Back in 2004, I created a blog on a whim and spent a few minutes trying to come up with a catchy name. I settled on Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom. No, I’m not the Captain of anything, but my name is Ken. Over the years, The Wisdom has served as a good outlet for my ridiculous thoughts and a nice way to keep a sharp edge on my logical-thought and writing processes.
Over time, however, the energy I could or wanted to devote to The Wisdom shrank, and it became focused more on more on the one thing I did care enough to think and write about – LSU football. So I figured a new brand was in order, and thus Every Night Should Be Saturday Night now exists.
Followers of college football blogs will no doubt get the name reference – it’s a nod to Every Day Should Be Saturday, which in its original form was the gold standard of “some guy with a computer, a brain and the love of college football”. But, of course, Saturday nights are better, especially in Baton Rouge.
And who am I and why would you care what I say? Well, I’m nobody and you won’t. But I do bring some bona fides as an LSU fan and a writer. First of all, I’m old so I’ve been around a while. To me, the “new section” of Tiger Stadium was the original West Upper and I sat up there the year it opened (I was 12 then). That edifice I now refer to as the “old old new section” as opposed to the “new old new section” that has replaced it.
I grew up (from 4th grade on) three miles from campus and spent the last half of the 1980s (and early part of the 1990s – the casual plan) earning a journalism degree from LSU and striving to answer such burning questions as “can you stand outside Tiger Stadium and throw a golf ball up into the South Endzone stands?” (potentially, but it’s a very bad idea) and “can you make it to a daytime Sugar Bowl after being in very poor shape on New Years Eve and sleeping in the bed of a pickup truck parked at Riverwalk?” (yes!).
My “real journalist” sports experience is limited to the one fall I spent part-timing on the Sports Desk of The Morning Advocate, which taught me the very valuable lesson that being a Sports Desk editor is the most miserable job in journalism. Being stuck in a newsroom on Friday and Saturday nights is no fun at all. And I ceased being a “real journalist” in 1997 – since that time I’ve been what’s best described as a “product guy” for online stuff.
I’ve been gone from Baton Rouge since 1991 and get drawn back mostly during football season. Until the explosion of the Internet, I felt really disconnected from LSU football even as I watched and went to games. But over the past decade I’ve been able to re-engage, both in consuming articles about the Tigers and using online information to research and develop my own opinions. I enjoy the exercise of thinking critically about LSU, especially as it relates to the opinions expressed by others. And let’s face it – college football is fun. It’s the only sport I follow nowadays.
As a “journalist”, I’ll bring to this a commitment to be correct in facts I present, thoughtful in opinions I express and observations I make, and work real hard to spell things right and stuff.
As an LSU fan, I figure I’m as qualified as anybody to offer up opinions and observations. I’m 30+ years into Tiger fandom, and I’d stack my “resume” up against anybody writing about LSU today. I was at the Earthquake Game and the 2004 Sugar Bowl. I’ve driven overnight to see us play both Florida State and Troy State. I was pissed enough at Les Miles to not go to the 2008 Chick-fil-A Bowl four miles from my house but traveled 2,700 miles to Seattle to see the start of the 2009 season. You say “Rice”, I say “77-0″. One of the best days of my life was the day Mike V arrived on campus and I got to play with him in the old tiger cage. I always asked him if he remembered me. I still hate Texas A&M. Few things have ever pissed me off as much as LSU selling out our image to Nike last year. I remember the effeminate way Jerry Stovall used to say “Bandits”. I thought it was cool that my landlord at one time was Doug Moreau. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world that my foot doctor growing up was Bo Strange. I spent my last day as an LSU student studying for my final final exam in the West stands of Tiger Stadium.
So I’m a fan.
And in the spirit of full disclosure, I lived in Birmingham when I was young and was a staunch Alabama fan. Until I entered LSU, my loyalties were Bama first, LSU second. And I still have feelings for The Tide. And my mom is from Athens and a UGA graduate, so historically I have good feelings toward the Bulldogs. But I live in Atlanta now and have to be around a lot of UGA fans, so that coupled with my dislike of Mark Richt and his Promise Keeper persona have soured me on the Dawgs. My mom knew Pat Dye at UGA, but she could never convince me to appreciate Auburn.
