Chance of rain?
Actually much greater than Dan Borne missing an LSU football game.
Or, as he joked Saturday morning, every time he misses one Bill Franques fills in.
That, you might note, was almost nine years ago to the day, the only previous game that Borne failed to call in his 30 years as the Tiger Stadium public-address announcer.
Borne, you see, is a Catholic deacon who conducts weddings. And like so many weddings in South Louisiana, the one in New Orleans this past Saturday night was scheduled not only with Dan in charge, but recognizing that LSU was playing football in South Carolina.
Until all hell broke loose in South Carolina, causing the well-documented switch in venues.
So early last week Borne had to let LSU know he wouldn’t be there if LSU became the host and Franques had to start getting his potential game face on.
Not that he didn’t have something scheduled, also. He was supposed to be helping his wife with a neighborhood garage sale, but that was postponed in lieu of LSU football.
And so it went Saturday, LSU rolling to a 45-24 victory over home/visiting South Carolina in the day with the fans on hand never noticing or missing Borne and Emily and Alex getting married that night without a problem.
Borne, who happens to have a fantastic dry sense of humor, said he gave Franques only one piece of advice. Hire two women spotters, like he does, because guys get distracted.
“I tried guys for years. The guys don’t want to spot. They want to coach,” Borne said.
“So when I say ‘Who ran the ball?’ They say “We should have run a 32 Flag Right instead of a post.’ And I’ll tell them I don’t want to know what we should have run. Who ran the ball? ‘Well, I didn’t see.’ So I fired all the guys.”
He hired NOLA.com entertainment reporter Chelsea Brasted and Sarah Laborde, a public-relations executive who comes in from Houston.
“They don’t care about strategy. They don’t care what play we run. The test you have to pass to be a spotter is this: I show them a number like 82. And if she says 82 instead of 28, she’s in.”
Officiating weddings is something about which Borne is a lot less flippant.
“There have been games past and there will be games future, but marriages are forever,” Borne said.
He’s been doing weddings for a while. But the last time he missed an LSU game wasn’t for a wedding. He’s currently ordained in the dioceses of Baton Rouge but at the time Borne was in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
“But the Archdiocese does not go by the LSU home-game schedule,” he cracked.
Accordingly, Borne had to attend a mandatory silent retreat, missing the game on October 14, 2006.
“And Bill had to pinch-hit for me that weekend and we played Kentucky and we won 49-0. So Bill’s on a run.”
Franques mentioned that while he might have been a little nervous Saturday morning, he said he’d done LSU spring football games in the past.
Franques got to LSU early Saturday was studying hard and especially working on pronunciations.
“I’m familiar with the headphones, and the way everything sounds,”Franques said, “so I’m less nervous than if I hadn’t sat in this chair before.”
Borne, it should be noted, has returned the favor, filling in twice for Franques, the familiar PA voice of LSU baseball at Alex Box Stadium.
“Once it was the for an impending delivery of a child. It was sort of understood that he was going to be around the hospital. And another time was for a wedding that Bill himself was in.”
Borne sent Franques a note with a few little details but other than telling him win the game, that was it.
“He has plenty of good people in the booth,” Borne said. “He’ll do great.”
And about the advice of hiring two women? Brasted and Laborde, by the way, had other plans, too.
Franques didn’t even bother with spotters, relying totally on the inside-the-press-box call of Jimmy Manasseh, who provides the media with instant play-by-play and down information as it occurs.
“I’ve got my binoculars and I hear Jimmy in the headset, so I’m going with that.”
He did great, of course, which was what you’d expect from a guy who’d been through so many nail-biting baseball regionals at The Box.
“It went well. I made it through unscathed,” he said.
And maybe you noticed or maybe you didn’t, but there was no reference to precipitation Saturday, of which there was none.
“Two reasons. To me that’s Dan’s signature and the other because under the circumstances it might not be appropriate, talking about the rain.”
But at the wedding?
Borne couldn’t resist.
“I think I may conclude it by saying ‘Chance of rain on this marriage? Never.’ That would be the way to do it.”