LSU Basketball

FROM FIRST TO WORST

Or from the penthouse to the outhouse.

I remember last March during the week before the final four. Our guys were in the limelight. ESPN was running interviews of Big Baby, Tyrus, Darrel, Garrett and the rest of the boys. Our Tigers were taking on celebrity status! ...Or was it just their fifteen minutes of fame?

Fast forward to this season. Look how far we've fallen! Fingers can be pointed in many different directions for the demise of this year's team. The fact is, this just isn't our year. But what disappoints me the most is to see how so many Tiger fans have seemingly abandoned their team. Yes, we are a football school, but it's a shame to see such a successful basket program program be neglected and forgotten. Fans do make a difference.

Sadly, the PMAC is no longer the "Deaf Dome." I remember well the days of Rudy Macklin, Ethan Martin, Greg "The Cookieman" Cook, Howard Carter, Leonard "Swat" Mitchell, DeWayne "The Astronaut" Scales, and Jordy Hultberg among others. Back then it really was the deaf dome and you would come out of there with your ears ringing! I'd never heard Tiger Stadium that loud! I was a student at the time and it was customary practice to stand in line for hours to get a good seat. The line for the student section for the Kentucky game in '81 stretched all the way to Nicholson Drive! That team finished 31-5 and made it to the final four. LSU Basketball had finally arrived!

I thought from that point on that basketball would always be a major sport at LSU. Sure, there is a select group of permanently loyal fans, but by and large the majority of fans from the glory days have long disappeared. There was a brief comeback when Shaq and company came on the scene in the early 90's but nothing like those days in the early 80's.

I hope that by some miracle the fans will show up for Saturday's game with Florida. Many are writing this game off as a certain loss, perhaps with good reason. I am reminded of the time LSU played #1 and eventual national champion Kentucky in 1978. All five LSU starters had fouled out of the game but the team managed to pull off a miracle 1 point upset. That was as loud as I'd ever heard the Assembly Center and I'm certain that the fans did indeed make a difference in that game.

A Waste of Time

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Technology is great... but is life really better because of it?

Call me old fashioned if you want, but I really miss many aspects of life before all of these hi-tech gadgets entered our lives.

When I grew up in the 1960's and 70's things were much different. We didn't have any...

Cable TV. In fact we only had two TV channels to watch! No VCRs!

Personal computers. No video games whatsoever! No internet!

Cell phones. Imagine not being able to call your best buddy on a whim!

Cars stereos. Not until the late 1970s. My parents cars only had monaural AM radios in them.

So life must have been totally boring! What did we do with all of our time?

I'll tell you what. Life was NOT boring at all! In fact, there seemed to be more hours in a day than there are now! There was more time and less of it was wasted! In many ways life was better despite not having so many of today's conveniences!