The Times has done it again.

Gut-wrenching stories by Jimmy Watson and Tim Brando about Centenary dropping to Division III completely ignore the man who played the biggest role in putting Centenary on the major-college basketball map more than 30 years ago.

Me.

When I called Coach Larry Little at the end of the 1975-76 basketball season to inform him that the Gents had finished a season in the Associated Press Top Twenty for the first time in the school’s history, he said, “That just shows you what one man can do.”

He wasn’t talking about Robert Parish, the star of that Centenary team.

He was talking about me.

As the sports editor for the Shreveport Journal, I was a member of the panel that voted in the weekly AP polls during the 1975-76 basketball season.

Knowing Centenary had no chance for the ranking it deserved because only a few voters in this area knew of the school’s existence, I gave the Gents a No. 2 vote each week to make up for the ignorance of writers in places such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

I didn’t give the Gents a No. 1 vote, because No. 1 votes show up in parentheses in the poll and I would’ve received more national publicity than I wanted. But I provided 18 of Centenary's 25 points in the final poll, which was enough for a No. 19 ranking — which they deserved.

During Parish’s four seasons, only four schools in the nation had better records than Centenary: UCLA, Indiana, Marquette and North Carolina State.

A year later, the AP (1) increased the number of voters, so that one vote couldn’t get a team into the Top Twenty, and (2) dropped me from the panel. I didn’t care, because that gave me more time for prep sports.

Parish, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame six years ago, was the nation's premier high school prospect in 1972. But he wasn't academically qualified for most NCAA schools because of the controversial 1.6 rule, which was voted out by the NCAA in December of his freshman year at Centenary because it was about to be challenged in court and the NCAA knew it wouldn’t survive.

Parish qualified for Centenary, which had been using a conversion table for converting SAT scores to ACT scores for several years. But the NCAA ruled that the conversion table was not valid.

Parish would've been given instant eligibility if he had transferred to any other school in the nation, but he was loyal to Centenary and Centenary was loyal to him, defying the NCAA by allowing him to play throughout his career.
The NCAA placed Centenary on what amounted to a six-year probation, and announced it would no longer list the statistics of players at any schools on probation among its national leaders.

That ruling was aimed at Parish, who ranked among the leaders in scoring and rebounding throughout his career.  
Parish earned his degree in four years at Centenary. Many basketball players who managed to stay eligible throughout their NCAA careers in the mid-1970s are no closer to degrees than they were 30 years ago.

Parish deserved all the honors he received, on and off the court, and Centenary deserved the recognition it received when he was playing.

But that was 33 years ago. Right now, Centenary deserves to be in Division III.

 Jerry Byrd is sports editor of the Bossier Press-Tribune and an award-winning columnist. Check out a few hundred of his columns on jerrybyrd.com. You may contact him at 747-7900. Fax number is 747-5298. E-mail address is  (home) This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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