In a lot of ways, I felt like it was a pretty good weekend.
Maybe my approach to the weekend wasn’t like yours. Maybe I remember more of it than you do. It all didn’t have to do with wins and losses.
My weekend started at 5 p.m. Friday in the second row of stands at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Something I had been waiting for weeks to see was taking place. Coach Johnny Jones was going to conduct his first practice as LSU head coach.
You had to know, as Johnny walked down the ramp from the dressing room that a flood of memories had to be in his mind. All the times he entered the court to practice as a player and the many years he assisted Dale Brown on that PMAC floor.
Now everything he has learned in 12 years as a head coach, put him in this moment – back on the floor of his alma mater – calling up the 11 players on his LSU team.
I know those formerly known as Midnight Madness events that are now Friday night extravaganzas are nice. They are fun and I will say Kentucky did it right this year bringing former players and coaches back to the floor, but then again, there is something about a coach, his team and the quietness of an arena when they are working out.
Coach Jones only stopped practice about 10 minutes to very calmly and quietly talk to his team for a minute that there was no place for “coolness.” That may have been the only time in the 2:15 workout that the players were anything but cool.
Coach Jones, joined by assistants Charlie Leonard, Robert Kirby and David Patrick had the team working hard every minute and the players responded in kind by giving one of the best efforts I’ve seen on an opening day in a while. With only 11 players, there is no margin for error when it comes to injuries but if anyone doubted this team has some toughness, one look at Eddie Ludwig taking an elbow to the forehead (four stitches) and then coming back about 20 minutes later to take a charge under the basket says all you need to know.
What you also need to know is that the whole team responded to that with whoops and hollers and applause.
The reality is that a national championship is not won on opening Friday whether you have 23,000 watch or 15. But I started my weekend feeling pretty good about what I saw on the basketball court and anxious to watch this team develop as LSU heads toward that Nov. 9 opener.
Saturday night, of course, was football night and even arriving on campus about 8 a.m., I could sure sense that big game feel was in the air. People were already trying to move already secured an inch or two to get just one more in an area. It’s the old square peg or this case square tent frame in the round hole game.
My judge on the size of the game is usually based on number of media in town and my view from the fifth floor of the athletic department down on the television compound. The more trucks the bigger the game and when the ESPN crew that usually does Saturdays on ABC comes to town, there is plenty of equipment – trucks, jib cameras, goal line cameras, the blimp, Sky Cam, etc.
They also bring enough people to televise a re-make of “War and Peace” and if you can figure out what all of them do of it they are doing something, you are a smarter person than me.
But this is when your team has made it. Big game TV coverage, national media and attention just on you until it is almost suffocating. The Tigers handle it pretty well and that’s another reason the media likes to come here (but don’t doubt the food, drink and hospitality don’t have a lot to do with it).
It also means that hundreds of people that work at LSU and those that are hired by LSU are tested to the fullest on a game night like Saturday. But it’s a labor of love and when one goes the extra mile to help someone coming on campus that’s a good thing.
Let me give you one example and there are always many. Julie Cribbs from our event management staff was up at the top of the hill by the Manship School when a car came up with a lost writer from the New York Times. Now she could have sent him out of the area because the teams and band were in the general vicinity but she worked with our staff and our media will-call staff went to the top of the hill with the writer’s parking pass so he could get to his lot and write good stuff about the Tigers win.
As some of us are prone to say around here sometimes, “It’s what we do.”
The game was pretty special. I know some of the general things that happen, but I don’t really get to see that much of the game live, so I’m as I write this watching Jeremy Hill on his long touchdown run on the CST replay. Wow! What a thing of beauty.
I also happened to catch some of the Gamecock network replay on Fox College Sports Sunday night as well. As the LSU crowd rose to full crescendo, the play-by-play voice said, “I’ve never been to the Roman Coliseum…” that was all you needed to know about what he thought of the madness known as “Saturday Night in Death Valley.”
I’m sure, like me, if you were out on Sunday, you found someone to talk to about their thoughts on the game and the weekend. Maybe you compared where you were sitting and your view of Hill’s touchdown or maybe you compared what someone cooked at the tailgate.
One thing I know, a semi-relaxing Sunday was a great way to finish off a good weekend in Tiger Town. I’m looking forward to a heck of a lot more between now and the end of the athletic year many months away. Geaux Tigers!