By Scooter Hobbs
Composed for the LSWA
You simply assume that today’s collegiate athletes spend a lot of time hopping from one institution to another.
The transfer portal isn’t just for sportsmen, it turns out.
For example, Glenn Guilbeau.
Long before it became popular, Metairie, a native of New Orleans, was leading the gateway life. He eventually covered the incessant hop-skip-and-jumping of collegiate players.
Guilbeau will be inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame at the yearly ceremony in Natchitoches, making it an official Hall of Fame voyage.
While the majority of journalists has at least been headquartered in Baton Rouge, covering LSU’s constantly chaotic athletics scene, few took the longer and more convoluted route there.
It was during his time as a freshman at LSU in 1979–1980, his year at UNO, his transfer to Missouri, his return to LSU, and his final year at Mizzou in the summer of 1983 that he first tested the portal. He worked as an intern in the sports information office at LSU under the renowned SID Paul Manasseh.
The jumping around started with the diploma in hand.
Beginning in Baton Rouge, it went on to you’ll need to take a deep breath here, then back to Baton Rouge at, and finally, being based in Baton Rouge, it covered LSU for the chain’s many state newspapers. After that, he started writing national columns at, and now he’s back where it all began.
You can let out a breath.
That man, however, had no qualms about trying new occupations, locations, offices, or supervisors.
fresh difficulties.
“Leaving a job, ideally on your own, and starting a new one has always been a lot of fun and adventure,” Guilbeau adds. You receive a farewell party first, and then you’re the new guy. Everything is brand-new.
For everyone of them, there was something to say.
You’ll see that the most of them were based in Baton Rouge, and one thing has been consistent throughout this diverse career.
No matter what team or sport he covers or where he works, readers will get Guilbeau Unfiltered.
Fans don’t always like him for it, but he has no other choice.
He’s going to write what he sees. The opinions you will read in his essays reflect his true beliefs.
None of this nonsense. There won’t be any sugarcoating.
He simply avoids tip-toeing around any topic, doesn’t play that pointless game, and isn’t concerned about upsetting too many people.
He claims that he has always preferred being a columnist to being a reporter. Writing comments doesn’t help you build lasting relationships with team members or at school.
Translation: He will call out any mistakes made by the home team. If the coach makes a poor judgment on game day, which they occasionally do, the coach will read about it in the papers the following day.
Fan-boy message boards have the power to (and occasionally do) disparage him.
Some of them may be surprised to learn that, in a cutthroat industry full of egos, Guilbeau is generally well-liked by his peers.
When he found out that another LSU beat writer was in the hospital in Houston during the time when LSU baseball was supposed to play Rice, he was the type of guy who informed Jay Johnson and recommended that the LSU coach visit the patient, which he did.
The fact that Guilbeau occasionally irritates his readers may cause him to give a huge hoot in Havana. or that throughout the years, he’s had a few small conflicts with well-known coaches and school officials.
Most likely, some do understand.
Herb Vincent, a former SID at LSU who is currently an assistant commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, says, “Even though I haven’t always agreed with his opinions, he always backs up his thoughts with viable information.”
As it happens, Vincent will be inducted as this year’s Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner in Natchitoches on the same evening as Guilbeau.
Vincent goes on to say that Glenn doesn’t kowtow to fan message boards and doesn’t hesitate to voice a viewpoint that isn’t widely shared. His reporting has always been meticulous, and he doesn’t hesitate to pose difficult questions.
The problem is that Guilbeau believes the teams have cheerleading tryouts, but he didn’t sign up for any of them.
According to Guilbeau, “I think there is one fan who loves it for every ten that get pissed.” I think LSU fans have a greater advantage than any other fan base. Due to LSU’s history of ups and downs and football coaching upheaval, they are constantly on the verge of turning against the Tigers.
He’ll handle it alone, Guilbeau. One of his many charming characteristics is his use of time as fashionably late. However, he never misses a deadline or anything else significant.
Additionally, he will typically be among the last people in the press box, finishing his deadline piece while already examining every possibility for the next one.
Guilbeau is capable of producing some copy. He is totally focused on his work.
Even his marriage to the ex-Michelle Millhollon is a classic love story, full of intrigue, coincidence, and at least one white lie, that would make a great black-and-white journalism film.
It took place in Omaha in the year 2000.
Naturally, Guilbeau was covering the College World Series for the Tigers baseball club.
Michelle was one of the top court reporters in the state at the time, and she still has a strong passion for reporting. She is currently the communications director for the Louisiana Teachers Retirement Association.
She sent back daily tales from the LSU fan and tailgate scene, despite her apparent lack of knowledge and lack of interest in athletics.
She had lately covered an execution in a prison in Angola for the newspaper. The editors decided that she should go cover some lighter fare.
The time was ideal.
Even before they arrived in Omaha, Glenn was already in love with her. She spent some of her after-hours time up there with photographers and sports reporters.
Before the national championship game, Glenn informed her that he, columnist Scott Rabalais, and a few staff members would be having a postgame belly-up in an Irish bar in Omaha’s Old Market neighborhood.
Oddly enough, Glenn was the only Advocate crew member there when she arrived.
Rabalais was even complicit in the evil Guilbeau scheme, which subsequently supported the fabrication that he and the others had an incident that prevented them from coming.
It was successful.
In summary, the Tigers were Guilbeau’s favorite team of all the teams he covered, and they won the final of Skip Bertman’s five national titles. However, it turned out that Glenn and Michelle formed a respectable team of their own.
According to Glenn, we began dating after returning to Baton Rouge.
His story from the final game won first place in that year’s Louisiana Sports Writers Association contest, thus he essentially won twice that day.
He has a wall full with national awards and too many of those plaques to count.
However, publishing a special piece on Bertman’s final season as head coach in 2001 may have been his greatest accomplishment.
Guilbeau authored almost all of the stories for it, and it was a book unto itself.
It received an Associated Press Sports Editors national prize.
Perhaps it also provided the ideal response to people who are curious about how he got along with all of those instructors.
Years later, Bertman selected Guilbeau to write Everything Matters in Baseball when he needed someone to write about his incredible time at LSU.
Skip was fantastic to work with, Guilbeau says, It was like those days when he was in Omaha at practice, just sitting in the dugout talking to reporters while barely watching practice. Fantastic memory for details. Great storyteller.
Guilbeau was present to recount them.
Like many in his trade, Guilbeau grew up loving sports, but it was more the journalism that kept him going after he got up close and personal to the former.
As a kid in Metairie, he rode his bike to the Saints training camp practices, and when his father Baker Guilbeau s season tickets arrived each year, he devoured the media guide that came with them. He always got fooled into thinking they might be good was always disappointed and probably never dreamed he d one day cover the Saints Super Bowl victory in 2010.
He also played youth baseball as a good field/no-hit shortstop. He s still a life-long Houston Astros fan not to worry, no fan-boy conflict there since he doesn t cover them (and stays off their message boards).
But his mother, Carmen, was the librarian at Rummel High School, and even before he was a student there, he was poring over the newspapers she collected the big-city stuff from New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.
Then one week his dad took him to a series of lectures at Loyola University, where John Jones and the late Marty Mule , then of the Times-Picayune sports staff, were the speakers.
I thought it was really cool, he says, not knowing at the time that one day he d be joining that duo and other scribes for the informal post-game football warm-downs to hash out games with the LSU coaches.
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 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.
________________________________________
