Some Southern Section championship luncheon highlights

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The Southern Section held its 32nd Football Press Conference and Luncheon today at The Grand in Long Beach. Fellow reporter Martin Henderson is going to provide a full recap of the event later, but let me give you some highlights you may not find in that blog:

• Petros Papadakis was the guest speaker. The best thing he did was keep his speech brief, really brief. As I heard Petros talk, I began to wonder how hard it is to get a degree from USC. ‘Not that hard,’ said Adam Maya (USC Class of ‘06) of the OC Register. ‘I got one.’ And Petros has one too. Quick question to USC grads, have you paid off your student loans yet?

• I was seated at the El Dorado table with Maya, Golden Hawks Coach Jeff Bailey, three of his players and two school administrators. I noticed that two of the players, and one of the administrators, were wearing the championship ring from last season. The guys don’t wear it very often. ‘We only bring it out for special occasions,’ linebacker Scott Galvan said. Running back Devin De Leon and Bailey didn’t wear theirs -- not because they didn’t think the luncheon was a special occasion, but because they forgot. The ring is big and extremely impressive. ‘It was a lot of fun creating that,’ Bailey said.

• A hot topic was the firing of UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell. Maya knew Dorrell was going to get fired today, but he had no idea the school had already contacted possible replacements. When I said Steve Mariucci was one of the candidates, his jaw dropped. Having two former NFL coaches going head-to-head as crosstown rivals would be awesome. Bailey told us he played at UCLA when Dorrell was with the coaching staff (that would put him at UCLA around 1988, I believe), but he didn’t offer an opinion on Dorrell.

• The last piece of information I have for you is about El Dorado Night: The Story of Shake-N-Bake. I was unsure as to who all of the El Dorado players were at our table, so I asked Bailey if he could introduce them. When he got to Galvan and Anthony Laurenzi (who had 23 sacks), the linebacker and the lineman said they would bring the Shake-N-Bake to Trabucco Hils on Friday night. Not only did they say it, but they proceeded to do it. Galvan was shake (a.k.a. Cal Naughton, a.k.a. Mike Honcho) and Laurenzi was bake (a.k.a. Ricky Bobby). It’s perfect. It rhymes, they’re both verbs. It’s awesome.

If you found that funny, here’s a YouTube Shake-N-Bake snippet from ‘Taladega Nights.’ OK, it’s time for me to Shake-N-Bake myself out of here. Don’t forget to look for Martin’s blogs.

-- Jaime Cardenas