For this alum, I was hoping he would help move us up to higher levels. At an alumni event held in Minden that I MC'd shortly after he became AD, he provided all the reasons for me to know he was the wrong man for the job in the first 5 minutes of conversation. I've always thought it surprised him that a Tech alum was not only uninterested in hearing about his philosophy of LSU and Tech's relative position in the universe but would take him to task for even making such condescending comments.
Neither of us joined the other's fan club.
Not a Stovall fan either. I was playing baseball at Tech during part of his time as AD. As you most know scholarships in baseball are not always full since only 11.5 for 30 guys available. For those of us that did not have books covered, they would let us borrow from the book room what was left after football and basketball got their books. Sometimes you got lucky and got all your books and sometimes you may only get one or two and then turn them in at the end of the quarter. When Stovall came he stopped this. Books just sitting there unused, just thought it was a senseless move but there may of been some type of regulatory issue but that was not shared as the reason. The second thing was he "cut out" the purchase of letter jackets which was still a thing back then. These things are probably trivial to most of you but it was two things that directly affected me. Plus he always seemed to be a "punk"!
It is sad that Jim Oakes last few years is what many remember him for. That is the fault of Dan Reneau who should have recognized the need for a change sooner.
Jim Oakes was the perfect man for the job when he took over for Stovall. He was able to bring members of the Tech family together and make the best of a tough situation for several years. He was personable and treated the $200/year giver the same as a guy who gave $10,000/year. I won't say that he had all the qualifications needed to be successful, but may fans believe that he was what we needed at the time. Most of those same fans agree that his time to step down should have been when we got in the WAC. Complacency set in and nobody was more complacent with our situation than Dan Reneau.
I understand. One thing about Jim is that he actually cared and cares about Louisiana Tech and always has. He was never in it for career advancement. The same can be said about J.R. Peace. Both guys dealt with the worst possible circumstances to help get us to where we are today.
In his first 2 years there were about a dozen major incidents/situations involving Stovall. Him forgetting to turn in the paperwork for the Lady Techsters to host an NCAA tournament game in 1991 was just one of them. The situation got so bad that The Tech Talk, in a series of stories, came out against him.
Stovall got us in the "Big West" with USL and Arkansas State. That was quite an accomplishment.