AJC > Sports > Blog > Archives > 2008 > January > 06
Sunday, January 6, 2008
It’s going to be an interesting Sunday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Orleans-It is going to be a very interesting Sunday for your humble correspondent.
It is the day before the BCS national championship game, which means we will have the final press conference with the two coaches. The players don’t have to participate and frankly, I don’t blame them. By now they are pretty sick of our questions.
This press conference goes pretty quickly because by this point there is really nothing left for the coaches to say or for us to ask. LSU’s Les Miles will get to our meeting room at the Marriott about 2 o’clock. He’ll visit with us for about 25 minutes.
Ohio State’s Jim Tressel will then arrive and the two coaches will pose together for a photo with the BCS National Championship Trophy, the one with the crystal football on top. One year during the final press conference one of the handlers almost dropped the crystal ball, which is worth thousands. Now THAT would have been a photo op.
There really won’t be any news coming out of these press conferences. This is just about the coaches digging one last time into their bag of clichés and reminding us that their teams have to focus on the job at hand and not worry about things they can’t control-or something to that effect.
By late Saturday night I had pretty much wrapped up my preview package for Monday morning. I put together a piece asking if LSU were a team of destiny. When you really look at all the closes finishes the Tigers had, it really makes you wonder if Fate didn’t play a hand in their getting here. I’ve matched up the teams by offense, defense, special teams, etc. I will tell you in advance that this game looks much closer than the experts think.
This afternoon I’m going to take part in something special when I go on a journalist’s tour that will show us the parts of New Orleans that have not yet recovered from Hurricane Katrina, which hit in late August of 2005.
As I told you when I first got here 11 days ago, the downtown area of New Orleans has come back very well. There are some places in the French Quarter that did not re-open but to me it looked like it had fully recovered.
That is not the case, I am told, for other parts of the city. We are going to the Lower Ninth Ward and other places that, for one reason or another, have not been rebuilt. I’ve had others tell me about these places but I want to see it for myself. I’ll let you know what I find, but I’ve braced myself for a very sobering experience.
Tonight I will gather with a number of former presidents of the Football Writers Association of America, of which I am one, for our annual dinner. It is our chance to sit back, have a glass of wine, and reflect on another season. And this one, my friends, is going to give us all a lot of reasons for reflection.
It’s been a long trip, but a fun trip, to New Orleans. I’ve eaten everything on the room service menu at last once and the folks bringing the food to the room are starting to call me by my first name. That must mean it’s time to go home.
Monday is Game Day. Kickoff can’t come soon enough.
Hope you have a good Sunday too.
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