By Bob Tompkins, The Town Talk
His passionate pursuit to celebrate sports excellence in Louisiana is a byproduct of a long-ago wish.
He might as well have made his wish on a four-leaf clover.
A cheery sort, he stands 5-foot-6 and sports an imposing beard, and if you decked him out in green and put a pilgrim's hat on his head, you might think you were looking at a leprechaun. To top it off, his name is Ireland; as in Doug Ireland.
He doesn't wear a pilgrim's hat, but he wears two hats in his dual jobs as sports information director at Northwestern State University and as executive director of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. The first job led to the second, and he had the Hall in mind when he gambled on changing his career track 17 years ago.
"When I went to Northwestern," said the 46-year-old Ireland, who had been enjoying an 18-month stint as a sports writer for The Town Talk when he took the SID job at NSU in January of 1989, "I knew I'd probably get to help with the (state sports) Hall of Fame. That was a carrot to the job offer. I thought it was a jewel, and I knew I might play some role in developing and maintaining it, and that was pretty enticing."
Little did he know then that he'd be running the state sports shrine 27 months later.
Jerry Pierce, the shrine's original director since NSU agreed to adopt the homeless hall in 1972, had been promoted to a university vice president, and he told Ireland he was too busy to be the director of the Hall of Fame.
He had to deal with, among other things, an investigation of a basketball coaching scandal from the Don Beasley era. Ironically, it was a scandal that first hit the sports pages in a story written by Ireland in 1988, when he was with The Town Talk.
"Jerry called me in, in April of '91, and asked me, 'Would you take it over?' It's sort of like the old line, 'Be careful what you wish for.' I was scared to death. I don't think I ever worked harder than I did that spring and summer, but we managed to pull (the induction celebration weekend) off without a problem."
Fifteen years later, Ireland presided over a Hall of Fame induction ceremony held for the first time last month in the new Natchitoches Events Center, where only memorabilia from the newest eight inductees was displayed in the lobby.
Color portraits and memorabilia from the other 237 Hall of Fame members is in temporary storage in New Orleans, having outgrown its former showcase at NSU's Prather Coliseum. The Louisiana Sports Writers Association, the custodian of the sports shrine, awaits the day when all the artifacts can be displayed in a long-planned permanent home for the Hall of Fame museum in the Historic District of Natchitoches on Front Street.
The state legislature, in its session completed in June, approved $7.1 million in funding for the project to build the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Museum as part of the State Museum, to be operated by the Office of State Museums in conjunction with the already existing Museum of Natchitoches.
Yet, until the state bond commission approves construction, there is no guarantee the project will progress. The commission has scheduled monthly meetings for the next four months, and consideration of the project could come as early as the next meeting on July 20. A vote on the project, which includes $600,000 for planning and design, and $6.5 million for construction, isn't likely to happen until September or October.
The Hall of Fame was formed in 1958, and over the years it has become a showcase for one of the brighter aspects of Louisiana's heritage. This state, which too often ranks at or near the bottom in many surveys on various topics, is among the nation's best in producing national and world sports figures.
Ireland said when Sports Illustrated was preparing its millennium editions for 2000, its editors compiled a list of Top 50 athletes from each state, but they had to "borrow" prominent sports figures from Louisiana to help fill out the rosters of several other states. Pete Maravich, for example, was moved to South Carolina, where he played high school basketball, even though he didn't achieve fame there.
After a comprehensive review of each state's sports history, SI's editors ranked Louisiana sixth in the nation, along with California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Alabama among the top 10 states in terms of caliber and number of sports figures produced by each state.
Ireland foresees a Hall of Fame Foundation being formed to handle such things as restoration of the art collection and marketing the hall around the state so that it gains more of a statewide presence.
"We've got some fantastic stories to tell, inspirational stories," Ireland said. "They shouldn't be celebrated for a couple of weeks in the summer and put on a shelf for a year.
"(Former Yankee pitching star) Ron Guidry, when he was elected, said, 'If you're going to celebrate what I've done, let me use it for the good of others.' That stuck in my craw. He was saying let's not dwell in the past; let's see what we can do to move forward and benefit people from around the state.
"That's what we intend to do," he said.
Yes, there are those who say the state money being devoted to this project could be better spent elsewhere, and the project ought to be privately funded, but Ireland argues it will be "a great economic engine for the entire state." He cites an economic impact study in January of this year by the Small Business Development Center at Northwestern State reporting the project can generate $120 million in economic impact for the state in its first year of operation. This figure is based on, among other things, data gathered from state Hall of Fame facilities in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, along with the Women's Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tenn.
"I don't think Louisiana can afford to wait on some private entities to suddenly come together and create a Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Museum," Ireland said, anticipating a possible opening of the shrine in Christmas of '08. "It hadn't happened yet, and that's because the Louisiana Sports Writers Association has run it, and we're not museum experts. We're not business people."
Putting the operations of the Hall under the state museum makes sense, said Ireland.
"Let's put the museum in the hands of the professionals," he said. "We're going to embrace this and celebrate it and benefit the state."