I’m imagining my graduation day. The birds are singing, cameras are flashing, parents are clapping and, most importantly and God willing, nobody along the lines of Drew Brees is giving my commencement speech.
It’s not that I don’t respect Brees for what he’s done; bringing the Saints to the Super Bowl and winning is no small feat. This alone, however, does not qualify him to send forth a generation of Loyola graduates on graduation day.
Some have argued that Brees came to the Saints out of the goodness of his heart, that he could have signed with a lot of other, better teams than the Saints at the time, and that this makes him a good New Orleans role model; but the fact of the matter is that Drew Brees came to the Saints only because the Chargers and the Dolphins wouldn’t pay him enough.
And speaking of pay, word is that the university is coughing up an ungodly amount of dough to compensate Brees for speaking for, what, five minutes? I’m fairly sure that for much less money, Loyola could have gotten someone far more qualified, inspirational and academically relevant to speak to this year’s graduates.
To put it into perspective, I am from Alabama. I am proud of the Saints for what they’ve done, they have made a fan out of me, but I do not let them control my life, particularly in an educational aspect. This is pretty typical of most non-Louisiana residents at Loyola, which means that I have no doubt that there are a lot of disappointed graduates-to-be that are wishing a commencement speaker had been picked that is known for doing something other than just sports.
After all, any Colts fans in the audience will pretty much have to grin and bear it, which is somewhat unfair to do to them on one of the most important days of their lives.
To back all of this up, I have prepared a short list of commencement speaking candidates that would be a better choice than Drew Brees: Ellen DeGeneres (hats off to you, Tulane), James Patterson, John Goodman, Buddy Guy, Eli Manning (better than Brees because he is actually from New Orleans), Tyler Perry, Richard Simmons (you know you’d love it) and Mitch Landrieu, and these are just the people I could think of with some tie to New Orleans that have accomplished anything related to any of Loyola’s offered majors. These people would even contribute to the goal that Loyola might have in mind with Brees, which is the goal of getting a little national publicity.
It is not to say that this goal is a bad one — publicity is always a good thing — but it isn’t too much to say that a better speaker for the graduates could have been selected, particularly one who wouldn’t have to read from a script written by a publicist and whose main source of inspiration will probably start with, “Who Dat.”
I understand the home team pride, but it is a bit extreme to depend on that pride to inspire an audience of scattered fans at best.
Chad Carlile is a Life and Times guest columnist. His column may be found regularly in the Opinion/Editorial section. He can be reached at [email protected]
