Sunday Slam: Connor O'Gara's Coverage Helps Ensure SEC Football Continues to Mean More
Maine West Grad Dugalic Signs Pro Contract in Serbia; Barrington Wins Record Ninth American Legion Baseball State Title; Burns Takes Over Triton Men's Basketball
Does football really just mean more in the SEC?
Connor O’Gara was admittedly skeptical before his media career led to covering Southeastern Conference football in 2017. The 2008 Buffalo Grove graduate was a Big Ten guy who went to Northwestern games as a kid, graduated from Indiana, spent nearly three years covering Nebraska football and then covered the league for two years for the “Saturday Traditions” website. His mom Sheila went to Illinois.
Then O’Gara started writing about Alabama, Georgia, LSU and the rest of the SEC for the website “Saturday Down South.” He is now its Senior National Columnist and it didn’t take long for him to become a believer of the gospel that this is college football fanaticism at an entirely different level.
“I thought it was overrated,” O’Gara said with a laugh from his home in Orlando, Florida. “The SEC bias, ‘Can you believe how much people talk about this conference?’ Then I got into it and even South Carolina can be a 3-9 team and have 80,000 people going nuts. You don’t talk football year-round in the Big Ten like they do in the SEC. The entire conference is exponentially different.
“I came into this job saying let’s see what this is really about. They recruit at such a different level and the fandom is so unbelievably unique. It was remarkable to see the atmosphere at Auburn last year. The season is a disaster and they have a game with Texas A&M and the place is rocking. It meant so much to them with Cadillac Williams (alum as the interim coach).
“You see the passion that goes into it and how crazy it is. You see the passion up close for so many of the fan bases and all of them care so much. I thought I knew what passion looked like at the Big Ten and it’s at such a different level in the SEC.”
Fortunately for the fanatics at every SEC school, who will unabashedly express their belief O’Gara hates SEC Team A in favor of SEC Team B, he fuels their passion with the productivity to feed the beast with an endless stream of content via columns, articles, podcasts and guest spots with SEC media outlets. Getting a congratulatory text for himself and his wife Lauren on the birth of their first child Claire a couple of months ago from SEC bigfoot Paul Finebaum of ESPN is a sign you’ve made it big.
Sure enough, at the wild and crazy four-day SEC media days extravaganza in mid-July in Nashville, O’Gara did a guest appearance on Finebaum’s show.
“Paul is so unbelievably kind to me in ways he doesn’t have to be,” O’Gara said a few days before SEC media days. “It’s opened doors for me.”
O’Gara has discovered there is no shortage of doors to open with a 24/7, 365-days a year insatiable appetite for SEC football that will only become more voracious with the impending additions of Oklahoma and Texas.
Every Monday since 2019 he’s done a 15-minute spot on ESPN Arkansas’ “Hit That Line.” That’s every Monday during the year and not just football season. O’Gara joked he took off a few Mondays during his paternity leave.
“The good thing about it is I don’t feel I have to talk about just three or four teams,” O’Gara said. “When I first started I thought it would just be Alabama, Georgia, LSU and sprinkle in a little Tennessee, but it’s really not.
“With a lot of fan bases it’s insane how much they want to consume content during the slowest time of the year. These shows devote so much time to talking about this because there’s a need for it. The podcast always has interest and there are always some way you can go.”
So that means O’Gara better know what’s going on with the quarterback situation at Missouri or the recruiting classes at Kentucky and Mississippi State. He watches every single SEC game because he hosts a “Saturday Down South” podcast twice a week that contains four hours of content.
He covers about four or five games a season in-person so he’s worked hard to establish relationships with schools, coaches, players and sports information directors throughout the league.
“It’s entirely different from a newspaper,” O’Gara said. “I feel I can write about college football year-round and in the SEC everybody cares and cares about it year-round.”
O’Gara, who was a reserve catcher as a junior when BG advanced to the Class AA baseball Elite Eight in Joliet in 2007, originally dreamed of covering the Cubs for the Chicago Tribune. He aspired to be like longtime Tribune sportswriter and columnist David Haugh, who is a morning host on the Score, or former Sun-Times and Tribune columnist Steve Rosenbloom, whose son Brandon played youth baseball with O’Gara.
Once O’Gara got to Indiana he thought he wanted to cover college basketball. He covered one of the most storied college programs and his senior year included its return to prominence on Christian Watford’s famed shot to beat Kentucky in the 2011-12 season. Then he got a job with the Kearney Hub in central Nebraska and was involved in the coverage of the Cornhuskers for 2 ½ years.
“When I got to Nebraska I realized this college football thing was really awesome,” O’Gara said. “It’s a different beast with four times as many people in the stadium and how big of an event each game feels like.”
As he looked around at the next step in his career he found an opportunity in 2015 to go to Orlando and join Saturday Football, Inc., to start its Big Ten “Saturday Traditions” website to complement “Saturday Down South.” O’Gara’s wife (then fiancee) Lauren said it made more sense to go that direction rather than stay in a struggling newspaper industry.
It seemed like a perfect fit since O’Gara was a Big Ten guy. Then, just before the start of the 2017 season, the company told O’Gara it wanted to put him in a hybrid role where he spent 75 percent of his time covering the SEC. He knew it would ultimately grow and after the 2017 season he became the face of “Saturday Down South” and SEC coverage.
He even got his older brother Ryan, who also worked in newspapers, to write for “Saturday Traditions” for three years before he switched to a real estate career in SEC country in Lexington, Kentucky. There have been other opportunities for Connor O’Gara in a volatile industry but he feels he has the best of all worlds with “Saturday Down South.”
“Now I would love to cover college football for the rest of my life and getting to do so in the SEC is awesome,” he said. “It’s fantastic. My company has more stability and it’s not a bloated staff doing a lot of layoffs. It’s nice to be at a place where I get every opportunity that comes my way and have a platform. That’s all I wanted.”
That platform is never dull. O’Gara laughed about the scrutiny his coverage gets and how SEC fans seem to enjoy hating everyone else’s team more than liking their own. That’s why O’Gara has made a point to be as fair and balanced as possible to every team in the league. He recently had third-year Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea on a podcast.
And there is a big benefit to not having grown up in SEC country or holding a diploma from one of its schools.
“I say all the time I don’t have a dog in the fight,” O”Gara said. “I don’t have an SEC team so I’m gonna call it like I see it. It allows me to come off more neutral.”
O’Gara will soon kick into high gear for long but fun SEC Saturdays.
It starts with a run and breakfast. Then O’Gara turns on ESPN’s College Gameday before settling in to watch SEC and other college games from noon eastern until 1 a.m. He will do a column off one of the games (typically the 3:30 headliner), write a wrapup of all the other games and do some prep work until 3 a.m., for his Sunday podcast on about five hours of sleep.
And then it’s family time on Sunday.
“It’s been kind of a wild ride and I’m enjoying it,” O’Gara said. “To be able to immerse myself in an incredibly passionate sport with such passionate fans makes it wild. It’s kind of crazy and Saturdays are just a blur but I love it. There’s always something to talk about.”
Dugalic Gets Pro Shot
Former Illinois Tech and Maine West basketball standout Milos Dugalic’s dream of playing professionally has come true. Dugalic signed a professional contract to play in Serbia’s top basketball league, according to Illinois Tech Sports Information Director Eric Willuweit.
The 6-foot-9 Dugalic averaged 17.2 points and 12.4 rebounds a game and had 18 double-doubles last season. Dugalic also won the fan voting to appear in the Division III All-Star Game.
“I’ve talked to some agents and they think I could have a very good career overseas,” Dugalic said in our March interview.
“He’s a very unique player with his size and versatility and he has dual citizenship here and in Serbia so that makes him an interesting prospect in Europe,” Illinois Tech coach T.J. Gray said in March.
Historic Ninth Legion State Title for Barrington
Barrington became the first team in Illinois American Legion baseball history to win nine state titles Saturday afternoon when it beat Danville 6-0 in Galesburg. Danny Hoffman needed only 92 pitches (59 strikes) to throw a 3-hitter with 8 strikeouts and 1 walk.
Barrington (19-7) broke a tie for eight Illinois Legion crowns with Arlington and Belleville as it advanced to the Great Lakes Regional in Midland, Mich., where it will open play at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday against the host post. Barrington had only 4 hits in the state championship, but one of them was Payton Soske’s second homer in as many games as it took advantage of 9 walks and 3 Danville errors.
The toughest game for Barrington in its 4-0 state tourney was the opener against host Galesburg as it won 9-8 on Patrick Podlesnik’s RBI single with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning. It won its second game 10-0 over Rock Island in 5 innings as Jackson Kanak threw a no-hitter with 4 strikeouts and 1 walk and Dylan Provenzano had 2 doubles and 2 RBI.
Barrington advanced to the championship game with a 17-8 win over Wheaton as Soske went 3-for-4 with 3 RBI and a homer, Podlesnik went 4-for-5 and Will Nazha had 3 hits in a 17-hit attack. Nick Lacson went the distance for the victory.
Barrington’s last state Legion tourney was in 2014 and it won its 1991 crown in Galesburg. Danville also advanced to the eight-team, double-elimination Great Lakes Regional that runs through Aug. 6. The winner advances to the American Legion World Series on Aug. 10-15 in Shelby, N.C.
Triton Men’s Basketball Turns to Burns
Libertyville graduate Brian Burns has been instrumental in the success of Triton College men’s basketball in the last five years under head coaches John Clancy and Steve Christiansen. Clancy’s departure in June to become an assistant coach at Western Illinois opened the door for Burns to be promoted to the top spot last week.
Triton has gone 128-28 since Burns joined the program as it made the transition to NJCAA Division I competition in 2018-19. The team went 22-7 this season and 30-6 with a trip to the NJCAA Final Four in 2021-22 in Hutchinson, Kan., under Clancy, who starred at Buffalo Grove.
"I would like to thank Triton College President Mary-Rita Moore, Associate Vice President of Athletics Garrick Abezetian and President of Business Services Sean Sullivan for their confidence in me," Burns said in a release on the Triton athletics website. "I am excited to continue to build off the success we've had at Triton between what Steve (Christiansen) did here for nearly 20 years and what (John) Clancy did the past two seasons. I want to keep that level of excellence and put my own spin on the program in the process."
Burns doesn’t foresee many changes in how the Triton program will look under his direction.
"We want to find guys who buy into our culture and who can thrive off that," Burns said. "We'll continue to get players that are under the radar like we've had in the past who are successful. It will be a similar style of play and similar style of players you'll see on the floor."
Triton also won the NJCAA Division II national title under Christiansen in 2018. The program’s only losing season since 2000 came in 2006-07.
"It starts with us trying to win the Region 4 championship every year," Burns said. "We have not been able to win a district title in my 5 years here as an assistant and those are the two main things we need to do to get to 'Hutch.'
"The goal for every junior college Division I team is to get to 'Hutch' and then once you are there, the next step is to win 'Hutch.' Our goal is to make it to the national tournament more years than not."
Burns has helped recruit and coach more than 20 NCAA Division I signees at Triton . He worked with star Alondes Williams, who was named ACC Player of the Year in 2021-22 at Wake Forest and is currently a member of the Brooklyn Nets. Burns also spent seven years with the Kessel Heat AAU program run by retired Mundelein coach Dennis Kessel.
Four More MSL Standouts on Ohio Valley 75th Anniversary Teams
The Ohio Valley Conference completed its 75th anniversary teams for all sports. The Mid-Suburban League had three baseball players selected in Austin Peay shortstop Chuck Abbott (Schaumburg), Eastern Illinois first baseman Matt Marzec (Palatine) and outfielder Pete Pirman (Palatine) and one track and field athlete in EIU pole vaulter Mick Viken (Rolling Meadows).
Abbott had a 42-game hitting streak his senior year at Austin Peay and was chosen in the second round of the 1996 Major League Baseball draft by the Angels. Marzec and Pirman were OVC players of the year in 1998 and 2002 respectively.
Viken received All-American honors in the pole vault three times for outdoor competition and once for indoors. His vault of 18-feet, ½-inch outdoors ranks second in Eastern Illinois history and his 17-10½ indoors is tied for first. He won the Class 3A state pole vault title at Meadows in 2009.
Eastern Illinois’ Jimmy Garoppolo (Meadows) in football and Rick Kaye (Conant) in basketball made the previously announced OVC 75th teams in those sports.
Goranson Takes Over Morton College Softball
Jim Goranson Sr., who went to St. Viator and played football at Harper College, has been a prominent figure in area softball. It was announced this week that Goranson will take over the program at Morton College in Cicero. (Thanks to Dion Martorano of the Des Plaines Journal & Topics for the heads up).
“I’m really excited about this opportunity,” Goranson said on Twitter. "We look forward to competing at not just the local level, but on a national level as well.”
Goranson runs the Illinois Bash travel softball program. He was a head coach at Regina Dominican in Wilmette and a head coach and assistant at Trinity in River Forest. He also coached for a year at Oakton College.
The list of Goranson’s U-18 Bash players to move on to Division I programs includes his daughter Dani (Michigan State), Leigh Farina (Illinois), Katie Luetkens (Michigan) and Kaitlyn Mullarkey (Iowa). Morton finished 19-38 overall this spring for its most wins since 1999 and went 7-3 in the Skyway Conference.
Goranson’s daughters Dani and Nikki were Daily Herald All-Area softball captains for Elk Grove and coach Ken Grams in 2012 and 2009 respectively. His son Jim Jr., played football at Illinois and Georgetown, his daughter Melanie competed in track and field at Western and Illinois and his son Mike was a Marine who won a Purple Heart while serving in Iraq.
Illinois Hoop Legend George Wilson Passes Away
George Wilson, who was a part of Chicago basketball history at every level, passed away Saturday at age 81. The 6-foot-8 Wilson was selected as one of the “100 Legends of the IHSA Boys Basketball Tournament” for leading Marshall to the Chicago Public League’s first two state titles in 1958 and 1960 and was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1973.
Wilson was a three-time high school All-America selection who originally signed with Illinois but decided to go to the University of Cincinnati and starred for its NCAA championship teams of 1961 and 1962. Wilson and the Bearcats nearly made it three in a row but that bid was spoiled by the big second-half and overtime comeback of his hometown Loyola team in 1963.
Wilson played on the 1964 Olympic Gold Medal team before starting a 7-year NBA career that included 43 games with the expansion Chicago Bulls in 1966-67. He also played for the Cincinnati Royals, Seattle Supersonics, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Buffalo Braves.
Spin Salario, who coached Wilson at Marshall, lived in Wheeling for years before his death in 2012.