Welcome to your worst nightmare, LSU fans.
Yes, I am back on the LSU beat after three years as a national columnist at OutKick.com/FOX News. OutKick did not renew my contract. So, since I wanted them to renew my contract, and they did not – I was fired. I’m not going to say something like, “We decided to part ways.” Or, “They decided to go in a different direction.”
That would be BS. And welcome to the No BS Zone of LSU coverage. You may not always like it, but you will get the truth as close to it as I can glean.
I have written several times about how athletic departments and/or universities try to soften the fact that they fired a coach by saying, “He resigned.” Or, “We went our separate ways,” instead of saying the coach was fired.
So, I’m not going to write that untruth about myself either. I was fired without cause as I was about to turn 63. My contract was not renewed without a good reason, which happens often in this business and was detailed in the contract. Still, I was fired.
But I’m not done yet. In fact, I’m starting over in a way.
“LSU is about to be back where it belongs. Check Tiger Rag for all the details.”
I wrote that to close my introductory column in the Sept. 3, 1983, edition of the Tiger Rag Magazine – Volume 6, Issue No. 3. I had just graduated from the University of Missouri that August. Tiger Rag was located at 2854 Kalurah Street in Baton Rouge just off Perkins Road under Interstate 10.
The next monthly issue will be Volume 47, Issue 9, and Tiger Rag is now located in the plush offices in the Investar Tower on Coursey Boulevard. The old Tiger Rag is now one of the coolest hangs in Baton Rouge – Duvic’s Martini Bar. If you take a hard left upon entering and go to the bar in the next room, that was my office.
I didn’t have a fifth of whiskey in my desk drawer, but you can get one there now at Duvic’s. Back when you could still smoke cigars in such places, I had one and a drink with former LSU assistant basketball coach Kermit Davis in my old office after the 2001-02 basketball season finale – a loss to Ball State in the second round of the NIT. Davis was leaving for the head coaching job at Middle Tennessee State, and before long was Ole Miss’ head coach.
Iron Pot steaks was right across Kalurah at the corner of Perkins back in 1983. It later became Zee Zee Gardens, and was used in the filming of the Steven Soderbergh indy classic “Sex, Lies and Videotape” in 1989. It is now the Overpass Merchant bar and restaurant.
Steve Myers, who started Tiger Rag in 1978 with Steve Townsend, was right across the hall. The late, great Charles Barbre sold ads and often went to lunch with me. We would review various restaurants around town. And the reviews were always good, because they paid for them. There was a transactional relationship.
That is not the case with Tiger Rag and LSU athletics, though that type of relationship is rampant in college athletics now. It never happened here, and never will. We’re independent, like “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” sort of.
Myers let me write a column on why LSU should fire head coach Jerry Stovall as the Tigers dipped to 2-8 in 1983. That was in the special “Jerry Stovall On Trial” issue on Nov. 19 of that year. Many major metropolitan sports editors would never have allowed that then. Even fewer would now.
The “No BS Zone” will continue.
But LSU is in a much better place now than it was in 1983 and in 2021 when I left the beat. The Tigers had just lost at UCLA, 38-27, as I was leaving that year. A 6-7 season ensued, and coach Ed Orgeron was fired.
Kelly may not win the national championship this season. He may not even make the new, 12-team playoff with that NFL-empty roster on defense. But eventually, he’ll be in that mix and win one without the off-field issues that plagued the national championship programs of Orgeron and Les Miles. LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson, women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey and gymnastics coach Jay Clark appear to be just getting started as far as gathering multiple national titles.
The men’s basketball program under Matt McMahon has even gradually progressed past the embarrassments that Johnny Jones (on the court) and Will Wade (off the court with the NCAA) were.
I just hope I don’t jinx anything.
-For when I first became an LSU beat writer in 1983, the Tigers went 4-7 and the coach got fired. Before my arrival, the Tigers had just gone 8-3-1, beat the Bear and Alabama and reached the Orange Bowl.
-After covering Alabama at the Montgomery Advertiser, I returned to Louisiana at the Alexandria Town Talk and got the LSU beat before the 1989 season. The Tigers were coming off five straight winning seasons and two SEC titles in the previous three years when I took over. And they went 4-7 to begin a stretch of six straight losing seasons with two more fired coaches. Sorry about that.
-I left the Town Talk after the 1992 season to cover Alabama at the Mobile Press-Register, then later Auburn. I moved to the Baton Rouge Advocate before the 1998 season. Coach Gerry DiNardo had just put together three straight winning seasons to end the six-year drought and even beat No. 1 Florida in 1997. And the Tigers fell to 4-7 with me on the beat in ’98 and to 3-8 in ’99, and DiNardo was done. Hey, I apologize.
But can he beat the jinx? If not, LSU and Kelly may have “to go in a different direction.”
So far, Billy Napier has struggled with the jinx touch – 11-14 and 6-10 in the SEC – since I wrote he should have been interviewed for the LSU job two years ago. Never said he should he be hired at LSU, folks.
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