By Jim Talbot
Who’s the luckiest guy you know? Well, I know the luckiest guy I know. ME!
Let me tell you why I think so.
Some 47 years ago I was playing golf with Lynn Amedee (former LSU quarterback and assistant coach at the time) at Shenandoah Country Club, and I asked him what they used for recruiting materials. He said Scooter Purvis had a loose-leaf notebook with Advocate clippings about the Tigers. “Crap,” I said, “I could produce something better than that!” He said, “Do it…and go see Mac (football coach Charles McClendon, 1962-79).” And so I did.
I showed it to Charlie McClendon and Carl Maddox (athletic director) and they loved it. Maddox asked me, “Do you know DALE BROWN?”
“No sir, I don’t,” I said.
“Well, if he sees this he’s going to want a recruiting brochure for basketball,” he said.
Brown loved it. And as I was leaving, he asked me if I could help him get his TV show (INSIDE LSU BASKETBALL) on the air. “Never done that, but I could try,” I said.
Thus began a near-50-year odyssey with Dale that changed my life forever and continues to do so as we remain close friends.
The shows were a great success. I traveled with the team, I heard every pre-game talk, every half-time talk, constantly went to practice. LSU Basketball was my new life. Because of Dale’s media and personal contacts, we had big stars like Wayne Newton, Larry Gatlin, Barbara Mandrell and Kenny Rogers on INSIDE LSU BASKETBALL!
And you want to know the lucky part? Getting to know the one human being that GOD put on this earth to try to make every person he met have a better of quality of life by believing it can be better if you condition your mind to believe it will be better, if you persevere, NEVER GIVE UP and work harder than you ever believed you could.
Lucky me. Because I believed every word and began building a better life for me and my family that gave me a decent quality of life that this old Bogalusa country boy probably would have never dreamed of.
Not only did I watch Dale Brown try to inspire every person he met to fight harder to be a better person, but to believe in themselves to build a quality of life that they could attain for themselves. I watched him sign every autograph, “NEVER GIVE UP!”
Our friendship began in 1979, just before the Tigers made it to the FINAL FOUR in 1981. That began the famous LSU “Tigers To The Top!” But more than that, I began traveling with Dale all over the world, while he did basketball clinics and made motivational speeches.
For example, we went to Baghdad, Iraq, when the Iraqi national basketball coach asked Dale to come help prepare his team for the World Arab Championship games in Casablanca. And how many people in the world have had to pull off the road to the airport for the Iraq dictator Sadam Hussein and his motorcade to pass?
Or other places like Paris, Bangkok, Singapore, Malaysia, Barcelona, or practically any other place in the world to do a clinic or a motivational speech. Not to mention Switzerland when he decided to climb the Matterhorn.
Picture this. This is Dale Brown personified. We’re lost driving outside of Paris somewhere looking for a hotel. It’s raining, getting dark and we notice a kid on a bike on the side of the road. Dale rolls down the window, says to the kid, “Can you tell me where the hotel is? Hey, where are your shoes?”
The kid was barefoot, and it was cold.
“I don’t have any shoes,” he said.
“Here, take mine,” Dale said and took off his tennis shoes and his socks and hands them out the window to the young boy.
I remember one night I pulled the car up to the rear of the the Superdome in New Orleans after Dale gave a speech to thousands of insurance executives. He jumped into the car, and I sat there for a moment and said, “Great speech! You know, I’ve heard so many of your speeches that I think I could duplicate them. But you know what I like most about your speeches? When you say, ‘And finally, in conclusion!’”
We’ve laughed about that one for many years.
I sat with Kenny “Sky” Walker (former Kentucky and NBA player) at a high school banquet in Lexington, Kentucky, when Dale was speaking. And I asked him who was the toughest player he ever played against. He said, Ricky Blanton – the 6-foot-6 kid who played center on Dale’s 1986 Final Four team.
Shaquille O’Neal wanted me to give him a cellular phone when he found out I was in the cellular phone business. I wouldn’t for fear of breaking NCAA rules. He reminded me of that when Dale and I visited his mansion in Los Angeles.
And the famous comedian Jerry Clower would always find me at the SEC Tournaments because I would put him on the television show. He loved Dale Brown.
In my eyes, there will never be another Dale Brown. Not only did he change my life, but he was like a brother I never had.
He never passed up an individual in a wheelchair without a smile, an encouraging word and a pat on the shoulder.
He reached into his pocket every time we crossed paths with someone who appeared down and out.
Dale Brown is a LEGEND, but not because he was the winningest basketball coach in LSU history. God put him on this earth for more than just to be a basketball coach. He put him on this earth to make the world a better place. And he did.
Now, would you believe me if I told you, I was one lucky LSU fan?
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