An LSU football prediction ... for 2043

      Joe Burrow reminds me of Steve Spurrier, and vice versa. And I have a prediction that will be a common bond concerning the Heisman Trophy.

Steve Spurrier (left) was one of the Heisman Trophy winners standing
behind Joe Burrow when the LSU QB accepted his award in December 2019.

     (You will have to read to the bottom of this blog to see the prediction.)
     Maybe even Spurrier -- never bashful -- would laugh at the quarterback comparison. Yes, both are Heisman Trophy winners (Spurrier 1966, Burrow 2019), but in complete different eras of football. Spurrier loved the passing game even in 1964-66 as Florida's starting QB, but in that era, the passing game was so limited.
     He was a good enough passer -- and a leader, and kicker -- to be a first-round NFL Draft pick. Burrow likely will be the first player to be selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. 
      Spurrier is partisan still to the Gators he coached into a national power for 12 years and also to  South Carolina, where he coached for 10 1/2 years. But we have to believe that he loved this LSU passing game and its quarterback (even if he was rooting for Florida on October 12 (Tigers 42, Gators 28).
     This is what I believe is the main common bond for Spurrier and Burrow: Both are total winners. 
     They both have national-championship credentials -- Spurrier in 1996 as The Old Ball Coach, director/designer of Florida's sensational passing game; Burrow in 2019 as the leader of LSU's best-in-history offense.
     Both honest, maybe too much so for some people. Brash -- Spurrier with his words, his biting "fun"; Burrow with his actions -- waving bye-bye to Texas fans, his "show the money" gestures, his pointing-to-the-ring-finger display Monday night.
     Spurrier, in his Florida association, was as much of a nemesis for LSU as Nick Saban has been as Alabama coach.
      Steve Superior, as the Gators' QB, was 3-0 vs. LSU in 1964-65-66. As Florida head coach (1990-2001), he was 11-1 vs. LSU, and most of those games were not close.
     LSU's only victory was in 1997 -- 28-21 -- when Florida was the defending national champion and ranked No. 1 again, and after that upset, LSU running back Kevin Faulk was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
     But Spurrier this week was on LSU's side.
     He told 247Sports, prior to the national-championship game: "... They [LSU and Clemson] both know how to win. They aren't going to beat themselves. Both teams have excellent quarterbacks. As an SEC guy, I have to sort of pull for LSU.
     "Joe Burrow -- I got to know him a little bit during high school when he came up there. He's a wonderful young man and has a good family. ... It's really going to be an interesting game to watch."
     And it was.
---
     Burrow, barring a trade, appears headed to the Cincinnati Bengals as the first pick in the NFL Draft. Good luck to him.
      No guarantee that he will be a great NFL player, a star, anywhere close to the magnitude of his 2019 LSU performance. 
      Look at the list of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks starting in the 1960s, and it is a history lesson. 
      Terry Baker (Oregon State, 1962) was the first; Burrow is the 32nd.
      Baker was the first pick in the '63 NFL Draft, by the Los Angeles Rams, and lasted three years -- basically "a bust" -- before he was off to play in Canada.
       Only two Heisman Trophy QBs in the last six decades (Roger Staubach, Jim Plunkett) led Super Bowl winners, only one (Staubach) is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, only one other (Cam Newton) has played in the Super Bowl.
      Evaluate the group and you find some starters who had nice seasons, some that faded away, some were busts (hey, Johnny Manziel) and some that never had a chance or even tried. 
      We'll see about the five Heisman QBs before Burrow -- Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson (this season's NFL MVP, playoff flop last weekend), Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston. 
       I will make no prediction on Burrow's NFL future -- no "rocket" arm, just a darned accurate one -- except I would not underestimate him. His command of the game, his incentive and leadership will carry him a long way.
      But remember, he's going to the Bengals. They are not the Bayou Bengals.

--- 

     Speaking of predictions, how about this one from our friend Paul Finebaum (Shreveport Journal sports-news writer, 1978-79) and now well-known SEC Network pundit (and, many think, Alabama booster) on Tuesday, November 19:
      "This will be LSU's last week at No. 1."
      Yes, we took note of that.
      Well, Paul was right ... for a couple of weeks and not entirely. LSU did drop behind Ohio State in the College Football Playoff rankings after that week -- after Ohio State beat Penn State -- but never fell from No. 1 in The Associated Press poll. 
     And, after the conference championship games, Paul was wrong. LSU went back to No. 1 in every poll/ranking ... and stayed. So Paul, on this, is wrong forever.
     It's his job -- analysis, predictions, interviews -- and be outspoken, keep viewers interested and  watching, keep them talking with and about him. So let's give him a break. 
     As my wife always reminds me, throw enough predictions out there, and some might even stick. 
---
     So, back to Spurrier and Burrow, here is my prediction: 
Someday, as Spurrier did at Florida, Burrow will return to LSU as the head football coach. 
     He has the football genes (his father coached for decades), he has the football smarts, he might even play for 10 years in the NFL (Spurrier did, mostly as a backup QB to John Brodie with the 49ers), and then he can go into coaching.
    Like Spurrier as the folk hero returning to his alma mater, Burrow will return to LSU and Louisiana, where he is now a forever legend. 
      It took Spurrier 24 years (1966 to '90) between Heisman Trophy QB to Gators' head coach, so project Burrow at LSU in 2043. Not many of us will be around to see my prediction come true. ... (Throw enough out there and some will stick.)
       So, in 2043, when someone comes across this blog when Joe Burrow is named LSU head football coach, let our kids and grandkids know we got this one right. Thank you.

Finebaum's career did survive Shreveport

     Sports writing at the Shreveport Journal, Part III:
     Paul Finebaum came to the Journal sports staff as a young man out of Memphis, and the University of Tennessee, in 1978. He is now a very respected sports writer and, even more so, a radio sports talk show host who SI.com ranked recently as one of the 20 most influential media people in the country.
     And he is one of the biggest success story of line of sports writers who worked at the Journal, and who could have imagined that?

Paul Finebaum (photo from aol.sportingnews.com and the
Paul Finebaum Radio Network/WJOX)

     In a short time, Finebaum made people in Shreveport mad. He was a different type sports writer than the town had seen.
     Even as a young man, Paul was just a bit cynical. He was a quiet, soft-spoken guy, really mild-mannered. But he didn't write like it.
     I had seen Wally Rugg come into Shreveport sports writing, at the Journal, a few years earlier, and shake things -- and people up -- with his opinionated writing style. Finebaum topped even Wally.
     Paul was ahead of his time, at least in Shreveport. He was what became known in sports writing as a "chipmunk." I guess I could do a whole blog on that, but let's see if I can explain. These were young guys who were irreverent, or agitators. They had answers to their questions, or thought they did, and they wrote what they wanted, no matter what.
     Summing it up: They were smart asses.
     So Paul wrote with satire, and he did that well. He was just a bit caustic; he did that well, too. He perhaps questioned some institutions; he was not enamored with history.
     Shreveport readers didn't understand. One example was when, in a column, he referred to the basketball coach at Centenary College as "Thomas of Canterbury." It was actually cleverly written. As the sports information director at Centenary, I tried to explain to some upset people what Paul was trying to do. It was satire, people.
     Then he wrote a piece on the semipro football team, the Shreveport Steamer. It was really a fly-by-night operation, and Paul saw it as such. So his tongue-in-cheek report on a game didn't go over well ... at all. The next game, Steamer "fans" had signs berating Finebaum. "Fire Finebaum," I think one of them read. (The fans also might have had rope ready for Paul's neck; I'm not sure.)
     Paul also was not exactly thrilled with covering Shreveport Captains' games at a wreck of a stadium, SPAR Stadium. Long, hot nights and games there could be a test. Paul, as I recall, wasn't all that much of a baseball fan, either; he did prefer college football over anything. Couldn't blame him for that.
     So his Captains' game stories weren't, let's say, enthusiastic.
     But that's not what teed me off one Fourth of July afternoon game Paul was covering at SPAR Stadium. I was the ballclub as public relations director, and what sent me over the edge -- an edge I went over much too often -- was a disparaging remark Paul made about Shreveport, my hometown: "Some people have to die here."
     Let's leave it at I owe Paul a button off a shirt. It was an embarrasing moment, not exactly good public relations.
     I apologized then, and as often as I could later. Still apologizing, OK.
     I defended Paul often in Shreveport; he didn't ask me to, but I tried to say to people that he had the right to write whatever he wanted, as long as it was OK with his bosses at the Journal.
     Ah, but Paul wasn't all that happy there at the newspaper and, as it turned out, neither were the paper's editors with him. Soon he was moved to newsside -- mutual agreement, perhaps -- and he took off on an assignment. He made a road trip with a trucker, to do a one monsterously long story. (A monster truck story?)
     After he did his work on that, he was gone ... fired from the paper. Something about overtime hours; I never knew the details, and don't need to know.
     And so away he went. He wound up in Birmingham and then in Mobile, and he became a well-known sports columnist/writer ... and more significantly, he became a radio sports talk show host.
     He became a tremendously popular/unpopular radio sports talk show host, and he became an expert on Alabama football and Auburn football, and Alabama/Auburn basketball, and on the SEC. His radio sports talk show is known throughout the Southeast, and he has a national reputation.
     He is often seen on the major sports network shows being interviewed about college athletics; he's regarded as an "expert" on NCAA matters and on football and basketball. When there is controversy -- and isn't there always between Alabama and Auburn faithful? -- Paul's viewpoints are what people want to hear, one way or the other.
     He can still do controversy.
     Paul has appeared on many top talk shows on television, and not just sports shows.
     He is the host of the "Best of the SEC" series for cable television; I've seen some of the shows, and they're well done.
     I visited with him at an Alabama football game I covered in Tuscaloosa in 1995, first time I'd seen him since he left Shreveport. We had a nice visit -- I apologized again -- and we've talked a couple of times since. He's been a guest a few times on my son-in-law's sports talk radio show in Knoxville.
     And we talked last week. In private, he's still as soft-spoken and low-key -- and entertaining -- as ever. He said he's never been back to Shreveport.
     His career didn't die there, and he won't either.