On a visit to Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, sports media losses, OSAA officials shortage, Sanders, Adley Rutschman and Glickman
Notes with the fall sports season revving into full gear …
• While covering sports through nearly two decades for the Portland Tribune, I was fortunate enough to visit some of the meccas of college football.
I was on the scene when Oregon State played at LSU (2004), Penn State (2008), Michigan (2015) and Ohio State (2018). I was there for Oregon’s visit to Nebraska in 2016. All of those were sports happenings (and losses by the Oregon schools).
Then there was my recent trek to Alabama to watch the Crimson Tide play Vanderbilt in their SEC opener at Bryant-Denny Stadium — another stop on my bucket list.
It happened by chance. I was in Virginia last November for a series of “Jerome Kersey: Overcoming the Odds” book signings in the former Trail Blazer’s home state. There I met John Rusevlyan, a former teammate and roommate of Kersey’s at Longwood College. In a conversation, I asked him where he lived.
“Florence, Alabama,” he said.
“Are you a fan of Crimson Tide football?” I asked.
“Yes I am.”
“Do you ever go to games?”
“I have season tickets.”
Suddenly my mind was whirling.
“Would there be any way you could get tickets to a game for me?”
“Yes I could.”
In July, I reached out to Rusevylan and asked if the offer was still there. A week later, I had tickets for the Vanderbilt game — in his suite.
Wife Stephanie and I stayed in Birmingham, an hour away from Tuscaloosa. We arrived about three hours early and parked for free about 10 blocks from the stadium. The scene outside was already festive. Area bars were packed. We spent a short time scouting out the campus before heading inside.
The suite was located high in the corner of the end zone, but it was an excellent viewing spot. The pre-game pageantry was spectacular, with a 400-member marching band, dance squads, cheerleaders and a rousing rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama.” The band formed a huge elephant, a nod to the school’s mascot called “Tusk.” There were “Roll Tide” chants everywhere.
Vandy entered the game with a 3-1 record, including a 63-10 thrashing of Hawaii. Even so, No. 2-ranked Alabama came in as a 40.5-point favorite. When the Commodores drove for a field goal on their first possession, it looked like it might be a game. Nope. The Crimson Tide covered the spread with a 55-3 pummeling.
(Which led me to think: If Alabama were to play Hawaii this year, the Tide would be a 105-point favorite. Right?)
Alabama’s game ops crew often used lighting as a prop, turning the stadium dark during the break between the third and fourth quarters, which signaled the nearly 100,000 in attendance to wave their lit cell phones in unison.
Steph thought the entire production was first class.
“It felt like I was watching the Super Bowl,” she said.
And she liked the free food and drinks in the suite.
“They’re going to lose on that deal,” she said. (No, she didn’t really say that.)
I looked up the list of the largest-capacity college football stadiums in the country. The top 13:
1. Michigan Stadium 107,601
2. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium 106,572
3. Ohio State’s Ohio Stadium 104,944
4. Texas A&M’s Kyle Field 102,733
5. LSU’s Tiger Stadium 102,321
6. Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium 101,915
7. Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium 101,821
8. Texas’ Darrell Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium 100,119
9. Georgia’s Sanford Stadium 92,746
10. UCLA’s Rose Bowl 91,136
11. Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium 88,548
12. Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium 87,451
13. Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium 85,458
Of the eight stadiums that are 100,000 or larger, I’ve seen games in five of them.
I’ve also seen many games at the Rose Bowl, which should be listed here with an asterisk. UCLA averages 45,000 for home games there, less than half of the Rose Bowl’s capacity. The Bruins drew 27,143 for their 2022 season opener there against Bowling Green on Sept. 3. The stadium is full only on Jan. 1.
Best game experience of the places I’ve been? When I was working, I didn’t pay much attention, frankly. But it would be hard to beat Alabama. Football is a religion there, and the Tide’s congregation goes full out in its devotion. You don’t see that in our part of the country.
• September was a rough month for those who worked in Portland newspapers in the golden era.
I wrote about the Sept. 8 death of Steve Brandon, the longtime sportswriter and editor at The Oregon Journal, Oregonian and Portland Tribune. He was 68.
On Sept. 19, John Dhulst died at age 78. I worked with “JD” for 25 years at The Journal and Oregonian. He was The Journal’s first beat writer for the Trail Blazers, working the first four seasons (1970-74). But John was at his best working the night sports desk at The Journal, the thankless job of designing and putting out the next day’s sports section.
My first few years at The Journal, I worked a lot of night shifts as “AD” — assistant desk — under Dhulst. He was nervous, biting all the hair off of his arms as he pieced together a front page. He was funny.
“Why do I surround myself with idiots?” he’d shout in times of frustration.
“I’m too busy to take a leak, Kerry,” he’d crack. “Can you take one for me?”
John was a character, a lover of the horse track, a night owl and life-long bachelor who enjoyed the sights Portland’s men’s clubs had to offer. He was one of a kind.
I didn’t know Ted Perkins well, but I knew him as a good newspaperman, a designer who did excellent work in the early years of the Tribune. He died Sept. 12 at age 59 after a long bout with cancer.
Ted didn’t work sports, but he knew them. He’d often have a question or comment about something sports-related, and we’d have a short talk. Personable guy.
Three good men, gone too soon.
Jack Folliard, executive director of the Oregon Athletic Officials Association, is looking for officials to hire in all sports due to a shortage (courtesy Jack Folliard)
• You’ve heard it from football play-by-play broadcasters the past couple of years. It’s third-and-three, and Georgia “is three yards short of the line to gain.”
Not three yards short of the first-down marker, as we’ve heard from those calling games for only about 100 years. Short of “the line to gain.”
I asked old friend Jack Folliard why the change to new terminology all of a sudden. Are announcers being told to use “line to gain”? Did somebody use the term, and others thought it was cool, kind of like “on the bump” instead of “mound” in baseball?
“I don’t know,” says Folliard, the executive director of the Oregon Athletic Officials Association. “I do know it’s the technical term in the rulebook.”
My preference remains “first-down marker.” Maybe it’s not trendy, but it works just fine.
• There is a statewide shortage of sports officials at the high school level, a trend that began more than a decade ago. During the 2010-11 scholastic year, the OSAA had 4,412 officials in seven sports — football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, wrestling, softball and baseball. During 2021-22, the number was down to 2,980, a drop of nearly 33 percent.
“It’s consistent statewide,” says Folliard, 74, who also works as supervisor for Pac-12 football officials. “It’s a sea change; the tide has gone out in all sports. It had already started when the pandemic hit and canceled seasons (2020), and a lot of officials didn’t come back. We’re also aging. I’m guessing the average age for our officials is close to 50.”
A few games in several sports have had to be canceled already this fall. In football, a number of games are being played on Thursdays and Saturdays to make up for the shortage.
“We’re starting to have to overwork officials,” says Folliard, who worked 33 years as a football official in the Pac-12 and many years as a basketball referee at the high school and small-college level. “We have football officials work a 4 o’clock freshman game, then go over and do a varsity game that night. Doubling up like that is tough on families and can cause burnout.”
Pay for large-school varsity football games is in the $70-to-$75 range and scales downward to the freshman level. Folliard said the OSAA is going through a review process which he hopes will result in “significant pay increases” in the future.
“Officiating is rewarding on many levels,” Folliard says. “I’ve made friends all up and down the West Coast through my career. It’s a great hobby if you’re interested in sports and in giving back.”
Those interested should follow protocol at newofficials.org.
• Tanner Sanders returned to his alma mater — Oregon State — a little more than a year ago to serve as premium sales manager for new inventory at Reser Stadium.
Now the former three-sport athlete is gone to accept a job as assistant director of development in the Longhorn Foundation, the fundraising arm of the athletic department at Texas.
Sanders, 27, had interned for the athletic director at Texas before taking the job at OSU. Now he is back in the Longhorn family, in part because he did his job in Corvallis so well.
“I was selling about 640 seats (on the side being renovated), including 72 loge or living room style boxes as well as club seats,” Sanders says. “There were only two loge boxes still up for grabs when I left. Now they are sold out. Part of the reason why I accepted this role at Texas, I sold all the inventory my job entailed. When I got to Oregon State I thought that would be an 18-month gig. We cranked it out in about 10 months.”
Athletic director Scott Barnes talked to Sanders about a few positions that would allow him to remain at OSU, but in the meantime Sanders had applied for the job at Texas.
“I couldn’t really pass it up,” says Sanders, 27. “I don’t know if I’ll get an opportunity like that again. To move to a bigger school and move into the SEC in 2024, along with the uncertainty of the Pac-12’s future … Corvallis is home and I’ll always be a Beaver, too, but this is the next step.”
Sanders’ career goals are clear.
“I’m jumping into the athletic administration world and continuing to learn as I go,” he says. “I’d love to work my way up to being an athletic director at a major university some day. Maybe that’s 15 to 20 years from now, but it’s the end goal.”
• In a recent interview, Baltimore Orioles general manager Lee Elias told how he decided on Oregon State catcher Adley Rutschman for the first pick in the 2019 major league draft.
Shortly after taking the job in November 2018, Elias set up meetings with Rutschman, California first baseman Andrew Vaughn and high school shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. After the set-tos, Elias said his decision wasn’t difficult.
“Adley was about as much a consensus No. 1 as you tend to see in this industry,” Elias said. “He provided us the best combination of floor and ceiling. We thought the leadership component would be a separator, which is looking like it could be the case. I thought it was a rare, once-in-a-decade kind of thing to get an offensive catcher in a draft.”
Through Friday, Rutschman was hitting .251 with 13 home runs and 42 RBIs in 108 games, and with his strong defensive capabilities is considered a top-five candidate for American League Rookie of the Year. Vaughn, who went third in the 2019 draft, is in his second year with the Chicago White Sox. He is hitting .276 with 17 homers and 75 RBIs in 130 games this season.
Witt, the second pick in the ’19 draft, is also have an outstanding rookie season as a third baseman for Kansas City. Witt is hitting .256 with with 20 homers, 80 RBIs and 28 stolen bases in 146 games, becoming only the fifth rookie in MLB history to have a 20-20 season. It probably puts him ahead of Rutschman in Rookie of the Year balloting.
Former Trail Blazers president Marshall Glickman has accepted a position as acting CEO for Euroleague basketball and has moved from Portland to Barcelona.
• Former Trail Blazers president Marshall Glickman has accepted the position as acting CEO of Euroleague Basketball. The son of Blazers founder Harry Glickman and CEO of G2 Strategic consulting firm is also working with Spanish pro soccer league LaLiga and helping FC Barcelona build a new 18,000-seat multi-purpose stadium.
“I’m super excited,” said Glickman, who will live in Barcelona. “This is a huge challenge. You can’t even begin to believe the challenges. But I’m looking forward to getting things done.”
► ◄
Readers: what are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the comments below. On the comments entry screen, only your name is required, your email address and website are optional, and may be left blank.
Follow me on Twitter.
Like me on Facebook.
Find me on Instagram.
Be sure to sign up for my emails.
