Fast Eddie: Tulane vs South Alabama...Who Does He Pick?
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I guess you could say we've been "friends for a while." You could also say we've "known each other." Either way, I have seen him around for decades. He has never given me his real name. I've always known him just as Fast Eddie.
Somehow or another, he finds me. I could be at a bar, a coffee shop, a small restaurant, you name it. When I least expect it, he'll pull up a chair, a bar stool, whatever, and start talking. I usually don't get in a word edgewise. There's probably a "Fast Eddie" in your life. This one's been in mine a very long time.
Today, I'm on the Xavier campus. I've been asked to help out with some volleyball public address announcing. Since I'll be sitting down for a while, and won't have a chance to take a bathroom break, I head for the men's room, and you can probably guess who's walking out as I'm walking in.
"I love coming to volleyball games here," Fast Eddie says with a smile on his face. He doesn't have the omnipresent cigar hanging out his mouth. Instead, he's got it in his hands, twirling it around almost like a majorette and her baton, except he has dropped it twice since our brief encounter outside the restroom. It doesn't bother him. He wipes it off with on his black, zippered sweatshirt and continues the twirling. I think I'm going to keep count of how many times he drops it.
"Me too," I answer. "This place is amazing. I bet few people even know it exists."
"It's always cold in here," Eddie announces, as he pulls on his covering, "thus, this."
3...
"Man, the Greenies did not look good last week," my "friend" announces, changing subject as he always seems to do: quickly. "Fifteen penalties in one game. That's the most since last year, when they had almost as many against the Hurricane." The Green Wave had a dozen in that 2025 contest against Tulsa.
4....and 5 (though it landed on his shoe...I guess that counts)
"And this South Alabama team comes in hot off an opening win," Fast Eddie tells me. I'm trying to move toward the floor of the Convocation Center, but he keeps moving slightly in my way each time. The clock's ticking and I have some PA stuff to get done.
"I don't know how the Greenies can get that many problems ironed out in a week," Eddie says as he drops his cigar on the floor for the 6th time.
"I'm saying take the points and USA," and he walks toward the floor to watch what may be his first ever volleyball game (no matter what he may have told me earlier).
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Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.