By RON HIGGINS
Written for the LSWA
The most forthright advice a college-aged John James “J.J.” Marshall received about pursuing a sportswriting career came from a crusty veteran scribe.
“The hours are terrible, you’ll never make any money,” Bill McIntyre, a transplanted Massachusettsan who was a staple on the Shreveport Times staff for 44 years, told Marshall.
That’s undeniably true. Forget the timecard. Sportswriters work until the job gets done. Most of them wouldn’t know how to act if they came close to earning six figures annually.
Shreveport native Marshall eventually ignored McIntyre’s warning. Not just once, but to the third power.
There’s the writer J.J., whose style flows so smoothly that he makes a 3,000-word story seem like a short read.
“He’s just a natural,” vows Nico Van Thyn, a former Shreveport Journal sports editor.
There’s the radio host J.J., who teams with older brother Ben for “SportsTalk with J.J. and Bonzai Ben,” the longest-running radio sports talk in Louisiana.
“Their listeners always know what to expect, but somehow always receive the unexpected with J.J. and Ben,” says Shreveport native Tim Brando, a nationally known college football and basketball play-by-play voice on various networks for more than four decades. “That’s what we call great radio.”
There’s the teacher J.J., who has been the media director since 1992 at his high school alma mater Loyola College Prep (formerly Shreveport Jesuit).
“His mindset for projects and the way he envisioned things really resonated with me,” says Will Rabun, a Loyola Class of 2022 graduate who recently accepted a job in Tyler, Texas, after graduating in May with a University of Arkansas journalism degree. “J.J. is not only the best teacher I’ve ever had, but also the best role model.”
For most of his 46-year career, all spent where he was born and raised, the 66-year-old Marshall balanced handling at least two of his journalistic ventures.
But as he reached Social Security age, he now spins three award-winning plates as a must-read writer, an entertaining sports radio talk show host and a nurturing educator.
Such a triple-threat talent is recognized by his colleagues, who voted Marshall as one of two winners of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame 2026 Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism. He’ll join the rest of the 12-member Class of ’26 honorees at the annual LSHOF induction ceremony in the Natchitoches Event Center.
For participation information on the Induction Celebration June 25-27, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-4255.
There’s no secret why Marshall gets better with age.
“If I didn’t have the vehicle to tell stories, that’s when you might as well just put me in the old folks’ home, because I’ll have nothing else to do,” he says.
***
Sportswriting chose Marshall long before he finally reciprocated the love and started collecting awards for the last 4½ decades.
It stretches from him and long-time friend Teddy Allen co-writing the 1987 Associated Press Sports Editors national best feature winner to capturing the Louisiana Sports Writers Association 2023 Story of the Year.
“J.J. is more competitive than most of us,” says Allen, a 2022 DSA Hall of Fame winner who worked for several Louisiana newspapers starting with the Journal. “He’s fun and entertaining on the radio. But when he writes, he’s serious business.
“He’s like ‘Nobody is going to tell this story better than I can.’ Sometimes I think he writes in full uniform, a cup, eye black and the whole deal.”
It began with elementary school-aged J.J., perusing the newspaper sports agate page.
“I really was more of an information junkie,” Marshall recalls. “I didn’t have any great prose, but writing sports seemed like a natural thing for me.”
Marshall was already into his high school playing career in football and baseball when then-Shreveport Times prep editor Van Thyn assigned the high school sophomore to cover an area high school basketball tournament for three nights.
It resulted in his first-ever byline.
“I have no memory whatsoever of who scored points, and the lede was probably crappy,” Marshall says, “But the next day when I saw my name by John Marshall at the top of the story, it was one of the greatest thrills in my life. I thought, `This is something I need to do the rest of my life.’”
Yet after he quarterbacked then-Jesuit to a 14-0 record and a state championship in 1976 in which he threw a game-winning screen pass for the game’s only TD, he enrolled at Louisiana Tech as an accounting major.
Why? Because of McIntyre’s aforementioned warning shot.
Marshall wandered through his first year in college, staring at his accounting professors as if they were speaking in tongues.
It all came to a head at the start of the first quarter of Marshall’s sophomore year. Or more specifically, Oct. 2, 1978.
“Same day Bucky Dent hit a game-winning homer for the Yankees in the East Division title playoff over the Red Sox,” Marshall remembers in typical sportswriter fashion, associating a historical sports moment with a personal life event.
It’s also the day Marshall’s quantitative analysis teacher handed him a test.
“I looked at page one, and I looked at page two, and then page three,” Marshall says. “After about five minutes, I sat there and realized two things.
“One, if I have to pass this test to pass this class, there is no way, no matter how much I apply myself, that I’ll pass this class. The second thing was, and more importantly, the Yankees and Red Sox were in that playoff game that I had to see.”
Marshall calmly strolled to the front of the classroom. Handed the teacher his blank test. And kept walking.
“Mr. Marshall. . .” the teacher sputtered, hoping for an explanation of his student’s immediate surrender.
“I’m good, I’m out, we’ll see you later,” Marshall said without a backwards glance.
He made a beeline across the Tech campus quadrangle.
“I walked into Keeny Hall, the journalism building,” Marshall recalls with a laugh, “and said, `How do I sign up?’”
***
The late Wiley Hilburn, chairman of Tech’s journalism department for 41 years until his retirement, became Marshall’s valued mentor.
“He took an interest in me like nobody ever really had,” Marshall says fondly. “For some reason, he recognized that I might have something.”
It was Hilburn who finagled a Shreveport Journal internship for Marshall in the summer of 1979.
He was surrounded by veteran journalists whose stories were written with perspective, personality, enthusiasm and creativity.
“These guys weren’t writing AP-style stories,” Marshall says. “A little light went off for me.”
In search of developing a writing style, Marshall began reading a variety of sportswriters. None resonated more than Gary Smith, often considered the greatest magazine writer in American history during his 30-year career for Inside Sports and Sports Illustrated.
Smith’s exquisite long-form style was once described as “an excavation of a sports figure’s soul.”
“I wanted to write like this guy,” Marshall emphasizes. “He didn’t use big words. He just told great stories.”
Marshall channeled some of Smith’s literary panache as he graduated from Louisiana Tech in May 1981. Two days after graduation, he was covering the Class AA minor league Shreveport Captains as a full-time writer for the Journal.
It was obvious that Marshall quickly found a writing style tapping into just about every human emotion.
“You couldn’t teach the creativity J.J. had,” Van Thyn says.
After Van Thyn left for another job, Marshall served as the Journal’s executive sports editor from 1988 until it ceased publication in 1991. He labored for the Gannett-owned Times for two years and wasn’t particularly thrilled with the company’s philosophy that every story should be a quick 12-inch read.
Ultimately, he didn’t hesitate when he had a chance to bet on himself.
***
It all started at 151 Leo Street in the Broadmoor subdivision of Shreveport, where a former World War II prisoner of war and his wife raised sons Ben and John.
The boys’ world in the 1960s and ‘70s was filled with backyard whiffle ball, driveway basketball and firing footballs at each other. They would discuss sports from sunrise until lights out.
Who knew two brothers, forever passionately debating which team is better or what player is overpaid, would turn it into a radio sports talk show for 34 years at several different Shreveport stations?
“We’ve been fired four or five times,” chuckles Ben, 71, who’s a retired attorney. “We’re like roaches. You can’t kill us.”
In May 1993, when Ben was subbing on J.J.’s show while he was on assignment, he used his airtime to verbally blast the Times for publishing what he believed was a substandard product.
The next day, Times editor Judy Christie confronted J.J. When he confirmed he had a radio show that solicited advertisers, Christie gave him an ultimatum.
Choose one profession. Resign from the Times or quit the radio show.
“I came out of her office, typed my resignation effective immediately, and handed it to her,” Marshall wistfully says. “I was out the door thinking `I guess I’ll make this radio thing work.’”
The show concept has never changed. It’s just two brothers throwing verbal jabs with occasional uppercuts mixed with laughter.
“There’s John James, the credible journalist amassing four decades and there’s Ben, a one-man filibuster,” Brando says. “It’s never taken long realizing the two grew up here, love it, but always address our community foibles when it comes to sports issues. It’s refreshing.”
Marshall’s radio career has coincided with his job as Loyola Prep’s media director/instructor. It’s where he’s learned a new medium of storytelling.
“I get the creative kids,” Marshall says. “That’s led me into producing several documentaries involving Loyola. I’m a very much an amateur documentarian.”
Marshall had the portfolio to work for the most highly regarded newspapers or sports magazines in America during his career. But marriage and raising a family with three kids – daughter Jordan and sons J.J. Jr. and Matthew – took precedent.
Ben points out his younger brother “has lived in the same zip code (71105) all his life.”
Never leaving the Port City has been just fine with J.J.
“God leads you to grow where you’re planted,” he believes. “I’ve been planted here the whole time. The stories I know about are here. I can’t really imagine doing it anywhere else.”
