The way the football game in suburban D.C. ended yesterday brought back memories of a game 22 years ago in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Almost 100,000 people yelling, there to watch modern gladiators. I was there to witness and tell the story. People wonder if I miss it.
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A college football program that hasn’t won a postseason game since 2002 and lost every game it played in 2023 once had stars who still shine.
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One of Saturday’s college football games took me down memory lane and reminded me of how much context matters when it comes to great plays.
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I’m writing this for me. By any of today’s guidelines and metrics, it’s too long. But it feels like the right way to take stock of my career.
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I’ve seen a lot of college football in a lot of stadiums. This doesn’t even include high school and pro games. It’s quite a list.
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LSU and USC meet in football for the third time Sunday in Las Vegas and on ABC. They face a high bar 45 years after their instant classic.
Read More...A 2005 column I wrote came from a part of my brain not normally accessed when I typed my thoughts on a laptop.
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I was midway through a nearly three-hour drive after midnight. It was raining. At least one other person who was still awake noticed: the DJ at the radio station I picked up at some point after crossing into Texas.
Read More...Published December 28, 2016
Gary Laney died without warning Friday, two days before Christmas. He was 47. The news was crushing. The shock hasn’t worn off, and I am flailing about in search of words.
His funeral is happening now in Baton Rouge. I wish he were here to talk about it with me. Gary’s presence here two years ago, the day before the funeral of our first editor in the daily newspaper business, was a gift to me from the cosmos. Now, he’s gone, and we are not having lunch together, not having beers, not telling Lake Charles stories, laughing and crying.
In a year of so much loss, Gary’s death is one of the hardest losses to bear.
We first met in the mid-1980s, when my journalism career was just getting started and he was a high school student with an interest in sports writing and newspaper work. He came up one day to the makeshift press box at Legion Field in Lake Charles where I was covering American Legion games, and on some level, he never left. Gary was like a friendly puppy, tagging along as I did my job. He was likable, smart, curious, full of questions, and eager to discuss sports, music, writing and many other subjects.