that good last year. Oklahoma only returns 4 starters on offense, and I know Lincoln Riley is an offensive genius, but Jalen Hurts is not Mayfield or Murray. I don’t know if the Big 12 can challenge Oklahoma enough to force 2 losses, but Georgia’s schedule is built to give them 2 losses before they make the SEC championship game.
● LSU catches a couple of breaks in scheduling. Auburn comes to LSU after a road trip to Arkansas. Even though Arkansas isn’t great, playing in Fayetteville can be a challenge. LSU catches Florida the week after the Gators host Auburn. Finally, the rematch with Texas A&M will come one week after the Aggies travel to Georgia. Back to back road challenges like this are extremely rare these days.
That’s it from my vacation. Hopefully, nothing too dramatic happens with LSU or Saints players in the next week and I can stick with boring football news.
HEY REF
In case some readers missed my column from last week please allow me to update those before moving on. I touched on the problem just about every high school association is having in regards to the shortage of officials. There’s another problem this shortage has to it and that’s retaining good officials from year to year. I can only go by what I’ve experienced from my time wearing the striped shirt running down the sidelines on Friday nights.
Last week I touched on one of the massive problems; the lack of common respect between coaches and officials. I’m not sure how or when things turned so ugly between the two parties but when I returned from my semi-retirement (12 years) due to health problems I was in for a huge shock in my first game back. In the crew that night none of its members had ever worked together before. Since we were working a 5A game I felt confident my crewmates that night knew what to do.
Well, it didn’t take long for that to be proven wrong. About half way thru the first quarter after the visiting team gained 20 yards or so on a run up the middle I thought I’d seen a yellow kite flying over the field. To my surprise it was a flag that the umpire had thrown as he called a hold on the offense. My coach didn’t like the call, of course, and had asked me for the player’s number. I went over to the umpire and inquired as to what was the number of the holder. Coaches and teams cannot go inside the 25 and must stay within the team’s box on that particular sideline.
The coach was yelling “horrible call” and he yelled it so loud he probably woke the dead. Before we set the chains up I asked for the number and the umpire just mumbled “I didn’t get it”. I went to my sideline for the next play and after that play I ran over to my coach and told him we didn’t get a number. So early in a game you’ve got to establish by your actions that this isn’t your first rodeo. You can probably guess what happened next as my coach blew a fuse and began ranting that we didn’t know what we were doing, etc., etc.
The rest of that quarter ran off without too much being flagged but as we changed ends for the second quarter my coach asked to speak with the “white hat”. But our referee would have nothing to do with him which in my mind was a huge mistake. That just enflamed the coach because he feels a great start to the game was taken away by the umpire’s call and now the referee refuses to talk to him during a change of quarters. Then just a few plays into quarter number two the umpire again calls a hold after a nice run.
I didn’t wait for the coach to ask so I ran over to where the flag was and asked for a number. I’ll never forget the look I got from a crewmate, the umpire, as he once again said he didn’t get a number. I just thought please give me a number, don’t guess or make up a number because it’ll be a very long night for me in particular if he once again just says he didn’t get the number. My worse fear came to light as once again he answers that he didn’t get a number. I knew I was the one that was about to have a huge chunk of my derriere bitten off. I hated to report that my crewmate didn’t get a number.
Yes, of course the coach blew a few hundred fuses because our crew didn’t report the player that had been called for holding, a second time. I let him spew for about twenty seconds then told him I wouldn’t allow him another second to discuss the play. I heard the whistle as the ref blew the ball ready for play and lined up getting ready for the next play. What happened next was the way in which I was taught to handle an upset coach; I completely ignored him hoping to get his attention back to the remainder of the game.
It worked since he understood that I wasn’t going to go backwards and try to explain what somebody in the crew had done. Well, at least for a couple of plays. The next time a foul was called on his team we had a number. After I reported the player he went off because now he can’t understand why we didn’t get a number during the first quarter. As he once again starts in on me about the inability of the umpire to get a number I turned around and said “Hey, coach, I’m out here to call balls and strikes”!
There was total silence and at first I’d thought I passed out. But soon I hear him telling his other coaches what I’d told him and they all began to laugh. I didn’t hear much else for the remainder of the game. In fact as we walked off for half time he apologized for his behavior. During our break I told the umpire that he needs to concentrate on getting a number but he just didn’t want to hear anything about the way in which he called the first half of the game. He didn’t know me and I him.
It was during halftime that I found out he was just starting his third year which translates to just two years under his belt. As we start the third quarter I see the yellow kite again. Before I can make two steps toward the end of the play one of the assistant coaches lets everybody know he does not want to play the rest of the game as we played in the first half. Then the bomb explodes as the umpire turns to my coaches and begins yelling at them that he’s calling the game, they don’t know this or that. It was like he threw gas on a fire, a fire that I put out before halftime. I’ve never seen or experienced an official turn and from the middle of the field yell at a team’s coaches like he just did.
This wasn’t an isolated insistence as I saw this type of behavior in other games. Why do today’s officials act this way? Possibly the coaches have lost all respect for officials and maybe officials have also lost respect for coaches. So, what did I think we needed to do? As I interviewed for assignment secretary after that experience I was asked what I would do to try and reverse this mutual lack of respect. My answer then is the same as today; get coaches and officials together away from the tense game day atmosphere. Everybody knows that reads my column that I don’t like “tooting my own horn” but if you read in Tuesday’s Advocate what the SEC is attempting you’ll see that they are getting coaches and officials together to work together to better the game TOGETHER!!!!
Till next week…
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