In shock move, World Surf League longboard commissioner Devon Howard resigns post; speculation runs wild amidst heartbroken community and hawk-eyed pundits as to true reason!

Howard's End.

It is being reported in Log Rap that Devon Howard, the debonaire longer board surfer and commissioner of the all the way longboard World Surf League tour, has shocked the world by resigning his post forthwith, the ostensible reason being that the tour “is in a great place right now” and “the job has been completed.”

Now, anyone who is remotely aware of Howard knows that he is an old-school sort beyond the way he rides a surfboard. He prizes hard work, has a solid overall ethic, speaks when necessary, keeps quiet otherwise. It would be unbecoming for him to slander his former employer but also seems odd that he would resign as the new year, with just announced stops at Manly (just days away), Huntington and Malibu, gets underway.

So why?

It is incumbent upon us to wildly speculate.

You will recall, months ago, when the rumor floated that the WSL was going to slash the longboard tour from three events to one. Sitting champion Joel Tudor caught wind and went on a wild tear which ended with the announcement that there would be three events, Manly, Huntington, Malibu and that Tudor would be indefinitely suspended.

Now, if the WSL really had wanted to shred the longboard tour and were embarrassed by it, as evidenced by CEO Erik Logan’s dismissive eye-rolling when discussing amongst partners, why didn’t it while telling all the longboarders to go kick rocks? Forcing them to surf Manly and Huntington seems far worse punishment.

Might that decision have been made in a strange Santa Monica vacuum featuring the aforementioned Logan and the increasingly dominant Jessi Miley-Dyer then shoved down Howard’s throat while he was ordered to spin it as “brilliant” to the longboarding community?

Could more “truths” have been poured down that same throat in order to spew upon his charges?

Hmmmm.

Howard’s resignation becomes even weightier when remembering that World Surf League shortboard commissioner Pat O’Connell took the same route last year, rendering his abdication and quietly taking the lead at the John John Florence fronted Florence x Marine.

The two are, without a shadow of a doubt, surfers’ surfers having come up in the old ways. They have been around the game since birth, know all the facets and love beyond what is healthy. For both to ask out of their World Surf League postings is…. suspect.

David Lee Scales and I, in any case, wildly speculate further about Howard’s end as well as the to the reasons Kelly Slater is a longtime boyfriend. Listen now.