August 15, 2019
SULPHUR HS FOOTBALL ON RADIO!!
Sulphur HS Football returns to the airwaves this fall. It will mark the 34th season that Bruce Merchant is the play by play voice of the Tors (Not sure how that is when Bruce is only 31 years old!)
It will mark the first year that yours truly, Jon Fine, is making a concerted effort to serve as a marketing representative for Sulphur HS Football on SporsRadio-1310AM—KEZM
Bruce will be joined by Patrick Frey on color commentary
More on these broadcasts in the week to come in this newsletter
For now, we issue a very warm welcome to several Sulphur Businesses who are receiving this newsletter for the first time. And, we hope you join the likes of the first 3 sponsors we have on the broadcast
A special thank you to: Curl Up & Dry Family Hair Salon, Golden Hooks and Possibilities Counseling Services
4 more have joined the party since our last newsletter. Special Thank you to Adkins Automotive, Hometown Furniture & Mattresses, Innovative Expressions and Pumpelly Tire
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.
LSU, SAINTS AND MUCH MORE
ArrestedDevelopmentMediaGuides, our EBay store, sells media guides. programs and baseball cards. Please visit JonFineProductions.com and click on icon to get to the store. Check out a full array of New Orleans Saints media guides and LSU media guides and programs and publications from much of the entire sports world. Over 6,200 publications listed.
HOUSTON ASTROS BASEBALL
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
I was going to write about the Saints and LSU football, but there is a great story that has been dominating the sports media landscape since last weekend. Antonio Brown’s helmet.
I am joking. Here we are with the football season about to start and everywhere I turn, Antonio Brown’s helmet is the top story. I keep turning the channel everytime I see it. Please keep reading.
Of course, I am going to write about LSU. In 11 days, it is game week, and I haven’t gone in detail about the defense yet. I agree with most people that despite losing one of the best defensive players in LSU history, this defense should be better.
The first reason is that while LSU loses Devin White, LSU returns K’Lavon Chaisson and Michael Divinity slides over to inside linebacker. LSU was thin at linebacker last year. At outside linebacker, once Chaisson went down, LSU did not have a legit outside pass rusher. Divinity did well, but inside linebacker is his natural position.
LSU was also thin at inside linebacker last year. When Jacob Phillips or Devin White were out, LSU was in trouble. In reality, the lack of depth at inside linebacker could pointed to as a direct cause for LSU losing at Florida. The Gators offensive success was primarily when backup linebackers were in the game and falling prey to Dan Mullen’s offense that often has young linebackers filling the wrong gaps.
Meanwhile, the defensive line returns. Fehoko, Logan, and Lawrence are back. At nose tackle, everyone is pretty sure that LSU is better with Shelvin and Ika. I still question the depth, but there is no denying that highly touted players are no longer youngsters and have had time to develop. Cherry, Farrell, and Thomas are names to watch closely.
It is interesting that there does appear to be a change in philosophy in the defensive line. Orgeron has talked about wanting the defensive line to penetrate as opposed to just holding a gap.
There has been plenty of discussion over the year of Orgeron meddling with the offense and I think that has been way overstated. As I have said in the past, the head coach gets to tell his coordinators what he is looking for philosophically. Protect the quarterback, take time off the clock with the lead, and other things like that. The word is that Canada wasn’t receptive to these types of suggestions.
Back to the defensive line penetrating more, and that has my attention because that is not Aranda’s style of defense. It will be interesting to see if this adjustment will be incorporated into the Aranda scheme smoothly. An aggressive defensive front can create negative plays, but also give up big plays.
As for the secondary, I don’t like referring to positions on the LSU football team as the best we have seen and all that other stuff. I guess I am still recovering from the year Coach Miles called the offensive line the best he has had and they woefully underperformed. Nevertheless, the defensive backs are extremely talented.
We know Delpit’s greatness. JaCoby Stevens single handedly kept LSU in the Texas A&M game at times. If he can play like that over the course of a season, he will remind me of LaRon Landry, and those are fun times to remember. Todd Harris started much of the year last year, performed well, and should only be better with experience.
It seems as though only injuries can prevent Fulton, Stingley, and Vincent from reminding us of the days of Peterson, Claiborne and Brooks. Speaking of injuries, everyone is very confident in the sxx defensive backs I have named and for good reason. But LSU will surely need 8-10 defensive backs over the course of the season. Therefore, some other young players will have to be ready and the number one name to keep track of is Marcel Brooks. Remember his name.
As I mentioned last week, writing about LSU at this point is based on logical guesses, but we now have tape of the Saints. I can’t say I was excited by what I saw.
Starting with the good news. Bridgewater is definitely one the best backups in the league. He and anyone the Saints play.
We all knew Eric McCoy needed to be the real deal and everything I saw says he is going to have a great rookie season. Chauncey Gardner-Johnson also looks like a great pick. That’s the end of my good list.
The reserve offensive line, especially the tackles were not good. The defensive backs spent most of the night falling down and not making any plays on the ball. The defensive line could not get any pressure without blitzing. I don’t think the Saints were able to cover one play action roll out all night.
I keep hoping a new receiver will catch my eye. A couple of them did some OK things, but not what I am looking to see. It may be my fault because I am somewhat in the past. I fully believe the Saints are missing a Lance Moore or Willie Snead in this offense. Someone that will always get open on third and six.
None of that was the most disappointing aspect though. I was fully expecting to see Marcus Davenport put on a show. There was no show. No pass rush moves of note. Nothing to see, and I watched closely. Of course, it is the first preseason game and there is no way for me to know what he was looking to get out of this game. There is still time for him to show out.
Don’t get me wrong. The Saints are going to have a very good season. Even if those aspects had been good, we all would have pointed out that it doesn’t matter because it is preseason. And that is probably the wisest thing for Saints fans to tell themselves.
HEY REF
If I may I’d like to pass along my gratitude to the coaches and officials that took time out of their busy schedules this past week to voice their concerns with what’s going on in the world of high school football. And I want them to be assured and understand that when I told them I’d never release any names and/or any schools that I will abide by that promise. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s get onto some very hot topics that both coaches and officials feel need addressing.
Coaches are upset with, well how do I say this, the attitude of some of the officials calling their games. They tend to feel some game officials are too “stand offish” in that some crews seem to have a chip on their shoulders that they bring with them to the game. That’s a valid point because too many officials feel the games they’re scheduled to work are below them. There are too many instances where half of the time that’s supposed to be used by the crew in discussing rules and mechanics before the game is spent talking about where other guys are calling. I don’t know if that will ever change because by nature officials do compete with each other to work BIGGER games since they feel it’s a reward to be in the top game of the week.
So concentration is a huge problem! Coaches feel and rightly so that if the crew scheduled for his games don’t want to be there then either tell your assigner to send you to a different game or better yet just don’t call at all. If more officials would concentrate on the game they’re about to call instead of where other guys are working it should make for a better time by all involved. I wish I could offer them some kind of a fix for that but sadly for too many officials they’ll always want to know other guy’s business.
Another “BIG” one for coaches is the inability of officials to explain a ruling that makes sense. That’s a double edge sword I feel since many coaches are too consumed with X’s and O’s they forget to know the rules. And of course I’ve got a story for that because one night after we penalized his team he ranted for ten minutes arguing that “That’s not how they called it on Sunday”. Well, when I got a free ten seconds I went over to him and told him “Coach, you’re right that wasn’t the way the NFL guys marked off the penalty and I agree 1,000 percent with you but you’ve got to remember this FRIDAY NIGHT, not Sunday afternoon”.
But the biggest problem some told me is that they feel the coach across the field “owns” the official on his sideline. By that they feel some officials in an attempt to quiet down the coaches on their sideline are guilty of what’s known as a “MAKEUP CALL”. They say if a guy blows a call he’ll do whatever he can to “make it up” and then call something on the other sideline as a way to even up the yardage walked off against that team. I’ve seen it happen and have wondered if a crewmate would stoop this low thinking its O. K. or worse be the right thing to do. If an official was guilty of doing that I hope the game film shows it and he’s never allowed back on a football field. There’s no excuse for doing that and it gives us all a black eye.
Next week I hope to expand on my conversations with some of the Baton Rouge area coaches. I’ll close by inviting coaches to send me their questions and insights as to what they feel we do right and/or wrong and a solution to make their Friday night games better.
Till next week…
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