The Marks Post: Holiday bonding

The holidays are a time for family bonding, and I did that for sure this Christmas with my biological family. But, I also did some bonding with a couple guys who have become like family. Raymond Partsch III and myself have covered the 2019 Peach Bowl and the 2020 NCAA College Football Playoff Championship together along with the LSU debacle at the ATM this year, but this past Friday’s Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl was the first bowl experience with us for our sports editor, Rhett Manuel.
Rhett and I rode up to Shreveport together and learned a lot about each other. For one thing, we have similar taste in music and are both wannabe karaoke legends. On the way up there, we listened to my ballpark playlist, which led to some interesting conversations.
A big conversation was about generations and which generation we fall into. I was born in 1982, and Rhett was born in 1985. He brought up that we are both in millennial generation. I disagreed and said I read somewhere there is a sub-generation that we fall into. I went on to argue that we had Encyclopedia Britannica, VCRs, cassette tape players in cars, and rabbit ears on TVs.
In the middle of the conversation, the song “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby and the Range started playing. I made a comment about generations and quipped, “That’s just the way it is.”
Rhett then said he always associated that line with Tupac, who worked that line into his song “Changes.” If this example does not prove my argument on the sub-generation, then I don’t know what does.
The conversation went on, and we started coming up with a roundtable of the weirdest sports figures in Louisiana. We narrowed it down to the following five: Ed Orgeron, Bobby Hebert, Terry Bradshaw, James Carville, and Karl Malone.
As the drive continued, the song “I’m Gonna Miss Her” started playing. Rhett asked me if I ever heard the Post Malone version of the song, and I replied the only Malone I know is Karl. That is another example of the generational differences. Anyway, Rhett played Post Malone’s version of the Brad Paisley hit, and, as it turns out, it is pretty good.
We arrived in Shreveport a couple hours before the game. It was my second time there at the stadium and first since the LHSAA state football championships were moved there in 2005 because of Hurricane Katrina. That year, I went with Ryan Menard on Friday night to watch Breaux Bridge play Bastrop. That night was the coldest I had ever been. I had two coats on and was still freezing. The next day, we went see Opelousas Catholic play Evangel, and Wayne Toups sang the National Anthem.
Being up there for the Independence Bowl was not that different from the state championship games because the temperature was in the 20s, and the wind chill was, not much of an exaggeration here, six degrees. I was wearing two pairs of shorts, a pair of pants, three shirts, two coats, and a pair of gloves. Two of my shirts were a Cotton Festival T-shirt and a KVPI T-shirt, and I was wearing my Sacred Heart cap. So, I was representing my hometown up there in Shreveport.
I was layered up because I was taking pictures on the sideline while Raymond and Rhett were covering the game in the press box. But, the joke was on them because there was no running water in the press box, and the elevator up there was broken.
On the sideline, it was not bad in the cold. But, it got worse once the sun started going down. One thing that helped me stay warm was I kept walking back-and-forth along the sideline. When I was finishing one of the walks, I heard a woman scream. I stopped, looked around, and realized former LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron was on the sideline, which was apparently the cause of the scream. I walked up to Coach O, introduced myself, and told him I was an LSU beat writer in 2019 and covered the Peach Bowl and the national championship game. He smiled and told me LSU could have scored 100 points against Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl.
As we prepare to enter into a new year, I look forward to similar bonding experiences. I just hope the team I’m covering on one of these trips gets a win. The law of averages should kick in sooner or later.