USC
- Thread starter Pika-Capper
- Start date
Its no insult
Its no insult
I don't know any teams in the horizon league. Even non fans take up for USC. Winning the heisman just means you are the most poplular, has nothing to do with how good you are see (Eric Crouch, Gino Toretta, Desmond Howard, Ki Jana Karter) its nothing more than a popularity contest. USC beats up on inferior competition and everybody oohs and awwwws. Then they play no conference championship game, beat a lame Michigan squad and say they deserve part of the NC, come on. Thats like saying the Carolina deserves part of the superbowl!
Its no insult
I don't know any teams in the horizon league. Even non fans take up for USC. Winning the heisman just means you are the most poplular, has nothing to do with how good you are see (Eric Crouch, Gino Toretta, Desmond Howard, Ki Jana Karter) its nothing more than a popularity contest. USC beats up on inferior competition and everybody oohs and awwwws. Then they play no conference championship game, beat a lame Michigan squad and say they deserve part of the NC, come on. Thats like saying the Carolina deserves part of the superbowl!
so whats your point? sure its a popularity contest.
but obviously pro scouts think their talent will translate to the nfl game. you telling me carson palmer isnt a stud? that reggie bush isnt a stud? the jury is out on leinart. we'll see.
but if youre asking why the media loves usc
its very simple
has lsu had anyone that can compare with palmer or bush? or even leinart of lendale white?
the answer is no.
that doesnt mean lsu isnt a bad ass team. theyre really solid.
but they havent had the star power of southern cal.
sure some of the usc media hype is a little annoying sometimes.
but its not like its coming out of nowhere.
reggie bush might have been the best college player in the last decade. you dont think the media is going to eat that up?
your gripe is more with the media than with usc i think.
actually his gripe is with anyone who is not
pro-lsu or
pro sec
after that, everybody else sucks.
and while sc does get all the media attention (much deserved) go check their ooc games the past 4 years and let me know how that record stacks up (almost flawless) and who they played (anyone, anywhere)
auburn x 2
arkansas x 2
notre dame x 5
nebraska
kansas state
byu x 2
va tech
colorado
colorado state
fresno (ala the mid major in hoops nobody wants to play)
+ 4 bowl games vs iowa, michigan, ou, texas
think they have 2 losses in those games
pro-lsu or
pro sec
after that, everybody else sucks.
and while sc does get all the media attention (much deserved) go check their ooc games the past 4 years and let me know how that record stacks up (almost flawless) and who they played (anyone, anywhere)
auburn x 2
arkansas x 2
notre dame x 5
nebraska
kansas state
byu x 2
va tech
colorado
colorado state
fresno (ala the mid major in hoops nobody wants to play)
+ 4 bowl games vs iowa, michigan, ou, texas
think they have 2 losses in those games
I don't like the PAC-10
I don't like the PAC-10
The PAC 10 at all. I don't hate all of college football. I just think the PAC 10 is a junk conference. And by the way LSU plays Fresno this season. The PAC 10 is made up of surfers who were not good enough to make the baseball team. I have been to 2 rose bowls in UCLA's home stadium where there were 90,000 Badger fans and 10,000 bruin fans, in their home stadium. The PAC- 10 travels shitty, and their fans tailgate at starbucks, its a fact. I attended the LSU Mildcat game in Tuscon and the Fat Tuesdays ran out of booze Friday night at 11 p.m. All the zona fans were at Starbucks talking about how they were going to play us tough. I arrived at the stadium at 7 a.m to start tailgaiting and it looked like a ghost town. No tailgaiting, no beer pong, no loud music, just a bunch of yuppies playing frisbee golf. I was at LSU Zona this year and watched the mildcats stomp on our eye in the middle of the field and wake a sleeping giant. Your starting QB nearly got killed and I bought a house in the keys off the winnings played it huge at minus 18. Great teams don't play around with imposters they put them away. USC had hands full with mildcats. USC is not for real, they lose to ND.
I don't like the PAC-10
The PAC 10 at all. I don't hate all of college football. I just think the PAC 10 is a junk conference. And by the way LSU plays Fresno this season. The PAC 10 is made up of surfers who were not good enough to make the baseball team. I have been to 2 rose bowls in UCLA's home stadium where there were 90,000 Badger fans and 10,000 bruin fans, in their home stadium. The PAC- 10 travels shitty, and their fans tailgate at starbucks, its a fact. I attended the LSU Mildcat game in Tuscon and the Fat Tuesdays ran out of booze Friday night at 11 p.m. All the zona fans were at Starbucks talking about how they were going to play us tough. I arrived at the stadium at 7 a.m to start tailgaiting and it looked like a ghost town. No tailgaiting, no beer pong, no loud music, just a bunch of yuppies playing frisbee golf. I was at LSU Zona this year and watched the mildcats stomp on our eye in the middle of the field and wake a sleeping giant. Your starting QB nearly got killed and I bought a house in the keys off the winnings played it huge at minus 18. Great teams don't play around with imposters they put them away. USC had hands full with mildcats. USC is not for real, they lose to ND.
I.E. THE HEISMAN
I.E. THE HEISMAN
If you are going to throw stones, didnt billy cannon have to sell his Heisman b/c the feds got wise to his ass?
we know OJs deal
but marcus allen, carson palmer, mike garret, ricky bell, OJ, and whomever else im missing werent bad pros
there are many USC fans that are undoubtedly donuts, seen them in action many years in seattle (just like moron UW rooters) but there are legions more like my bro in law who went to USC that are just plain supporters and not idiots about it ... is every LSU fan commedable and perfect?
USC is w/o a doubt the best team in cfb over last 4 years, anyone disputing that hasnt watched the sport during that window.
SUGAR BOWL
Still running
It was a Halloween sprint that sealed Billy Cannon's fate as an LSU legend, but it is his post-football life -- and people's obsession with it -- that has forced him to flee the spotlight.
Wednesday December 31, 2003 BILLY CANNON
By Josh Peter
Staff writer
His back facing the wall, Billy Cannon scanned the room with icy blue eyes. He was there reluctantly and grudgingly, fate and history having conspired against him.
Forty-five years after Cannon led the Louisiana State University football team to its only national championship, the 2003 team had earned a spot in the national championship game. And as the Tigers prepared for Sunday's Nokia Sugar Bowl, talk inevitably turned to the 1958 team and its star -- its transcendent but tortured star.
Cannon welcomes questions about winning the national championship and the Heisman Trophy, or about his 11-year pro career that followed. What he dreads are questions about his 1983 conviction for counterfeiting, or filing for personal bankruptcy in 1995, or a $300,000-a-year orthodontics practice that collapsed, forcing him to take a job running the dental clinic at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Cannon said he doesn't see how his life is worthy of an in-depth story. "You could write my story in four paragraphs," he said.
"He's alive.
"He had five bypasses.
"He had prostate cancer surgery.
"And he's doing fine."
He survived both of those surgical procedures in the past five years. And for the past two decades, Cannon has avoided tough questions by avoiding interviews. Once, he even turned down a request to talk with Dennis Quaid, the actor who played an aging Heisman Trophy winner in the 1988 film "Everybody's All-American," a movie many thought was based on Cannon's life.
But in recent weeks, with the buzz over the '58 team building, Cannon at last submitted to an interview request, albeit on his own terms.
The meeting took place at T.J. Ribs, the Baton Rouge restaurant where Cannon has eaten for free since 1986 when, short on cash, he sold his Heisman Trophy to restaurant owner Tom Moran.
Cannon didn't come alone. He brought two friends: Jimmy Lear, whom he's known since grade school, and Boots Garland, a former LSU track coach who serves as an unofficial liaison for anybody who wants to meet with Cannon. They sat at the prized table, the one reserved for bigwigs, table No. 106. And with his back to the wall, Cannon was in position to see everything coming at him, until . . .
Coach encounter
Lunch gave way to small talk and small talk gave way to stories when Garland leaned toward the middle of the table and, with a conspiratorial whisper, indicated he had a doozy of a tale. First he looked at Cannon, as if to make sure it was OK, then told about the first time LSU's only Heisman Trophy winner met Nick Saban, the LSU football coach who's becoming a legend in his own right.
It was a few years ago at an LSU function in Monroe, Garland said. Cannon was sitting at a table with friends and former teammates. Saban was standing across the room.
When the coach saw Cannon, he crossed the room and introduced himself.
Saban: "We'd like to get you back involved in the program."
Cannon: "Well, I'm up in the country now. When you get a chance, why don't you come and see me?"
Saban: "What I mean is, we'd like to have you come out to practice and, you know, get involved and come visit us."
Cannon: "Tell you what, if you come see me, I'll come see you."
Politely, Saban excused himself. Not so politely, Garland leaned toward LSU's lone Heisman Trophy winner and said, "You're still a (jerk)."
As Garland recounted the punch line, Cannon grinned. Not one of his aw-shucks grins, but a mischievous, unapologetic grin.
Warming up during the two-hour lunch, Cannon began sharing stories about his youth. About being born in Philadelphia, Miss., to a line of dirt farmers. And about his father losing the family farm before moving the family to Baton Rouge, and then losing a leg during a work-related accident. About whippings he took from a neighborhood bully when he was only 4, and about the whipping he took from the high school principal and his father the day he decided to play hooky.
But while the lunch session at T.J. Ribs included charming stories, it also included cryptic comments. Like, "Let me say this, I know the difference between friends and acquaintances." And, "You don't know a man unless you've been with him when he's failed."
At times, Cannon's moods changed abruptly, toggling between gracious and gruff, trusting and suspicious, agreeable and agitated. As Terri Cannon, one of Billy's five children, put it: "He's a hard one to define."
For instance, while Cannon brushed off Saban three years ago, there he was on the LSU sideline earlier this season, before the Louisiana Tech game at Tiger Stadium, standing with two of his granddaughters while being introduced to thunderous cheers as his famed, 89-yard punt return played on the giant scoreboard.
Famous forever
If you live in Louisiana, you know the punt return. The one against Ole Miss on Halloween night 1959. The run during which Cannon broke free of no fewer than seven would-be tacklers on his way to the end zone and eternal fame. The run that lifted LSU to a 7-3 win and propelled Cannon to a runaway victory in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
LSU fans had never seen anything like Cannon, and old-timers insist there never will be anything like him again. Strong enough to win the Southeastern Conference shot put championship. Fast enough to run the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds. Some rules just didn't apply to Cannon, or maybe it was that he ignored them.
Even the most memorable play of his career started with a broken rule. Then-coach Paul Dietzel had banned players from fielding punts inside the 15-yard line. Cannon fielded the ball at the 11 and turned Dietzel's shouts of "No, no, no" into cries of "Go, go, go!"
During the 1958 season, with LSU leading Tulane 55-0, Dietzel sent in Cannon with a play to run out the clock. Cannon called his own audible -- resulting in yet another touchdown. And during a recent lunch, said former LSU quarterback Durel Matherne, Cannon howled, "I made a fool of you and Dietzel."
He was the first freshman football player allowed to move out of the athletic dorm when he got married three months after arriving at Baton Rouge. And he was the only LSU player who signed a pro contract before the end of his career. Courts ruled his secret deal with the Los Angeles Rams illegal but upheld the even richer, $100,000 contract he later signed with the Houston Oilers.
Cannon redefined what it meant to be an LSU superstar and a college halfback, then went on to win All-Pro honors during his 11-year professional career.
Keeping a low profile
He's still powerfully built at age 66, his meaty arms and thick chest stretching against the fabric of his shirt. Over those muscles he wears an armor of privacy. His friends say it's been that way since 1984, when he pleaded guilty to counterfeiting and began serving a 2 ?-year sentence in federal prison.
For years, he used to bring his family to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and mingle with Mike Serio and the crowd outside Serio's Po-Boy shop on St. Charles. After his conviction, Cannon's family came without him.
Most of his public appearances are unannounced and low-profile.
"Even today people make fun of him with the counterfeiting," said Serio, whose friendship with Cannon dates back to the 1950s. "Enough's enough. He's paid the price.
"I guess he'd rather keep a low profile and do what he loves to do, and that's what he's doing."
But outside of his family and small circle of friends, getting to know Cannon is as hard as it was for defenders to bring him down in 1959. Which is to say one had better have help, because Cannon still uses his blockers, and he still darts and dodges like he did on that Halloween night. His professional and private lives are off-limits.
In fact, Cannon asked his co-workers and Angola warden Burl Cain not to talk for this story.
"He so hates to see in every story written about him that he was in prison," Cain said. "If we ever got to the point where we left him alone from that, he'd want to be part of wonderful reports."
Until then, Cain said, he will say little more than the public records law requires. He hired Cannon on June 2, 1997. Cannon is paid $98,900 a year. "He does a great job and has straightened out our medical clinic. I have no complaints about him. That's all I'm going to tell you," Cain said.
Peace and passion
So one must turn to friends, family members, neighbors and public documents to construct a portrait of Cannon. Mostly, it is a portrait of a man at peace.
During his professional career, in the offseasons, Cannon went back to school and earned a degree in dentistry. But during that time he also discovered something that would replace football as his passion: racehorses.
"He loves those horses more than he loves his wife," said Garland, who later wanted to clarify he was only joking.
Yet during the past 20 years, friends and family members say, Cannon has spent as much time with those horses as he's spent with people. More times than she can count, said Cannon's wife, Dorothy, she has awakened in the middle of the night only to find Billy sleeping in their nearby barn while waiting for one of his pregnant broodmares to give birth.
"Most of the time I'd go out just to see if he was OK," Dorothy Cannon said. "One of the horses could kick him. He's been kicked I don't know how many times. A lot of blue marks."
Now Billy Cannon waits in the comfort of his home. Actually, according to public documents, it's more living quarters than home: a 1,500-square-foot metal building wrapped with cedar wood and connected to the barn on an 11-acre property on the outskirts of St. Francisville, more than an hour's drive from the family's home in Baton Rouge. Cannon had it built two years ago after neighbors, citing the "stench" and "nuisance" of the horses, filed a lawsuit regarding his old barn in Baton Rouge.
The suit was resolved when Cannon moved his horses, about a dozen strong. Noting her husband's optimism, Dorothy Cannon said, "Every horse that he has is going to win the Kentucky Derby."
One day, perhaps. But of the 30-plus horses Cannon has bred, none has made it to Churchill Downs -- or won more than $150,000. Glenn Delahoussaye, who bought and trained Cannon's winningest horse yet, chuckled when he noted the horse's name: Can You Keep A Secret?
"Kind of ironic," Delahoussaye said.
When Cannon was short on cash, trainer Darrel Clavelle said, he still enjoyed looking for young colts and fillies, and passing on tips to his friends. On Cannon's recommendation, Clavelle said, he paid $8,000 for a horse named Tricky who went on to win more than $300,000. It's one reason he looks forward to Cannon's visits to Evangeline Downs racetrack in Carencro, where Clavelle said the men will share a few beers and their thoughts on horses during morning workouts.
"Billy was a good athlete himself, and he likes to see a good athlete," Clavelle said. "Billy's got a sharp eye for a good thoroughbred."
In hopes of breeding a champion of his own, Cannon lives on his St. Francisville horse farm next door to his son, Billy Jr. Dorothy Cannon lives in Baton Rouge. And while husband and wife see each other only on weekends, Dorothy said, she knows Billy's routine well.
Up at 4 a.m. Pour a cup of coffee. Out to the barn and feed the horses. At the Angola clinic by 7 a.m. and back home by 4 p.m. Just in time to feed his horses again. Maybe watch the news on his 52-inch TV, the same one on which he watches LSU football games. In bed by 8:30 p.m. and back at it by 4 a.m. the next day.
"Some people don't need other people to make themselves happy," Garland said. "That doesn't mean they're recluses."
Hard to read
Dave Gallent, a retired fireman and horse breeder, lives across the road from Cannon and said he chats with Cannon several times a week when they bump into each other at the mailbox. Gallent said he has known Cannon for more than 30 years, having met through their mutual interest in horses, and that he knows Cannon better than most people. Certainly better than people who know only what they've seen on highlight reels.
Gallent said he distinctly remembers the day in 1983 when he called Cannon and invited him to check out some young colts at a horse farm and Cannon declined, saying he had to fix a broken water line at his orthodontics office in Baton Rouge.
"I thought, 'That's mighty odd, Billy digging up a water line,' " Gallent said. "That's when he made the ground a little richer, putting hundred dollar bills in it."
The next day, Gallent said, he picked up the newspaper and read about Cannon's arrest on counterfeiting charges. Cannon had led federal agents to water coolers stuffed with fake $100 bills, with $2.2 million of those bills buried under a shed on Cannon's Jones Creek Road lot. In all, authorities found $6 million in counterfeit bills -- but never found a satisfying answer as to why a man making $300,000 a year as an orthodontist would participate in the scheme.
Gallent said he knows better than to go to Cannon for those types of questions. Questions like who came up with the $683,500 Cannon paid for a 40-acre property that has been carved up into three lots, including the one on which Billy Jr. lives with his wife and five children. Gallent said Billy Jr. told him that his brother-in-law, lawyer Jon Kenton Parsons, came up with the money.
"Little Bill will tell you pretty good, and Big Bill will tell you what you want to hear," Gallent said. "Big Billy's got some bad things about him, but he's got some good things about him too. . . .
"But you don't never know what's behind them eyes."
During the two-hour lunch at T.J. Ribs, it was impossible to know what was behind those eyes.
Midway through the lunch, Cannon suddenly turned angry, bristling about phone calls made to his friends and family members for this story. Just like all those other reporters, he snarled, looking for people to fill in preconceived notions and writing the story regardless of the truth.
Yet pleading for a more extensive interview -- to understand the truth as only Cannon knows it -- goes nowhere.
"You know me better today than you knew me yesterday," he said.
Knowing him any more was out of the question. Because when the choice is baring his soul or protecting it, Billy Cannon sees no choice at all.
I.E. THE HEISMAN
If you are going to throw stones, didnt billy cannon have to sell his Heisman b/c the feds got wise to his ass?
we know OJs deal
but marcus allen, carson palmer, mike garret, ricky bell, OJ, and whomever else im missing werent bad pros
there are many USC fans that are undoubtedly donuts, seen them in action many years in seattle (just like moron UW rooters) but there are legions more like my bro in law who went to USC that are just plain supporters and not idiots about it ... is every LSU fan commedable and perfect?
USC is w/o a doubt the best team in cfb over last 4 years, anyone disputing that hasnt watched the sport during that window.
SUGAR BOWL
Still running
It was a Halloween sprint that sealed Billy Cannon's fate as an LSU legend, but it is his post-football life -- and people's obsession with it -- that has forced him to flee the spotlight.
Wednesday December 31, 2003 BILLY CANNON
By Josh Peter
Staff writer
His back facing the wall, Billy Cannon scanned the room with icy blue eyes. He was there reluctantly and grudgingly, fate and history having conspired against him.
Forty-five years after Cannon led the Louisiana State University football team to its only national championship, the 2003 team had earned a spot in the national championship game. And as the Tigers prepared for Sunday's Nokia Sugar Bowl, talk inevitably turned to the 1958 team and its star -- its transcendent but tortured star.
Cannon welcomes questions about winning the national championship and the Heisman Trophy, or about his 11-year pro career that followed. What he dreads are questions about his 1983 conviction for counterfeiting, or filing for personal bankruptcy in 1995, or a $300,000-a-year orthodontics practice that collapsed, forcing him to take a job running the dental clinic at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Cannon said he doesn't see how his life is worthy of an in-depth story. "You could write my story in four paragraphs," he said.
"He's alive.
"He had five bypasses.
"He had prostate cancer surgery.
"And he's doing fine."
He survived both of those surgical procedures in the past five years. And for the past two decades, Cannon has avoided tough questions by avoiding interviews. Once, he even turned down a request to talk with Dennis Quaid, the actor who played an aging Heisman Trophy winner in the 1988 film "Everybody's All-American," a movie many thought was based on Cannon's life.
But in recent weeks, with the buzz over the '58 team building, Cannon at last submitted to an interview request, albeit on his own terms.
The meeting took place at T.J. Ribs, the Baton Rouge restaurant where Cannon has eaten for free since 1986 when, short on cash, he sold his Heisman Trophy to restaurant owner Tom Moran.
Cannon didn't come alone. He brought two friends: Jimmy Lear, whom he's known since grade school, and Boots Garland, a former LSU track coach who serves as an unofficial liaison for anybody who wants to meet with Cannon. They sat at the prized table, the one reserved for bigwigs, table No. 106. And with his back to the wall, Cannon was in position to see everything coming at him, until . . .
Coach encounter
Lunch gave way to small talk and small talk gave way to stories when Garland leaned toward the middle of the table and, with a conspiratorial whisper, indicated he had a doozy of a tale. First he looked at Cannon, as if to make sure it was OK, then told about the first time LSU's only Heisman Trophy winner met Nick Saban, the LSU football coach who's becoming a legend in his own right.
It was a few years ago at an LSU function in Monroe, Garland said. Cannon was sitting at a table with friends and former teammates. Saban was standing across the room.
When the coach saw Cannon, he crossed the room and introduced himself.
Saban: "We'd like to get you back involved in the program."
Cannon: "Well, I'm up in the country now. When you get a chance, why don't you come and see me?"
Saban: "What I mean is, we'd like to have you come out to practice and, you know, get involved and come visit us."
Cannon: "Tell you what, if you come see me, I'll come see you."
Politely, Saban excused himself. Not so politely, Garland leaned toward LSU's lone Heisman Trophy winner and said, "You're still a (jerk)."
As Garland recounted the punch line, Cannon grinned. Not one of his aw-shucks grins, but a mischievous, unapologetic grin.
Warming up during the two-hour lunch, Cannon began sharing stories about his youth. About being born in Philadelphia, Miss., to a line of dirt farmers. And about his father losing the family farm before moving the family to Baton Rouge, and then losing a leg during a work-related accident. About whippings he took from a neighborhood bully when he was only 4, and about the whipping he took from the high school principal and his father the day he decided to play hooky.
But while the lunch session at T.J. Ribs included charming stories, it also included cryptic comments. Like, "Let me say this, I know the difference between friends and acquaintances." And, "You don't know a man unless you've been with him when he's failed."
At times, Cannon's moods changed abruptly, toggling between gracious and gruff, trusting and suspicious, agreeable and agitated. As Terri Cannon, one of Billy's five children, put it: "He's a hard one to define."
For instance, while Cannon brushed off Saban three years ago, there he was on the LSU sideline earlier this season, before the Louisiana Tech game at Tiger Stadium, standing with two of his granddaughters while being introduced to thunderous cheers as his famed, 89-yard punt return played on the giant scoreboard.
Famous forever
If you live in Louisiana, you know the punt return. The one against Ole Miss on Halloween night 1959. The run during which Cannon broke free of no fewer than seven would-be tacklers on his way to the end zone and eternal fame. The run that lifted LSU to a 7-3 win and propelled Cannon to a runaway victory in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
LSU fans had never seen anything like Cannon, and old-timers insist there never will be anything like him again. Strong enough to win the Southeastern Conference shot put championship. Fast enough to run the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds. Some rules just didn't apply to Cannon, or maybe it was that he ignored them.
Even the most memorable play of his career started with a broken rule. Then-coach Paul Dietzel had banned players from fielding punts inside the 15-yard line. Cannon fielded the ball at the 11 and turned Dietzel's shouts of "No, no, no" into cries of "Go, go, go!"
During the 1958 season, with LSU leading Tulane 55-0, Dietzel sent in Cannon with a play to run out the clock. Cannon called his own audible -- resulting in yet another touchdown. And during a recent lunch, said former LSU quarterback Durel Matherne, Cannon howled, "I made a fool of you and Dietzel."
He was the first freshman football player allowed to move out of the athletic dorm when he got married three months after arriving at Baton Rouge. And he was the only LSU player who signed a pro contract before the end of his career. Courts ruled his secret deal with the Los Angeles Rams illegal but upheld the even richer, $100,000 contract he later signed with the Houston Oilers.
Cannon redefined what it meant to be an LSU superstar and a college halfback, then went on to win All-Pro honors during his 11-year professional career.
Keeping a low profile
He's still powerfully built at age 66, his meaty arms and thick chest stretching against the fabric of his shirt. Over those muscles he wears an armor of privacy. His friends say it's been that way since 1984, when he pleaded guilty to counterfeiting and began serving a 2 ?-year sentence in federal prison.
For years, he used to bring his family to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and mingle with Mike Serio and the crowd outside Serio's Po-Boy shop on St. Charles. After his conviction, Cannon's family came without him.
Most of his public appearances are unannounced and low-profile.
"Even today people make fun of him with the counterfeiting," said Serio, whose friendship with Cannon dates back to the 1950s. "Enough's enough. He's paid the price.
"I guess he'd rather keep a low profile and do what he loves to do, and that's what he's doing."
But outside of his family and small circle of friends, getting to know Cannon is as hard as it was for defenders to bring him down in 1959. Which is to say one had better have help, because Cannon still uses his blockers, and he still darts and dodges like he did on that Halloween night. His professional and private lives are off-limits.
In fact, Cannon asked his co-workers and Angola warden Burl Cain not to talk for this story.
"He so hates to see in every story written about him that he was in prison," Cain said. "If we ever got to the point where we left him alone from that, he'd want to be part of wonderful reports."
Until then, Cain said, he will say little more than the public records law requires. He hired Cannon on June 2, 1997. Cannon is paid $98,900 a year. "He does a great job and has straightened out our medical clinic. I have no complaints about him. That's all I'm going to tell you," Cain said.
Peace and passion
So one must turn to friends, family members, neighbors and public documents to construct a portrait of Cannon. Mostly, it is a portrait of a man at peace.
During his professional career, in the offseasons, Cannon went back to school and earned a degree in dentistry. But during that time he also discovered something that would replace football as his passion: racehorses.
"He loves those horses more than he loves his wife," said Garland, who later wanted to clarify he was only joking.
Yet during the past 20 years, friends and family members say, Cannon has spent as much time with those horses as he's spent with people. More times than she can count, said Cannon's wife, Dorothy, she has awakened in the middle of the night only to find Billy sleeping in their nearby barn while waiting for one of his pregnant broodmares to give birth.
"Most of the time I'd go out just to see if he was OK," Dorothy Cannon said. "One of the horses could kick him. He's been kicked I don't know how many times. A lot of blue marks."
Now Billy Cannon waits in the comfort of his home. Actually, according to public documents, it's more living quarters than home: a 1,500-square-foot metal building wrapped with cedar wood and connected to the barn on an 11-acre property on the outskirts of St. Francisville, more than an hour's drive from the family's home in Baton Rouge. Cannon had it built two years ago after neighbors, citing the "stench" and "nuisance" of the horses, filed a lawsuit regarding his old barn in Baton Rouge.
The suit was resolved when Cannon moved his horses, about a dozen strong. Noting her husband's optimism, Dorothy Cannon said, "Every horse that he has is going to win the Kentucky Derby."
One day, perhaps. But of the 30-plus horses Cannon has bred, none has made it to Churchill Downs -- or won more than $150,000. Glenn Delahoussaye, who bought and trained Cannon's winningest horse yet, chuckled when he noted the horse's name: Can You Keep A Secret?
"Kind of ironic," Delahoussaye said.
When Cannon was short on cash, trainer Darrel Clavelle said, he still enjoyed looking for young colts and fillies, and passing on tips to his friends. On Cannon's recommendation, Clavelle said, he paid $8,000 for a horse named Tricky who went on to win more than $300,000. It's one reason he looks forward to Cannon's visits to Evangeline Downs racetrack in Carencro, where Clavelle said the men will share a few beers and their thoughts on horses during morning workouts.
"Billy was a good athlete himself, and he likes to see a good athlete," Clavelle said. "Billy's got a sharp eye for a good thoroughbred."
In hopes of breeding a champion of his own, Cannon lives on his St. Francisville horse farm next door to his son, Billy Jr. Dorothy Cannon lives in Baton Rouge. And while husband and wife see each other only on weekends, Dorothy said, she knows Billy's routine well.
Up at 4 a.m. Pour a cup of coffee. Out to the barn and feed the horses. At the Angola clinic by 7 a.m. and back home by 4 p.m. Just in time to feed his horses again. Maybe watch the news on his 52-inch TV, the same one on which he watches LSU football games. In bed by 8:30 p.m. and back at it by 4 a.m. the next day.
"Some people don't need other people to make themselves happy," Garland said. "That doesn't mean they're recluses."
Hard to read
Dave Gallent, a retired fireman and horse breeder, lives across the road from Cannon and said he chats with Cannon several times a week when they bump into each other at the mailbox. Gallent said he has known Cannon for more than 30 years, having met through their mutual interest in horses, and that he knows Cannon better than most people. Certainly better than people who know only what they've seen on highlight reels.
Gallent said he distinctly remembers the day in 1983 when he called Cannon and invited him to check out some young colts at a horse farm and Cannon declined, saying he had to fix a broken water line at his orthodontics office in Baton Rouge.
"I thought, 'That's mighty odd, Billy digging up a water line,' " Gallent said. "That's when he made the ground a little richer, putting hundred dollar bills in it."
The next day, Gallent said, he picked up the newspaper and read about Cannon's arrest on counterfeiting charges. Cannon had led federal agents to water coolers stuffed with fake $100 bills, with $2.2 million of those bills buried under a shed on Cannon's Jones Creek Road lot. In all, authorities found $6 million in counterfeit bills -- but never found a satisfying answer as to why a man making $300,000 a year as an orthodontist would participate in the scheme.
Gallent said he knows better than to go to Cannon for those types of questions. Questions like who came up with the $683,500 Cannon paid for a 40-acre property that has been carved up into three lots, including the one on which Billy Jr. lives with his wife and five children. Gallent said Billy Jr. told him that his brother-in-law, lawyer Jon Kenton Parsons, came up with the money.
"Little Bill will tell you pretty good, and Big Bill will tell you what you want to hear," Gallent said. "Big Billy's got some bad things about him, but he's got some good things about him too. . . .
"But you don't never know what's behind them eyes."
During the two-hour lunch at T.J. Ribs, it was impossible to know what was behind those eyes.
Midway through the lunch, Cannon suddenly turned angry, bristling about phone calls made to his friends and family members for this story. Just like all those other reporters, he snarled, looking for people to fill in preconceived notions and writing the story regardless of the truth.
Yet pleading for a more extensive interview -- to understand the truth as only Cannon knows it -- goes nowhere.
"You know me better today than you knew me yesterday," he said.
Knowing him any more was out of the question. Because when the choice is baring his soul or protecting it, Billy Cannon sees no choice at all.
Your a moron... and a hater...USC is undefeated & about to win another NC
Thanks to Auburn, LSU won't even get a BCS bid
Les Miles is the worst coach ever.
Once Sabans recruits are gone LSU will once again be a basement team in the SEC
How many times I have to say this ryan, you dont know what your talking about. First off, Auburn won that game fair and square. Secondly, there are alot of Pac10 fans, but I doubt there are alot of Pac10 fans (or SEC) that teams reflect their lives or whatever you were saying, about how you bleed with your teams
yeah we are all fans ryan, but because my team lost doesnt make me a loser and vice versa with winning. And you have seen one guy with a USC shirt on in a starbucks out here and automatically you put Pac10 fans "tailgate at starbucks", (I wish there was a smiley yawning) because you put that in about every post regarding pac10. You might as well make it your sig. Talk about what you know, and ask about what you dont.Wow, this is a lil much to handle too. USC still has a big load on their plate, so about to win another NC, I dont know about that. I think there are alot of teams that can beat USC right now, and that they are mere points behind auburn is a big indicator to me that there is still a huge SC bias in the media. LSU can still get a bowl bid, and should, because they are at least a top 8 team right now.
I don't have a dog in this hunt but if you want to say they won fair and squared you need to stop handicapping. The guy is right. E verygame impact call was against LSU. Take the blinders off or learn to look at the game more closely. I guess you think Pittsburgh won the superbowl fair and square to.How many times I have to say this ryan, you dont know what your talking about. First off, Auburn won that game fair and square. Secondly, there are alot of Pac10 fans, but I doubt there are alot of Pac10 fans (or SEC) that teams reflect their lives or whatever you were saying, about how you bleed with your teams
Sponge, you are the biggest square on this board. Get back to argueing with our troops about what REALLY goes on in Iraq.:mj07: How bout I take a line from your book - "If you dont expect a lil home cooking than you need to stop handicapping"
I was on Seattle actually, and even though the officating pissed me off I didnt come on here and bitch about it all season (like Ryan is going to do)
Just as you miss everything in the real world you missed everything in this game. What exactly is a square? Are you calling me a public bettor. If so once again you missed the boat. Your 0 for three.
BLG Stocks? whatever that means
BLG Stocks? whatever that means
Auburn won fair and square? You obviously did not see the game. I am not making excuses but it was the worst officiated college game I have ever seen and at least 5 guys from sportscenter agreed with me that the game was blown!
BLG Stocks? whatever that means
Auburn won fair and square? You obviously did not see the game. I am not making excuses but it was the worst officiated college game I have ever seen and at least 5 guys from sportscenter agreed with me that the game was blown!
heres all i need to know about auburn and lsu.
... lsu scored 3 points.
i dont give a sh1t how poorly the game was officiated.
if you score 3 points, do you deserve to win any game of significance?
and if your best argument is "at least 5 guys on sportscenter agreed with me", then youre in bad shape because there might only be 2 or 3 guys on their family of networks whose opinion is worth a damn.
... lsu scored 3 points.
i dont give a sh1t how poorly the game was officiated.
if you score 3 points, do you deserve to win any game of significance?
and if your best argument is "at least 5 guys on sportscenter agreed with me", then youre in bad shape because there might only be 2 or 3 guys on their family of networks whose opinion is worth a damn.
the game?
or the pi call?
because the pi call still doesnt get lsu in the endzone, in fact it puts them at the 15 or so with 20-30 secs left and they are still looking for their first td
There were multiple incorrect calls
There were multiple incorrect calls
Our d only allowed 7 Mild cat fan you guys gave that up in the first 2 min of the LSU game, you had your hands full with byu! tHE only words that should come out of your mouth are Sir would you like ketchup and mustard on that?
There were multiple incorrect calls
Our d only allowed 7 Mild cat fan you guys gave that up in the first 2 min of the LSU game, you had your hands full with byu! tHE only words that should come out of your mouth are Sir would you like ketchup and mustard on that?
im so sick about hearing these type of rediculous arguments. Same thing with the superbowl. People telling me that seattle had all these other chances. That is not how it works fellas. 1 freaking blow call can change a whole game around. Watch the games more closely.
Ryan i live in the east and have no stake in this game but for anyone to say this game was officated honestly and there were blown calls on both sides is delusional at best. You guys got robbed time and time again. It was the worst officiated game i saw since the superbowl or some of those Maverick wins in the NBA playoffs.
