By SCOOTER HOBBS, Written for the LSWA
You just think college athletes do a lot of bouncing around from school to school these days.
It turns out the transfer portal is not just for athletes.
Take Glenn Guilbeau, for instance.
The New Orleans native, Metairie to be exact, was living the portal life long before it became fashionable — long before he ended up covering the constant hop-skip-and-jumping of college athletes.
It is now officially a Hall of Fame journey, as Guilbeau will be inducted in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame during the annual festivities June 26-28 in Natchitoches. Winner of an array of national awards for his reporting and work as a columnist, Guilbeau will receive the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism, along with the late New Orleans television sportscaster Ed Daniels.
Few on the journalism side took a longer and more winding road there than Guilbeau, although most of it has at least been based in Baton Rouge, covering LSU’s always-wild sports scene.
He first tested the portal in college, attending LSU as a freshman in 1979-80, UNO for a year, then transferring to Missouri, then back to LSU and finally finishing at Mizzou in the summer of 1983. While at LSU, he interned in sports information office under the legendary Paul Manasseh.
Diploma in hand, the bouncing around began.
It started back in Baton Rouge working for Tiger Rag before moving on to — you’ll need to take a deep breath here — the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, Slidell Sentry News, Alexandria Town Talk, Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register, back to Baton Rouge at The Advocate, then Gannett Louisiana (based in Baton Rouge) covering LSU for the chain’s numerous state newspapers. Then he became a national columnist at OutKick.com/FOX News, and, finally, now back where it all started at Tiger Rag.
Feel free to exhale.
But that’s a guy who was never afraid to try new jobs, new places, new offices, new bosses.
New challenges.
“It has always been a lot of fun and adventure to leave a job, preferably on your own, and start a new one,” Guilbeau says. “First you get a going-away party, then you’re the new guy. Everything’s fresh.”
There was something to be said for all of them, including his stint in Alexandria at The Town Talk in the early 1990s, working for sports editor Bob Tompkins.
Most of them, you’ll note, were based in Baton Rouge or like the Town Talk gig, involved covering LSU. There is one constant throughout this varied career.
It doesn’t matter where he works or which team or sport he covers, readers are going to get Guilbeau Unfiltered.
It doesn’t always endear him to fans, but he knows no other way.
What he sees, is what he’s going to write. What he truly believes, is the opinion you’re going to read in his columns.
None of this fluff stuff. Don’t expect any sugar-coating.
He just doesn’t play that silly game, doesn’t tip-toe around any subject, can’t worry about how many feathers he might ruffle in the process.
“I always wanted to be a columnist more than a reporter,” he says. “Writing opinions doesn’t lend itself to long relationships with people at the school or on the team.”
Translation: If the home team messes up, he’s going to point it out. If the coach made a bad game-day decision — and they do on occasion — that coach will read about it in the next day’s newspaper.
Fan-boy message boards can (and sometimes do) torch him all they want.
It might surprise some of them to know that Guilbeau is universally well received by his colleagues in a competitive business with no shortage of egos.
He’s the kind of guy who, learning that a fellow LSU beat writer was hospitalized in Houston at the same time LSU baseball was scheduled to play Rice, alerted Jay Johnson and suggested that the LSU coach pay the patient a visit (he did).
One of these moons Guilbeau might give a big hoot in Havana that he sometimes gets under his readers’ skin. Or that he’s had some minor feuds with famous coaches and school administrators over the years.
Some, probably most, do get it.
“While I have not always agreed with his opinions, he always backs up his thoughts with viable information,” says Herb Vincent, LSU’s long-time SID who is now an associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.
Coincidentally, Vincent will be inducted the same night as Guilbeau in Natchitoches as this year’s winner of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award.
Vincent continues: “Glenn does not cater to the fan message boards and he doesn’t shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion. He has always been thorough in his reporting and is not afraid to ask the tough question.”
His career path was set during his teenage years after a childhood in New Orleans filled with regular visits, courtesy of his father, to watch the New Orleans Saints practice.
“I thought it would be fun to cover sports for a living. It wouldn’t be like working … or so I thought.”
Yet it all started with a love affair with the Saints and Houston Astros — both awful during his formative years.
“Consistently, yearly, the worst two teams on the planet,” he remembers.
Perhaps that explains why his prose wanders into the negative from time to time.
“I haven’t talked to a psychologist about this,” he laughs. “But maybe I should.”
Contact Scooter at shobbs@americanpress.com