Hall of Fame: Jim Carnett (Orange Coast College)

Richard Dunn

Jim Carnett isn’t listed among Orange Coast College’s all-time

leading rushers or home run hitters, but the fact that anybody is listed

at all is because of him.

Considered a pioneer among California Community College Sports

Information Directors, Carnett, whose reach now goes far beyond the

playing fields, is known in his circles as having mastered the art of

record keeping, statistical research and media relations.

In 1971, community college SIDs were mostly ex-jocks who barely knew

home row on a typewriter, but could speak the coaches’ language.

Carnett reinvented the position, not just in digging up statistics and

information never before researched, but incorporating media savvy

tactics to generate publicity for the OCC athletes and coaches.

Carnett’s in-depth profiles often grazed the sports pages of Orange

County newspapers and helped otherwise anonymous athletes gain some

exposure, including a baseball pitcher and late friend, Dan Quisenberry.

Years later, when Quisenberry was inducted into the OCC Hall of Fame,

he thanked Carnett for the story and told him it was the best piece ever

written on him. Carnett was stunned.

“(Quisenberry) told me he still had it and remembered it,” said

Carnett, also an OCC graduate, who has embodied everything a community

college could wish for since beginning in 1971 as a full-time campus

publicist and SID.

Carnett dropped sports from his OCC responsibilities in 1986, when the

college president, Dr. Donald Bronsard, wanted more marketing,

recruitment and outreach programs from the communications department,

which had a staff of three when Carnett started 30 years ago and now has

tripled in size with him at the helm.

“It wasn’t by choice that I got out of sports (in ‘86),” Carnett said.

“That was probably the part of the job I loved most. The other duties I

loved, too, but sports was the frosting on the cake.”

Orange Coast’s living, breathing history book, Carnett is “Mr. OCC,” a

moniker he wears with pride.

“They’ve called me that a few times,” said Carnett, who will receive

the distinguished D. Richard Petrizzo Career Service Award at a banquet

Sunday in Denver from the National Council for Marketing and Public

Relations.

Prior to his administrative promotions, Carnett was a witness at OCC’s

all-time greatest conquests, including football national championships in

1963 and ‘75, basketball’s state title in 1979 and baseball’s state

championship in 1980.

Carnett is a self-described frustrated jock from Costa Mesa High,

where he became sports editor of the school newspaper and public-address

announcer at home football games across the street at OCC’s LeBard

Stadium.

Part of Mesa’s first graduating class in ‘62, Carnett was a sports

stringer (or part-timer) at age 15 for the Globe-Herald and Pilot, a

Daily Pilot precursor, under sports editor Bill Donor. His mother would

drive him to high school games, then later wait in the newspaper parking

lot while the budding journalist cranked out a story.

As an OCC student in 1963, Carnett rode the rooter bus to Pasadena’s

Rose Bowl for the Pirates’ Junior Rose Bowl game against Northeastern

Oklahoma, won by OCC, 21-0.

Back then, there was so much community spirit that a parade was held

earlier in the day for the football team in Costa Mesa near what is now

Triangle Square.

Carnett joined the U.S. Army in 1964 and remained in the service until

‘67, serving mostly as sports editor for two Korean-based newspapers.

Carnett returned to OCC as a student, went through a first marriage

and graduated from Cal State Fullerton in early 1971, before returning to

Orange Coast as an employee. He has won numerous honors in his career and

produced statewide award-winning football, basketball and baseball media

guides for 15 years.

“We didn’t have two football records when I got here,” said Carnett,

who originally wanted to work in professional sports PR, but realized it

wasn’t as glamorous as he thought, and had “always loved being on a

college campus.”

When the campus PR position opened at OCC in August 1971, Carnett

landed a dream job at his alma mater and has never left.

Carnett lists the ’79 state championship in basketball under Coach

Tandy Gillis as his No. 1 OCC sports highlight, because few expected the

Pirates to win that season.

Football is Carnett’s favorite sport, but the undefeated ‘75national

championship football team destroyed every opponent and was never

challenged. Even in the Avocado Bowl, Coach Dick Tucker pulled his

starters in the second half of OCC’s 38-14 win over Rio Hondo, in which

OCC led at halftime, 31-6.

Carnett also loved watching former OCC baseball coach Mike Mayne turn

the program around, going from last place to first, including the 1980

state championship and five South Coast Conference titles in seven years.

Carnett, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

lives in Costa Mesa with his wife, Hedy. He has three daughters, a

deceased son and a grandson, 1 1/2-year-old Ethan. “He’s the athlete his

grandfather never was,” Carnett said.