We attended a funeral in Baton Rouge this past Saturday morning. It was hot even at 8 am when we left home, and only got hotter as the day wore on. But that really wasn't an issue that day, as we were going to be there for a good family who seemed to only do good things for other people. Cheryl Bauer and her husband Joey had us over last spring to their house on the Mississippi River levee in Sunshine, and Joey boiled crawfish. Cheryl had taken Taylor (a senior at LSU), Camille (then a high school senior in Baton Rouge), and our son, DJ to the 2010 Capitol One Bowl in Florida. She is from Rayne, part of the Arceneaux family, and has been around us since we moved to Louisiana in 1991.
We arrived at the funeral home about 9 am, and we went inside to be there for the family. Joey was a great father, and worked for long periods of time in the oilfield in Africa, leaving Cheryl to take care of the family back home, which she did very well. Taylor is going to be an electrical engineer, and Camille is a high level gymnast who works at that sport for long hours every day.
Many Arceneauxs were at the funeral, and it was good to see and talk to them. Anthony Cramer, our old neighbor from the Roberts Cove area, still farming and working through back problems from sitting on tractors his whole life. Steve and Klare Arceneaux from Central, our old neighbors in Baton Rouge while we were in law school, are like us- our kids are growing up and the older ones are going through college and we just keep plugging along. Piggy Arceneaux, the old police chief from Rayne, catching up with all his relatives. Anthony Emmons, an old friend from Rayne who we see every once in a while now that he no longer owns the furniture rental store in town, is running for state representative and riding his bike every day. Charles Faul, our neighbor right down the street in Mire who comes from an old farming family, gave me some tips on growing a garden starting next year.
We were all there to try to help Cheryl and her two great kids, but there wasn't much we could do other than just being there. Joey was just 51, and died unexpectedly last week. I know they will be alright, but they were clearly in shock when we saw them. I hope that if there is anything we can do for them, that they know we are there for them. I know first hand how hard it is to lose a parent at that age- I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
After the funeral, our little family ate lunch at The Chimes near the LSU campus. It's a great old place where I used to go eat lunch every so often when I was in law school, and it hasn't changed much. Their blackened alligator and chicken sandwiches are great, and the kids all like that place.
It was moving in day for the LSU football players, even though DJ had been there since his spring semester ended, as he took one class in the intersession. DJ has a nice room on the second floor, and his roommates are all excited to be back. Tremayne cooked them dinner and did some cleaning up in the place, and the boys and I went to play golf at Beaver Creek by Zachary. Even though it was 98 degrees when we started our round, we had a good time. When a thunderstorm hit us on our 17th hole, we had to settle for looking at the 18th instead of playing it as we drove in to the clubhouse to beat the lightning. If it were just rain, we would have played right through it. As Tom said on the 16th green as we first heard lightning, "Rat fart!" (quoting the bishop from Caddyshack as he was struck by lightning on the last green).
When we got back to the LSU dorms where DJ lives, he and I went on a shopping trip for some groceries, and got he and his roommates set up for a few weeks. Cereal, Powerade, bread, fruit, meat and cheese- all the staples. It was nice to spend a few minutes with him- that doesn't happen very much anymore now that they are away at school.
We left for home about 9:30 pm, and everyone slept all the way home, giving me time to ponder the day. We started the day by going to be there for our friends, a family that is hurting from an unexpected tragedy, and we finished it by being able to spend the day together with our kids as they get ready for summer school at LSU. It definitely makes me grateful for what we have- we need to say our prayers of thanks every night!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Why Mess With A Good Thing?
As I watch the NFL lockout situation, I keep shaking my head at why it has gotten to this point. I am a huge NFL fan, watch games as much as time allows, know the history of the game and love it, and I am just amazed that the powers that be in the NFLPA and the owners can't get this straightened out and avoid a lockout or, even worse, canceling games in the fall.
I had just graduated from high school in 1981 when I moved to my brother's house a few miles from Milwaukee County Stadium. I would stay there for the summer to finish playing baseball after my senior year, and I planned to go to as many Brewers games as I possibly could. Ticket prices then were very low- as I remember it, outfield bleacher tickets were about $5 per game, so I could have easily made 25-30 games that summer around our baseball games and practices. I really loved baseball. Then it all changed- the players and the baseball owners couldn't agree on a contract, so there was a player strike and the games that summer were canceled. I was seriously disappointed, but found other ways to spend my free time, and life went on. However, for about 15 years, I didn't follow major league baseball, didn't go out of my way to go to a game or watch it on tv, and just really didn't care about the game very much. That 1981 strike just turned me off from major league baseball.
As our boys grew up and got to baseball playing age, I returned to the sport to coach them, and we even went to a few Astros and Rangers games. But I never forgot how the players/owners back in 1981 had let me down, and I took our kids to LSU baseball games, which we really enjoyed. I have been to a few MLB games over the past 15 years, but my passion in sports is now definitely football- college or pro, I don't care. It was a great joy for me to see the Packers win this Super Bowl, after all the adversity they had to work through during the season. What a great game.
Now I see that the NFL owners and the players are about to go through a lockout, where the players won't be able to be in the team facilities or even to meet with their coaches or coordinators. It's one of the dumbest things I have seen- the NFL is clearly the premier sports league in the world, there is plenty of money to be made by owners and players alike, and they are squabbling like little kids on a playground.
When I look at the issues that the league seem to be unable to agree on, I become even more amazed. The first is revenue distribution, and presently the $9.3 billion (that's right- billion dollars!) in revenue in 2010 was split with roughly 14% to the league to grow the game (like a franchise fee that McDonald's or Subway owners pay), 57% to the players' salaries (labor costs), and remainder to the owners. That's about $3.3 billion to the owners, and they want another billion dollars of the pie from the players in this new contract. How have the owners been making it in the past with their share? Why the sudden new need for an extra billion dollars? Seems like that could be worked out, with the owners realizing they have a great thing going, and that they shouldn't mess it up by arguing over money like they are. Advantage: Players.
The second issue is the owners' desire to move to an 18 game season. Presently the teams play 4 exhibition games and 16 regular season games. The exhibition games, with the exception of the final one, usually only require the veterans to play a half or so, in order to play and evaluate the rookies and newcomers to the teams. By adding two regular season games, the owners evidently see additional concession and tv revenue for the longer season, and the players see more wear and tear on their bodies from the extra games, with no additional money coming in to them in the form of salary or for their long term medical care. The league has already moved beginning in 1978 from a 14 game to a 16 game season, and the Super Bowl is now being played in February. There can be too much of a good thing- if the owners are smart, they'll realize that they don't want to water down their game by starting regular season games before kids have even gone back to school in the fall. Advantage: Players.
The third issue is a rookie wage scale, and after the Ryan Leaf escapade and others over the years who have gotten huge rookie salaries and not performed well, this seems likely to pass. Really, why should a college player be given a $50 million contract with $25 or $30 million guaranteed, before he has played one down in the league? I can see the wisdom in this: some players who teams think are "can't miss" draft choices are human and can miss, and that pool of player money should realistically go to veterans who have proven themselves in the league. Advantage: Owners.
The last issue is the ability of teams to recover bonus money paid to players if the player violate the law or the league personal conduct policy, and this issue becomes somewhat complicated. The NFL players' only "guaranteed" money is their bonus, and that fact is one that makes the league so great. Players have to produce or they are gone- it's survival of the fittest and "produce or perish" at its best. However, unlike players' salaries in baseball and basketball, NFL salaries are, for the most part, not guaranteed. This issue is probably one that should result in both sides giving a little, and one that probably should be negotiated to a resolution. However, it's not a season killer- get in a room and get to an agreement! Advantage: Draw.
So there is my take on the NFL strike. I hope that they get this worked out so that the players and coaches can start working together on the practice field and in the meeting rooms as soon as possible, as the game is very complex today and much time goes into things like developing timing and getting all the players on the same page with their teammates. If the lockout continues for any length of time, the game (and the product on the field this fall) will suffer, and it may take years to get it back to what it was last season. The NFL is clearly the superior sports league in the world right now- please don't mess it up!!
I had just graduated from high school in 1981 when I moved to my brother's house a few miles from Milwaukee County Stadium. I would stay there for the summer to finish playing baseball after my senior year, and I planned to go to as many Brewers games as I possibly could. Ticket prices then were very low- as I remember it, outfield bleacher tickets were about $5 per game, so I could have easily made 25-30 games that summer around our baseball games and practices. I really loved baseball. Then it all changed- the players and the baseball owners couldn't agree on a contract, so there was a player strike and the games that summer were canceled. I was seriously disappointed, but found other ways to spend my free time, and life went on. However, for about 15 years, I didn't follow major league baseball, didn't go out of my way to go to a game or watch it on tv, and just really didn't care about the game very much. That 1981 strike just turned me off from major league baseball.
As our boys grew up and got to baseball playing age, I returned to the sport to coach them, and we even went to a few Astros and Rangers games. But I never forgot how the players/owners back in 1981 had let me down, and I took our kids to LSU baseball games, which we really enjoyed. I have been to a few MLB games over the past 15 years, but my passion in sports is now definitely football- college or pro, I don't care. It was a great joy for me to see the Packers win this Super Bowl, after all the adversity they had to work through during the season. What a great game.
Now I see that the NFL owners and the players are about to go through a lockout, where the players won't be able to be in the team facilities or even to meet with their coaches or coordinators. It's one of the dumbest things I have seen- the NFL is clearly the premier sports league in the world, there is plenty of money to be made by owners and players alike, and they are squabbling like little kids on a playground.
When I look at the issues that the league seem to be unable to agree on, I become even more amazed. The first is revenue distribution, and presently the $9.3 billion (that's right- billion dollars!) in revenue in 2010 was split with roughly 14% to the league to grow the game (like a franchise fee that McDonald's or Subway owners pay), 57% to the players' salaries (labor costs), and remainder to the owners. That's about $3.3 billion to the owners, and they want another billion dollars of the pie from the players in this new contract. How have the owners been making it in the past with their share? Why the sudden new need for an extra billion dollars? Seems like that could be worked out, with the owners realizing they have a great thing going, and that they shouldn't mess it up by arguing over money like they are. Advantage: Players.
The second issue is the owners' desire to move to an 18 game season. Presently the teams play 4 exhibition games and 16 regular season games. The exhibition games, with the exception of the final one, usually only require the veterans to play a half or so, in order to play and evaluate the rookies and newcomers to the teams. By adding two regular season games, the owners evidently see additional concession and tv revenue for the longer season, and the players see more wear and tear on their bodies from the extra games, with no additional money coming in to them in the form of salary or for their long term medical care. The league has already moved beginning in 1978 from a 14 game to a 16 game season, and the Super Bowl is now being played in February. There can be too much of a good thing- if the owners are smart, they'll realize that they don't want to water down their game by starting regular season games before kids have even gone back to school in the fall. Advantage: Players.
The third issue is a rookie wage scale, and after the Ryan Leaf escapade and others over the years who have gotten huge rookie salaries and not performed well, this seems likely to pass. Really, why should a college player be given a $50 million contract with $25 or $30 million guaranteed, before he has played one down in the league? I can see the wisdom in this: some players who teams think are "can't miss" draft choices are human and can miss, and that pool of player money should realistically go to veterans who have proven themselves in the league. Advantage: Owners.
The last issue is the ability of teams to recover bonus money paid to players if the player violate the law or the league personal conduct policy, and this issue becomes somewhat complicated. The NFL players' only "guaranteed" money is their bonus, and that fact is one that makes the league so great. Players have to produce or they are gone- it's survival of the fittest and "produce or perish" at its best. However, unlike players' salaries in baseball and basketball, NFL salaries are, for the most part, not guaranteed. This issue is probably one that should result in both sides giving a little, and one that probably should be negotiated to a resolution. However, it's not a season killer- get in a room and get to an agreement! Advantage: Draw.
So there is my take on the NFL strike. I hope that they get this worked out so that the players and coaches can start working together on the practice field and in the meeting rooms as soon as possible, as the game is very complex today and much time goes into things like developing timing and getting all the players on the same page with their teammates. If the lockout continues for any length of time, the game (and the product on the field this fall) will suffer, and it may take years to get it back to what it was last season. The NFL is clearly the superior sports league in the world right now- please don't mess it up!!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Welcome!
Welcome to my newest writing adventure- my attempt to connect with people I've met and the things I've done in life, in addition to those that challenges that are still ahead. I always admired my oldest brother Duke's ability to write stories about things that interested me- he was a reporter for a Wisconsin newspaper and then became a lawyer. I was always a big reader- I tell our kids that I have read the World Book encyclopedia from front to back numerous times, and that's where my trivia skills were first devleoped. But writing didn't get really interesting to me until I became good friends with a fellow summer camp counselor whose real job was as an English professor at Cal. I brought him my papers that I had written as a college freshman, and he went through them and critiqued them for me. And he did it in a way that motivated me to continue writing and get better at it. Bill Engel- thanks for getting me started!
I am living with my wife and kids in southwest Louisiana, a practicing attorney and felony prosecutor in our rural parish. I also have a civil law practice and have come to really like helping businesses get started and grow. There's just something powerful about building something- I don't get the same powerful feeling from suing a company for damages, which results in a degree of tearing a business apart. However, just like I feel very strongly that a criminal defendant deserves a good defense, I feel that the plaintiffs' bar has brought about many important changes in our country. These changes have made our lives safer, and kids these days face far fewer dangerous situations than kids fifty years ago. Kudos to plaintiffs' lawyers!
I am an avid football fan, having spent most of my life either playing or coaching the game. My next oldest brother, Joe, made sure I made it to my games and practices when I was growing up in Augusta, Georgia. He is most responsible for fostering my love of the game. Our oldest son, Andy, is a high school football coach in Baton Rouge, and I couldn't be prouder of him. He is the offensive line coach (where he played during an All State playing career at Notre Dame of Crowley), and to watch his guys working as a team and so proficiently is really a thing of beauty. Our next son, DJ, is a freshman linebacker at LSU, and working hard to be a contributor for that team as it sets its goal on a national championship in 2011.
I will try to write about those things that mean a lot to me, and about those things that helped me get where I am today. Hopefully it will be entertaining to some, and one always worries that some may find my work worthless. But as a man much wiser than me once said, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Teddy Roosevelt spoke those words in a speech he gave at the Sorbonne in Parish, France on April 23, 1910, and what he said means a lot to me. It means that whenever I have a jury trial upcoming, and I am working until midnight for the weeks prior, if I begin to have any doubts about either my ability to connect with a jury or to meet my expectations of what I owe to a victim or our parish, I think about those words and find great strength in them. When I coached football and baseball, I would trust the system that enabled me to give the players enough quality reps and a thought process to handle any situation that may arise in a game. When you lay it all out there for everyone to see, and you've given it everything you have, then there is no way for you to fail.
I hope that you find this fun to read. I think it will be fun to write. No matter what, I plan to enjoy my time in this arena, and may even find myself in a worthy cause or daring greatly. We shall see.
I am living with my wife and kids in southwest Louisiana, a practicing attorney and felony prosecutor in our rural parish. I also have a civil law practice and have come to really like helping businesses get started and grow. There's just something powerful about building something- I don't get the same powerful feeling from suing a company for damages, which results in a degree of tearing a business apart. However, just like I feel very strongly that a criminal defendant deserves a good defense, I feel that the plaintiffs' bar has brought about many important changes in our country. These changes have made our lives safer, and kids these days face far fewer dangerous situations than kids fifty years ago. Kudos to plaintiffs' lawyers!
I am an avid football fan, having spent most of my life either playing or coaching the game. My next oldest brother, Joe, made sure I made it to my games and practices when I was growing up in Augusta, Georgia. He is most responsible for fostering my love of the game. Our oldest son, Andy, is a high school football coach in Baton Rouge, and I couldn't be prouder of him. He is the offensive line coach (where he played during an All State playing career at Notre Dame of Crowley), and to watch his guys working as a team and so proficiently is really a thing of beauty. Our next son, DJ, is a freshman linebacker at LSU, and working hard to be a contributor for that team as it sets its goal on a national championship in 2011.
I will try to write about those things that mean a lot to me, and about those things that helped me get where I am today. Hopefully it will be entertaining to some, and one always worries that some may find my work worthless. But as a man much wiser than me once said, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Teddy Roosevelt spoke those words in a speech he gave at the Sorbonne in Parish, France on April 23, 1910, and what he said means a lot to me. It means that whenever I have a jury trial upcoming, and I am working until midnight for the weeks prior, if I begin to have any doubts about either my ability to connect with a jury or to meet my expectations of what I owe to a victim or our parish, I think about those words and find great strength in them. When I coached football and baseball, I would trust the system that enabled me to give the players enough quality reps and a thought process to handle any situation that may arise in a game. When you lay it all out there for everyone to see, and you've given it everything you have, then there is no way for you to fail.
I hope that you find this fun to read. I think it will be fun to write. No matter what, I plan to enjoy my time in this arena, and may even find myself in a worthy cause or daring greatly. We shall see.
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