Verge Ausberry
On a rainy Monday evening, President Linda Martin opened up the October 21, 2019 meeting of the Gulf Coast Athletic Club meeting at 7:00pm. New members and guests were introduced.
George Autrey took the podium and announced that Scott Johnson is the new leader in the Football Pool. George noted several are struggling, your Editor included, but still a lot of ball to go.
Coach Matt Blake was introduced and talked about last week’s game with Daphne, which was rescheduled for Saturday because of Tropical Storm Nestor. Coach noted they are on their 6th Quarterback of the season, but he’s very proud of his guys for their efforts every day. Volleyball is 31-9 and playing great, currently ranked #9 in the State of Alabama. Area and State tourneys are coming up. Winter sports started today for Basketball and Wrestling with all new Head Coaches. Cross County won on Saturday and should go to State. Swimming has 13 or 14 qualified for State already and Boys and Girls Bowling, with our own Coach Owen Corcoran, has started. GO DOLPHINS!!
Doctor Gaylon McCollough, our usual Student-Athletes presentation guru, was out of town, so the duties were ably handled by his Associate at the McCollough Institute, Dr. Yula Indeveya, who, once again, did a wonderful job. Our Female Student Athlete was Lisa Patel, a member of the Varsity Basketball Team. She has a 4.4 GPA and is #1 in the Senior Class and is also President of the Student Government Association. With an ACT score of 29, she hopes to attend UAB or Auburn and major in Biomedical Sciences. She wants to get a Masters from UAB. She thanked her parents and the GCAC and noted that sports were a big part of her life.
Our Male Student Athlete was John Paul Uter. He has a 4.37 GPA and has been a member of the National Honor Society for three years, and he concurrently attends Coastal Alabama Community College. A Quarterback (for 11 years) and Safety of the Football team, he also participates on the Wrestling Team, which he noted is a “Gentlemen’s Sport”. He wants to go to college and study engineering. He thanked God and his parents and said his teammates have shown a lot of heart during this tough season.
Dec McClelland led the Team Reports with his usual excellent commentary on the giving’s and misgivings of all our favorite teams. The SEC still has 5 teams in the Top Ten. The Crying Towel was awarded to Maryland for their 34-28 loss to Indiana “Your loss is our win”, but sadly, Maryland Mike was nowhere to be found to accept this week’s laundry. Seems the Terps have given up 2,000 yards so far this year.
Our Speaker was Verge Ausberry, the Executive Deputy Athletic Director and Executive Director of External Relations at LSU. Verge played Middle Linebacker for LSU from 1085 through 1990. This New Iberia, LA native is married and loves what he does, primarily dealing with governmental relations and the Educational side of Athletics with LSU’s 500 athletes, and he noted “College Athletics help make young people better.”
He said the Name/Image/Likeness is the biggest issue today and, with coaches making huge salaries, the student athletes get relatively nothing. He did note that each athlete does get a “cost of attendance” fee of about $1,900 per month or about $300,000 per athlete during their career. “We take care of you for life”, saying you could come back in 40 years and get your degree if you wanted to, but paying athletes to play would be disastrous for most schools who lose money on athletics right now.
Verge said women outnumber men in college now and Title 9 will further reduce men’s scholarships in the future. He opined that long-term big money contracts for college coaches is killing colleges and suggested a bonus system for high performance makes more sense. It’s all about Finances and Money.
The 50/50 was drawn and awarded to Ron Sumpter. Adjournment was at 8:27pm.