20 years ago today Buddy Diliberto passed away (15 Viewers)

[rsmith2783]

I'll never forget the morning of January 8th, 2005. It was a Saturday, and I was on my way to work. Before heading out, I hopped on here to catch up on the latest Saints news (hoping to read that Jim Haslett had been fired). Instead, I saw a thread with Buddy D's name on it. I was completely shocked to find out that he had passed away. It was a serious gut punch. I had faithfully listened to his radio show, and no matter how badly the Saints played, he always found a way to make you smile. He shared in the joy of winning and frustration of losing.

I remember one time during the 1999 season, when the Saints were playing terribly (they finished 3-13), Buddy D opened his show with a prayer, asking the Lord to help the Saints. It was both hilarious and sincere.

Listening to him tell callers they were "squirrels" was always funny, and he never held back when discussing Saints players, coaches, or even the owner. If something was bad, he called it bad. During the Buddy D roasting session, he joked that the Saints had banned him "for life and 10 years." When he asked, "What's the 10 years for?" the response was, "Well, in case you're the second Lazarus, you'll get 10 more years."

WWL hasn't been the same since he passed. RIP, Buddy D!

 

[BooBirdSaint]

Never have so few vowels caused so much mispronunciation...

 

[longtime lurker]

Thanks for sharing your post.

He was a real legend. I listened to his shows nightly back when WWL radio did a great job of covering the Saints. I never felt like I was getting whatever the Saints wanted him to report as “the news”. It felt to me like he wasn’t afraid of asking the tough questions. I miss his stories and his loyal callers who made his shows so entertaining. He was a member of that old school style of sports reporting and it’s really hard to find that anymore, IMHO. He was far from perfect….but that’s partly what made him so special. Props to Mike D also, they made a great team on the radio.

 

[Scott B]

You can’t tell the story of the Saints pre Katrina without including Buddy D. He was such a huge fabric of Pre Katrina Saints fandom. Doesn’t matter if you liked him or not, he was a major part of local Saints’ fans lives.

 

[Saint Jack]

Not to denigrate because I actually have good memories of listening to him as a kid, but he’s the reason why some fans and commentators in the national media cling to the Baghead days like it happened in the most rev past.

 

[Saintman2884]

I'll never forget the morning of January 8th, 2005. It was a Saturday, and I was on my way to work. Before heading out, I hopped on here to catch up on the latest Saints news (hoping to read that Jim Haslett had been fired). Instead, I saw a thread with Buddy D's name on it. I was completely shocked to find out that he had passed away. It was a serious gut punch. I had faithfully listened to his radio show, and no matter how badly the Saints played, he always found a way to make you smile. He shared in the joy of winning and frustration of losing.

I remember one time during the 1999 season, when the Saints were playing terribly (they finished 3-13), Buddy D opened his show with a prayer, asking the Lord to help the Saints. It was both hilarious and sincere.

Listening to him tell callers they were "squirrels" was always funny, and he never held back when discussing Saints players, coaches, or even the owner. If something was bad, he called it bad. During the Buddy D roasting session, he joked that the Saints had banned him "for life and 10 years." When he asked, "What's the 10 years for?" the response was, "Well, in case you're the second Lazarus, you'll get 10 more years."

WWL hasn't been the same since he passed. RIP, Buddy D!

I don't think many in the Saints organization and perhaps even some of the players from the late 60's-early 80's liked Dilberto due to the fact that he persistently and stubbornly kept saying the quiet parts out loud about how criminally incompetent, inept, frankly stupid the sort of FO and ownership we had under Mecom and Buddy kept showing and pointing the obvious parts of that stupidity in a way that was uncompromising and unfiltered. One constant refrain from Dilberto all throughout the 70's and early 80's was that John Mecom was an idiot, clueless owner who was always way in over his head and every year with each passing losing season and bad FO decision, trade or first-round draft pick, he kept proving his point.

When it came to Benson, I think Buddy respected him more because he at least made some great personnel moves and team-related decisions once he took ownership although their were some modest criticism here and there. It wasnt until maybe mid-late 90's that Dilberto's focus on Benson turned a lot more critical and maybe a tad bit more personal although it never really reached the same level of nasty, vitriol that existed between him and Mecom. Mecom despised and hated Dilberto and IMHO, maybe that was a deflectionary coping mechanism for him to not consider that perhaps critics like Dilberto were right about him all along. He was an absolute failure as an NFL owner and in quite a few other business ventures. The only two decent, respectable HC's Mecom ever hired was Hank Schramm and Bum Phillips, perhaps Dick Nolan was a distant third but IIRC, he presided over the disastrous 1-15 1980 "Baghead" season when so many issues plagued the team like drug/substance abuse, lack of discipline, effort and Nolan's confusing, stubborn committment to a Flex Defense that works only if you have a lot of time and right players, which Nolan didn't really have in New Orleans in the late 70's.

 

[Saintman2884]

Not to denigrate because I actually have good memories of listening to him as a kid, but he’s the reason why some fans and commentators in the national media cling to the Baghead days like it happened in the most rev past.

It is a shame that Buddy D never lived at least maybe another 10 years to witness the outstanding, almost mythical accomplishments Brees and Sean Payton would bring to this city, team and organization for 15 seasons as well as a SB victory. Still, considering his contrarian nature, Buddy probably wouldve criticized or questioned Payton's lack of committment to building up decent defenses or why we never tried to make it more of an effective complement to how powerful our offenses were from 2006-2011, and 2013.


I do believe however he wouldve given Payton a lot more rope when taking into consideration the sheer amount of success his methods brought in compared to past HC''s like Mora.

I can't imagine Buddy D going toe-to-toe with Mora like Ron Swadoda (?) did in late 80's after Swadoda essentially asked Mora why he was practicing his team so hard for what was, in his view, a "meaningless game" and Mora went full-blown thermonuclear on his arse and they had one of the nastiest, contensious on-air fights ever witnessed on New Orleans television. To this day, it is a mini-miracle neither one of them took a swing at each other during that heated conversation.

 

[HouseCall]

Not to denigrate because I actually have good memories of listening to him as a kid, but he’s the reason why some fans and commentators in the national media cling to the Baghead days like it happened in the most rev past.

Yeah, I agree. He was a Saints legend but I found him very difficult to listen to for Saints info and I also found his commentary to be too heavily based on gambling and the Vegas line.

But still, he was a one of a kind and very much a symbol of the “rough around the edges” Saints.

 

[Saintman2884]

Yeah, I agree. He was a Saints legend but I found him very difficult to listen to for Saints info and I also found his commentary to be too heavily based on gambling and the Vegas line.

But still, he was a one of a kind and very much a symbol of the “rough around the edges” Saints.

I think most Saints fans today, if not most sports journalists would agree that Dilberto's personality and form of aggressive, confrontational sports journalism likely wouldn't fly today. Today, NFL and NCAAF HC's along with requisite teams and programs control the narrative and nature of press conferences far more then 45-50 years ago and if faced with assertive, pressing questions from beat reporters like Dilberto today, they'd probably ask or demand he can taken off the beat or allowed into pre-or-post game press conferences, otherwise we won't do them anymore.

 

[Saint Jack]

I think most Saints fans today, if not most sports journalists would agree that Dilberto's personality and form of aggressive, confrontational sports journalism likely wouldn't fly today. Today, NFL and NCAAF HC's along with requisite teams and programs control the narrative and nature of press conferences far more then 45-50 years ago and if faced with assertive, pressing questions from beat reporters like Dilberto today, they'd probably ask or demand he can taken off the beat or allowed into pre-or-post game press conferences, otherwise we won't do them anymore.

He would have been on First Take or one of their clone shows.

 

[rsmith2783]

I don't think many in the Saints organization and perhaps even some of the players from the late 60's-early 80's liked Dilberto due to the fact that he persistently and stubbornly kept saying the quiet parts out loud about how criminally incompetent, inept, frankly stupid the sort of FO and ownership we had under Mecom and Buddy kept showing and pointing the obvious parts of that stupidity in a way that was uncompromising and unfiltered. One constant refrain from Dilberto all throughout the 70's and early 80's was that John Mecom was an idiot, clueless owner who was always way in over his head and every year with each passing losing season and bad FO decision, trade or first-round draft pick, he kept proving his point.

When it came to Benson, I think Buddy respected him more because he at least made some great personnel moves and team-related decisions once he took ownership although their were some modest criticism here and there. It wasnt until maybe mid-late 90's that Dilberto's focus on Benson turned a lot more critical and maybe a tad bit more personal although it never really reached the same level of nasty, vitriol that existed between him and Mecom. Mecom despised and hated Dilberto and IMHO, maybe that was a deflectionary coping mechanism for him to not consider that perhaps critics like Dilberto were right about him all along. He was an absolute failure as an NFL owner and in quite a few other business ventures. The only two decent, respectable HC's Mecom ever hired was Hank Schramm and Bum Phillips, perhaps Dick Nolan was a distant third but IIRC, he presided over the disastrous 1-15 1980 "Baghead" season when so many issues plagued the team like drug/substance abuse, lack of discipline, effort and Nolan's confusing, stubborn committment to a Flex Defense that works only if you have a lot of time and right players, which Nolan didn't really have in New Orleans in the late 70's.

I think Buddy use to call him the Millionaire Playboy. But he was right for calling out ownership that continuously made bad moves while putting the loyal fans in a hard place. Unfortunately we started seeing some of the same behavior from Loomis. Props to Benson for stepping up and buying both the Saints and Pelicans.

 

[St.Dan]

Buddy's journalistic roots were in the print world during the heyday of newspapers. Hence his commitment to asking the tough questions at a time when interviews and pressers with coaches were far less controlled by the league than now. It's a good thing he didn't live to witness the tragedy of Katrina itself, but a shame he couldn't witness the franchise's rebirth after it.

 

[SaintStephen1]

two things I think about with Buddy are the mispronunciations like Joe Fethersfield and his absolute pimping for Ditka to get Saints job.

 

[Saintman2884]

two things I think about with Buddy are the mispronunciations like Joe Fethersfield and his absolute pimping for Ditka to get Saints job.

Sad that Dilberto turned out to be so completely and utterly wrong and a bit misguided in his perception that a past-his-prime, clueless and overrated HC like Ditka could somehow resurrect and revitalize this team and franchise. I think Buddy D seriously over-estimated Ditka's role in remaking the Bears into contenders in the 1980's and early 90's when in reality they kind of already had a good defense in 1981 with Buddy Ryan, it was really more GM Jim Finks who drafted and attracted that great talent in the 1982 draft and Ditka, for the most part, stayed out of the way until his ego ballooned by the late 80's and he began thinking he was mostly responsible for building those Bears teams.

 

[SaintStephen1]

Sad that Dilberto turned out to be so completely and utterly wrong and a bit misguided in his perception that a past-his-prime, clueless and overrated HC like Ditka could somehow resurrect and revitalize this team and franchise. I think Buddy D seriously over-estimated Ditka's role in remaking the Bears into contenders in the 1980's and early 90's when in reality they kind of already had a good defense in 1981 with Buddy Ryan, it was really more GM Jim Finks who drafted and attracted that great talent in the 1982 draft and Ditka, for the most part, stayed out of the way until his ego ballooned by the late 80's and he began thinking he was mostly responsible for building those Bears teams.

Buddy partly liked him so he could get inside betting info from Ditka.