Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

Outside of Louisiana (because nobody who lives there seems to know about this), the phrase “LSU fans smell like corndogs” appears to be gaining some traction. Apparently this was started by an Auburn fan visiting Baton Rouge a few years back, and I guess it”s supposed to be the Auburn equivalent of UGA fans saying “Florida fans wear jean shorts.” I find it funny that an Auburn fan would take the aroma of LSU tailgating as being that of corndogs. I guess that”s the height of fried food at Auburn games - the cuisine their fans associate with the fried-food smell. LSU fans absolutely end up smelling “fried” after a long day of tailgating, but that comes from boudin balls, fried turkey, things like the amazing etouffee-stuffed fried bread I had Saturday and - last weekend, especially - fried alligator. No self-respecting LSU tailgater would serve corndogs.

And if “you smell like corndogs” is the insult the rest of the SEC wants to lay on LSU, have at it. Auburn fans smell like people who watched South Florida and Mississippi State beat them.

Leslie”s Balls - As somebody who”s never been much of a Les Miles fan, I had to ask myself how his determination to keep the ball against Florida and LSU”s amazing success - seriously, who ever goes 5-for-5 on fourth downs? - in doing so changes my perception. Right after the game, my thought was that Leslie displayed a ton of guts, but I wasn”t sure if the calls necessarily showed him to be a great coach.

Later I learned that keeping the ball away from Tebow was a key strategy going into the game, and it was a good one. The Gators had the ball for a total of 2 minutes, 27 seconds in the fourth quarter, which left little room for Timmy to do his magic. It was a great gameplan, and Leslie showed the balls to stick to it when the decision to do so got really tough. He left the execution to his coordinators and his players, but the strategy and decision-making was his. That”s what a head coach should do, and Leslie did an outstanding job with the Florida game.

Today I am officially changing my stance on Leslie from “questionable” to “favorable”. I wanted the coach to prove me wrong this year, and so far he”s doing that.

Miles and Michigan - Les Miles is a Michigan Man; there”s no way around that. If the job comes open this year, next year or ten years from now (if he keeps winning), Miles will be a candidate, and he will think hard about taking it. I can”t fault him for that. Unlike Nick Saban, who nobody believed would stay in Baton Rouge forever, I could see Miles making LSU his long-term gig. But Michigan is a big-time job, and a Michigan Man rightfully would kill for the chance to lead that team. LSU fans realize this, and would wish Leslie well if he decided to go.

Now, if he left to coach in the NFL and re-appeared at Ole Miss a few years later, that would be another story. So, Leslie, if Michigan offers you the job and you want to take it, I”m cool with that.

Bo Pelini”s prospects - There”s a really good write-up on Bo Pelini at Yahoo Sports this week, with the crux being Bo should already be a head coach and no doubt will be soon. There”s no doubt about that. Pelini is a defensive genius and demonstrates the kind of leadership, drive and personality that would make him a successful head coach. He seems to be cut very much from the Nick Saban mold.

And he”ll get a head coach job, maybe this off-season. I just hope the timing works out so that if Leslie leaves for Michigan, LSU can elevate Pelini to head coach and keep that talent in Baton Rouge. If there”s anybody left at LSU from the Mike Archer days, that might be a scary thought, but Pelini is a keeper.

LSU tailgating from the Gator perspective - The generally excellent college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday took a roadtrip to Baton Rouge for the Florida game and ended up with an astoundingly accurate depiction of LSU tailgating from the visitor”s perspective. The most significant observation is the unique LSU fan behavior of lobbing crude insults at the opposing team”s fans then turning around and offering them a drink and some awesome food. That”s the LSU way - we hate you, but we love a party even more … so come on in!

The blog hints at the other thing LSU is becoming known for - there are a lot more people tailgating than will actually go into the game. LSU estimated that between 160,000 and 170,000 people were on campus Saturday, and only 93,000 of them got into the stadium. I was among those who spent all day eating, drinking and socializing before settling in to the best TV experience I”ve ever had:

Tiger tailgating lends itself to not necessarily caring about getting into the game. It starts early, finishes late and the food, drink and fun as a standalone event beats just about anything else you could be doing on a fall Saturday.

I think LSU supports the idea of huge crowds coming out for Tiger game days, so I”d like to offer a suggestion. The university should set up a low-power UHF transmitter and broadcast the games across campus. The Florida game was perfect because it was at night and on CBS, but that”s a rarity. When ESPN has the game, the only way to watch is with a portable satellite rig, and those are still not quite common. Give every tailgate the chance to watch the game with a 13-inch Sylvania and a pair of rabbit ears, and you”ll get 250,000 people out to the games.

As loyal readers of The Wisdom know, I”m a big fan of Alton Brown and Good Eats (although the current season is kind of disappointing. Whole fish? No thanks. Didn”t even watch that episode). And I enjoyed the heck out of the first season of Feasting on Asphalt, Alton”s motorcycle tour / eating show.

But the first episode of Feasting II left me puzzled and hugely disappointed in Alton and the gang. Feasting II is a culinary motorcycle trip up the Mississippi River (on land, of course), which should yield a bounty of food and culture, at least until they reach Memphis. Episode 1 took the crew from the mouth of the Mississippi to just north of New Orleans, a slam dunk for a food show if there ever was one.

They blew it. Completely.

First of all, except for post-production voice-overs, Alton goes out of his way to not call Katrina by name. What”s that about? Driving from Venice to New Orleans, they show shots of land-bound shrimp boats and wrecked buildings, but only talk about the storm in vague phrases like “a very nasty lady” and “a little storm they had here a few years ago.” Strange, but whatever.

So the team rolls into New Orleans at dinnertime, and their restaurant of choice? Mulate”s. That”s right, Alton picked a tourist Cajun restaurant as his showcase of New Orleans cuisine. On the show, they”re surprised to find that the place is packed with tourists and decide they need a new plan. Alton announces that he has “the name of a place” that”s supposed to be “real” but it”s “not listed”. Unfortunately, they can”t find it and end up eating tourist Cajun food in the street.

How the hell do you plan a food show trip to New Orleans and end up at Mulate”s (which Alton couldn”t even pronounce - it”s MU-lots, not Moo-la-tays)? We”re talking about America”s great culinary city here. As hard as it can be to figure out what”s open when in the post-Katrina world, this is a professional production by a supposed student of culture and cuisine. Inexcusably lame.

Alton also doesn”t seem to understand that Louisiana isn”t sweet tea country. It”s not the South, Alton, it”s Louisiana.

The other place Alton visits in New Orleans is Big Fisherman on Magazine Street. OK, it”s a local place, but it”s also Cajun. And not that the Atchafalaya wouldn”t make for a darn fine road trip, but this is New Orleans. Go to Central Grocery and show the world a real muffaletta, head over to Franky & Johnny”s for some “yat lunch or, hell, head over to Cooter Brown”s. Anything would have been better than following the trip to the Cajun tourist trap with another Cajun place … and then splitting town.

Alton gave the nuanced and complex New Orleanian food experience the shaft, and he should know better.

The rest of the episode was pretty good, as they got out of New Orleans and found some good … Cajun food in Vacherie and … Cajun andouille sausage and hog”s head cheese in LaPlace.

Episode 2 premieres tomorrow night, and they”re headed toward Baton Rouge. Maybe they”ll find some Cajun food there.

With the 2007 football season a scant month away, I need to think about refreshing the old LSU merchandise closet. And with not having been in Louisiana since … I really can”t remember, I turned to lsushop.net for help. What I saw in the hat section disturbed me. No, not this:

Or even this:

… although both of those are pretty disturbing. What got me was this:

It”s a baseball hat featuring Mike the Tiger wearing a baseball hat. Too bad he”s wearing it backwards; I”m curious to know if his hat has a smaller version of himself wearing a hat.

Worse yet are the above hat”s brothers:

The camo (note, camo has no place in college athletics gear) hat with Mike wearing a purple hat:

And the mind-boggling white hat with Mike wearing a camo hat:

Can”t we just be happy with a simple hat with “LSU” on it?

It turns out that St. Louis Cardinals” pitcher Josh Hancock had a blood alcohol level of 0.157, wasn”t wearing a seatbelt and may have been talking on his cellphone when he killed himself by slamming into the back of a tow truck going 68 miles per hour (in a 55 zone).

That”s a whole lot of stupidity to invest in a single human.

CNN”s American Morning goes Mark III tomorrow with the O”Briens (Soledad and Miles) getting kicked to the curb in favor of two new robo-anchors: Kiran Chetry and John Roberts.

Because, clearly, the problem with American Morning is that the anchors haven”t been white and plastic enough.

American Morning is in a tough spot. CNN wants it to be a news-based morning show, but it gets crushed by the unwatchable Fox & Friends on Fox News and - as hard as this is to believe - barely kept a lead over the (former) MSNBC simulcast of Don Imus” (former) radio program. Yes, a radio show being shown on TV was almost as popular as American Morning.

So I guess their solution is to make “news” look more like the “coffee talk” garbage on Fox & Friends by bringing over one of Fox”s almost-but-not-quite-hot Stepford Anchors and pairing her with a plastic “serious” anchorman to read the news.

Good luck with that.

Poaching a Fox roboanchor chick to appeal to the Fox & Friends crowd is just dumb and lazy programming. If CNN wants to make a run at having a real news show, here”s a tip: make the news real.

A great example is the “Minding Your Business” segment, which is supposedly a business news piece. But that”s rarely the case. The pet food recall, the rats-in-Manhattan restaurant story and product recalls are the kind of things they turn to most often there. Either make the business news segment about business news or just kill it.

It”s too much to ask, I guess, that a morning news program report a lot of different news rather than recycling everything every half hour. And to think CNN would abandon the kind of fluff crap that fills cable news is right out of the question.

No, just try to put people in front of the camera that Fox America will identify with and go from there. Pathetic.

Going through my RSS feeds last night, I was surprised to see a fairly rational account of The Coca Cola Company”s proxy filing and executive pay disclosures in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But, alas, that was just the initial filing of the story. The original piece, which my reader said came across at 1:36 p.m. (maybe still available here if you”ve given ajc.com a fake email address) was headlined “Coke CEO gets $7 mil in cash pay for “06 and was written thusly:

Coca-Cola Chairman and Chief Executive Neville Isdell earned $7 million in salary and incentive pay in 2006, plus stock awards and other perks worth millions more, the soft drink maker reported Friday.

The payout included a one-time award of $5.5 million based on the company”s total performance for the year, as determined by Coke”s board of directors using a preset award range.

Isdell”s base salary in 2006 was $1.5 million, the same as he earned in 2005. Isdell also received stock awards and options worth millions more, according to a filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Many of the stock awards and options can be cashed in only after meeting certain targets or remaining with the company for a set period of time.

In addition, Isdell got the benefit of the company”s corporate jet, a car and driver, and security that were all worth nearly $320,000, according to Coke”s filing.

The SEC requires publicly-traded companies to disclose compensation for the top five highest paid employees.

The rest of the piece talks about other proxy matters.

OK, so it headlines the $7 million in cash, mentions Isdell got stock and options “worth millions more” and correctly states that a lot of that compensation “can be cashed in only after meeting certain targets”. It would be far too much to ask, of course, for the AJC to put the compensation in context of the company”s performance - such as the $17 billion in market cap added in 2006 - and there”s no chance in hell the AJC would reference any of the exhaustive explanation Coke lists about how pay is determined.

But for the AJC, this was a relatively fair bit of reporting.

However, by the time the story was massaged for today”s physical paper - which apparently some people actually still buy - the headline had become “Coke chief”s compensation $32.3 million in “06” and the story read:

Coca-Cola Chairman and Chief Executive Neville Isdell earned $7.5 million in salary, incentive pay and perks in 2006, the soft drink maker reported Friday.

But including stock options and awards, pension benefits, deferred compensation and other benefits, Isdell”s total compensation hit $32.3 million in 2006, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC requires publicly traded companies to disclose annually the compensation for the five highest-paid employees. New rules this year greatly expand how companies disclose compensation. The rules aim to give investors a more transparent view into executive compensation.

Had the rules been in place last year, Isdell”s total compensation would have been reported as a little more than $26 million for 2005, according to Coke”s calculations.

Isdell”s pay included a one-time cash award of $5.5 million based on the company”s total performance for the year, as determined by Coke”s board of directors using a preset award range. That was up from the $4.5 million bonus Isdell received in 2005.

Isdell”s base salary in 2006 was $1.5 million, the same as he earned in 2005.

In addition to the cash and benefits compensation, Isdell received stock awards and options currently worth roughly $19.4 million, according to the SEC filing. Isdell won”t be able to cash in these stock awards and options until the company meets certain financial targets and he remains with the company for a set period of time.

Isdell received other pension benefits and deferred compensation worth nearly $5.4 million.

Isdell”s perks included the use of the company”s corporate jet, a car and driver and security that were all worth nearly $320,000, according to Coke”s filing.

If you”re a bit lazy, here are the changes:

- Headline focuses on the big money (which he may not actually get)

- Value of “perks” added to the “cash” received to raise that total by $500K

- Stock value pushed up with not-at-all-agenda-driven “But …” lead in and value stated

- Paragraph about SEC rules added to reinforce how you poor people now get to know exactly how much these fatcats “make”

- Paragraph added to report what the big number would have been in 2005

- Note added that cash award was up from 2005

- Conditions of his options award changed from “Many of the stock awards and options can be cashed in only after meeting certain targets” to “Isdell won”t be able to cash in these stock awards and options until the company meets certain financial targets”. Key change there is “after meeting” becomes “until the company meets”, which implies much more certainty that the gain will be realized.

- The note “In addition, Isdell got the benefit of the company”s corporate jet, a car and driver, and security that were all worth nearly $320,000″ became “Isdell”s perks included the use of the company”s corporate jet, a car and driver and security that were all worth nearly $320,000″. That”s a classic and telling AJC twist - “perks” is a much better wealth-envy term than “benefits”. The information is exactly the same, just twisted to better suit the AJC “Business” section”s anti-business agenda.

I”m sure the AJC editors would say the changes merely represent the difference between an immediate, breaking story and one written after the reporter had more time to examine the SEC filing. Yes, there”s more information in the follow-on piece, but it all serves the purpose of making Isdell”s package look fatter.

The paper also had the time to read Coke”s 40-page explanation of how executive compensation is determined, but they included none of the context provided by the company. I”m sure the AJC read the part where Coke explains in great detail why Isdell is required by the company (for security reasons) to always travel on corporate planes and how the car and driver he”s provided with are used for other company purposes when not transporting Isdell, but again they saw no reason to use any of that information in their expanded story.

Of course, none of this is surprising. I just wanted to point it out.