Sixteen years ago I started to regularly write about my other great passion outside of politics: New Orleans Saints football.

While hunting for stories from the Saints front office, training camp, and the Black and Gold rumor mill (which provided no shortage of fodder in the Sean Payton era) I decided to take a chance at fielding questions to a man whose radio interviews I listened to as if he were passing along hot stock market tips, Mike Detillier.

Mike had the rare combination of gifts possessing a depth of football of college and professional knowledge that was uncanny mixed with being a skilled raconteur who left you hanging on to every word.

I’d often refer to Mike as the E.F. Hutton (people of certain generations will understand and appreciate the reference) of football and more than a few times I was tardy to work as I sat in my truck in the parking lot until the conclusion of his Monday morning segment on WWL 870 AM.

I tracked Mike’s email down, introduced myself, and asked if he wouldn’t mind taking some questions in advance of the 2010 NFL Draft.

He replied immediately and between then and my lunch break when I’d do the interview, I cobbled together about 20 or so questions.

What I did not expect was the torrent of information to each and every query. I was running a simple blog and was a nobody, a fan who had the same questions on my mind as others in my numerically limited readership.

Yet Mike answered those questions as if he were defending his thesis before the Board of Football. I spent days trying to translate pages and pages of notes I scribbled. There were no one sentence answers with Mike.

From that point forward I became friends with Mike and he generously shared his time, expertise, wisdom, and fearless candor about LSU and the Saints, extending to this relative stranger a degree of confidence I felt unworthy to receive yet honored to have.

A regular trademark of a Detillier interview were questions I had not asked that he suggested I should, and taking the hint, asked a couple more that more often than not be the most relevant ones in the interview.

Eventually my focus would shift more heavily to political commentary yet I kept going forward with the annual draft interview with Mike, which was my most read column in any given year.

My favorite anecdote with Mike involved Washington Mardi Gras.

One year he asked me a slew of questions about the event and how could he and his wife Linda attend. Needless to say I dropped everything I was doing to ensure that they got in and worked a tour of the White House in to boot.

Watching how giddy he was taking in the trappings of the Executive Mansion remains my favorite DCMG memory.

A week later I had a thank you note and gift cards to a favorite restaurant in my mailbox as a show of appreciation. I never did have the heart to use those cards, keeping them on.my desk ss a reminder of how classy Mike was.

A proud son of Raceland, Mike was one of the most genuine people in sports media and completely without pretense.

Mike was truly a fan of the game in the best sense of the word.

On the first day of the draft I’d text him “Merry Christmas Morning!”.

As the Saints would be on the board, Mike would start excitedly pacing around the WWL 870 AM broadcast dais, unable to contain his excitement as the pick came in.

Within seconds of the announcement Detillier would rattle of a deluge of information on the newest addition to the Saints as if he had committed an FBI file on the guy to memory.

He wasn’t a “homer” who gave carte blanche to a football program in exchange for access; he told it like it was and was every bit as entertaining as his fellow local media legend Buddy Deliberto, but in a different way.

Buddy D was sarcastically funny, suffered through calls from characters, playfully bantered with the “squirrels”, and regularly garroted what was then the Queen’s English.

In contrast Mike was witty, analytical, and exuded a passion for the subject matter that was only rivaled by his bayou brother Bobby J. The common thread between the two local sports media icons was how polite they were to earnest callers, and did so without being patronizing.

Eventually the rest of American sports media would discover how special Mike Detillier was and would schedule him on national shows for his take on the draft.

The true Draft King finally received the recognition he richly deserved from his peers as one of the leading experts on college football talent and where individual players would fit best in the pros.

In preparation for his farewell and his terminal diagnosis to be announced on what would have been his 66th birthday on Tuesday, Mike offered up his outlook on life, witnessing the Lord, expressing love for America, and its game.

It was an uncharacteristically brief summation but as his time was limited, Mike succinctly covered what mattered most to him.

Mike Detillier went out with humility and class; no doubt saddened by his sudden diagnosis but not crushed to a point of despair, confident that our existence does not conclude with our final breath.

Merci beaucoup pour votre amitié et bonne nuit a une légende.