The story of ‘The Road to The Final Four’ and ‘Selection Sunday’; Tying up loose ends

For the past few weeks I’ve been saying and writing that those of us who love college basketball had better savor this coming Selection Sunday because it is likely to be the last one with the kind of suspense we have become accustomed to on the second weekend in March. When the NCAA expands the tournament—which I think is almost inevitable—teams like Illinois, Seton Hall, South Florida, Georgia Tech, Arizona State, Florida, Wichita State and Northeastern—all of whom are on the bubble this year, will already have locked up bids.

It’s worth nothing that none of those teams has done anything particularly special this season. They’re all just solid teams that may (or may not) get squeezed out by the numbers game. That’s part of what the process so much fun: who gets in and who gets left out and the fact that each of those teams has SOME claim to a spot in the field. That will be gone with a 96 team field we all know that. The NCAA knows that and doesn’t care as long as the money offered by ESPN or (less likely) CBS-Turner is so out-of-whack that they can roll around in it for years to come.

In writing about how much I have come to enjoy Selection Sunday I would be remiss if I didn’t remind people who don’t know how it came about. Most basketball fans—especially younger ones—just take the day for granted, sort of like Christmas. There’s always been Selection Sunday, right grandpa? Well no, there hasn’t been.

It started in 1982, the year that CBS took over the rights to the NCAA Tournament from NBC.

The role that NBC and the syndicate TVS (run by Eddie Einhorn) played in building the NCAA Tournament into a national event can’t be underplayed. Remember, as recently as the historic 1966 Texas Western-Kentucky championship game, The Final Four wasn’t on network TV. It was syndicated—and not picked up in many cities—by TVS. It wasn’t until 1969 when TVS entered into a deal with NBC that The Final Four—in Lew Alcindor’s senior season at UCLA—was televised nationally. Even then the semifinals were regionalized: The East-Mideast regional was shown in the eastern half of the country, the Midwest-West regional in the west. That was the first year the semifinals were moved from Friday to Thursday because the championship game was moved to Saturday afternoon since it clearly wasn’t worthy of prime time.

The progression from that point forward was rapid: NBC took the championship game to prime time in 1973, making The Final Four a Saturday-Monday night affair and Bill Walton made it work by shooting 21-of-22 for UCLA against Memphis State in the championship game. Two years later the tournament expanded from 25 teams to 32 and conference runners-up were allowed to participate. A year later Indiana and Michigan played in an all-Big Ten final as the post-John Wooden era began.

Then came Magic and Bird in 1979 and more expansion: first to 40 teams, then 48 and 53 and finally 64 in 1985. Note that the number moved up slowly, the committee wanting to be sure it wasn’t going too fast. The move to 64, pushed hard by Wayne Duke and Vic Bubas had as much to do with wanting to eliminate byes and have everyone play the same number of games as anything else. Obviously with a 96 team field that will go out the window.

Al McGuire won the national championship with Marquette in his final game as a coach in 1977. The next year, he joined Billy Packer and Dick Enberg to form basketball’s first three man booth and they became cult figures in college basketball. When CBS wrested the rights from NBC by offering $48 million for three years—triple what NBC had paid—there was a good deal of talk that an era had ended (which it had) and that college hoops would never be the same.

CBS needed to do something to establish itself as THE network of college basketball, especially since NBC still did regular season games with Enberg and McGuire and there were those who still thought IT was the network of college basketball.

After failing in an attempt to hire Bob Knight (yes, Bob Knight) as its No. 1 color commentator, CBS hired Packer, both for that job as a consultant on scheduling (it had no college hoops contacts at the time) and on the package in general. Packer and Len DeLuca, then a CBS producer who now works at ESPN, sat down to think of ways to connect CBS to college basketball.

They came up with two ideas: Tie together the entire season with some kind of theme: The Road to The Final Four. Every game would be part of that road and every week would lead to—in the case of 1982—New Orleans. Then, one of them said something like this: “Why don’t we announce the brackets on TV?”

There is still some dispute between the two of them as to who actually thought of the idea first but together they came up with it. Until then, coaches would sit in their offices on Selection Sunday—there were no games played that day, the ACC didn’t move its championship game to Sunday until 1982—and wait for a phone call from the NCAA office in Kansas City, which is where the selection committee would meet.

Packer and DeLuca changed that. No one got a phone call anymore. Instead, they were told to watch their TV on Sunday afternoon to find out if they were in and if so where they were going. From there, the whole thing just grew and grew until it reached the point where it has become a national holiday for college hoops fans.

So, as we get ready for what might be the last truly meaningful Selection Sunday of our lives, let’s pause for a moment and pay tribute to Packer and DeLuca. It probably seemed like a minor thing to them all those years ago but it turned out to be a truly big deal.

*********

I had a nice talk with Scott Van Pelt yesterday. He called after reading yesterday’s blog, understandably a little upset, but very willing to discuss both his point of view and mine on the subject. He admitted that he had “wrestled,” with the issue for years. “I grew up a Maryland fan, I went to Maryland and I’m very passionate about my school,” he said.

All of which is absolutely fine as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I can honestly say I wish I felt a little more passion for my school. He also asked if I was wrong when I directed a profanity at the officials five years ago during a Navy-Duke football game. Of course I was wrong. That’s why I apologized on the air right away, offered to resign and, as I’ve said before, kind of grin and bear it when people bring it up now. I screwed up; I pay the price.

That said, he and I agreed that there’s a difference between one brief outburst and repeatedly getting up and screaming in public even if you aren’t on duty at the time. I would add in response to some of yesterday’s posts that I readily admit I have a bias towards Navy (and Army) but during broadcasts I probably defend the officials on calls that go against Navy about as often as I criticize them. Ask the Navy fans who listen regularly. That said, I withdraw nothing I’ve ever said about Perry Hudspeth.

One more point on bias: OF COURSE I’m biased. Everyone is for one reason or another. Do I like Mike Krzyzewski (or Gary Williams or Roy Williams or Paul Goydos or Ernie Els to name a few) more than Tiger Woods? Yes. I think they’re nicer people, having nothing to do with what they do away from their professions. That doesn’t mean I have an axe to grind with Woods, I just disagree with his behavior often—and did so long before November 27th—while always admiring his brilliance on the golf course.

Scott said he had talked to Jay Bilas, who I mentioned because I believed then (and believe now) that if he or I were to sit behind a Duke bench and yell at officials we’d be crucified. He said Bilas told him he thought what Scott did was okay—something about believing in the “duality of man,”—spoken like a true lawyer, which is fine. As I said, TV guys do commercials and the standards ARE different than for print guys.

In the end, I think we agreed to (sort of) disagree. I think Scott understands WHY I’d criticize him and I understand WHY he feels the way he feels. And we’re both proud members of FOG—Friends of Gary (me, unofficially of course). I give him credit for making the call and handling the situation, in my opinion, very maturely.

********

Finally to my friends from Hoya Paranoia Inc: Yes, you are RIGHT I was WRONG. Georgetown made The Big East Tournament in 2004. My memory is good but it isn’t perfect. I looked it up last night after I hosted the radio show on WFAN. Georgetown was 4-12 in the league and tied for 12th with Miami in a 14-team league and made the tournament (losing first round) on a tiebreaker. Craig Esherick was fired soon thereafter and replaced by John Thompson III.

Here’s the irony of the whole thing: I made the comment about the 2004 team on the air last night in the context of complimenting Thompson for coming in and rebuilding the program and going to The Final Four three years later. I wasn’t ripping Georgetown or, as one poster put it, “lying,” about the Hoyas. I was complimenting them and had a memory block. Like I said, my memory is good, but it isn’t perfect—especially these days.

So, I apologize for my mistake. I would also urge all of you to calm down for crying out loud. Will I continue to criticize Georgetown for not playing in the BB+T Classic? You bet. You want to say I’m wrong to do that, have at it. We’ll agree to disagree. I also will continue to say that John Thompson the elder killed local rivalries in DC in part because HE says he did it and in part because the evidence is right there for anyone to see.

For the record: I get along fine with JT the elder these days even if we disagree on the issue of local rivalries and the BB+T. Neither of us screams or yells or calls the other a “liar,” when we talk about those subjects. I’ve known JT III since he played at Princeton and think he is a terrific coach even though I wish he would just tell his dad, “I know you didn’t play in the BB+T but I think it is the right thing to do so I’m doing it.”

My guess is his dad would get over it. You Hoya fans need to do the same.

Enberg, one of the best and a class act, moves on to do Padres games

Amidst all the continuing speculation about what Tiger Woods’ fall from grace will mean to his golf, his endorsements and his legacy, there was a note in the paper this morning about Dick Enberg signing on to do 110 to 120 games on TV for The San Diego Padres this coming season.

I’m really not sure how to take that news. I sincerely hope Dick is happy about it because he’s one of the absolute good guys that I’ve met through the years. What I know is good is that he lives in the San Diego area so this will cut down his travel considerably and I can remember talking to him years ago about constant travel being the one downside of what we all do. Of course back then he had young children so it was tougher, I would guess, than now.

He doesn’t look it on or off camera but Dick is going to be 75 next month.

The first time I laid eyes on Dick Enberg was in December of 1968 when I was a kid trolling the stands at Madison Square Garden for autographs during the Holiday Festival. He was sitting with the UCLA players watching the third place game and, after I’d gotten Lew Alcindor, Curtis Rowe and Sidney Wicks to sign, someone told me that the guy in the front row did the play-by-play for UCLA. Since Marv Albert was a hero of mine I figured it was worth asking him to sign too. I still remember that he asked my name and wrote, “To John,” before signing his name.

I became more familiar with him when I watched the old TV show, “Sports Challenge,” in the 70s, a show which seemed to somehow get every big sports star you might imagine to come on to answer—or in most cases not answer—sports trivia questions. I liked watching for that reason but also because I knew the answer to most of the questions. One thing I DIDN’T like about the show was that when they showed replays of historic moments in sports, Enberg had re-voiced them—no doubt because the technology made it difficult to get a lot of the actual calls. It was nothing against Enberg, it just didn’t feel real to me.

I first really got to know Dick covering college basketball for The Post during the golden era of Enberg, Packer and McGuire on NBC. There was really nothing like watching a game with Packer and McGuire screaming at one another and Enberg playing traffic cop—which he did brilliantly. Back in those days the three of them did a Sunday game-of-the-week and their PR guy, Tom Merritt, would frequently invite writers who were covering the game out to dinner on Saturday night. That was how I first got to know both Al and Dick (I already knew Packer from covering the ACC).

Al was, of course, the star—at dinner and on-the-air—but there was a warmth to Enberg that was, at least to me, clearly genuine. He often joked that he always knew what his future was because Al was seven years older than he was and would always tell him what was in store for him. Whenever Al would crack up a room with a story he would turn to Enberg and say, “Still got it Dixie.”

The break-up of that trio when CBS got the NCAA broadcasting rights prior to the 1982 tournament is still one of the bigger disappointments of my life. Enberg and McGuire stayed together to do regular season games on NBC but Packer moved to CBS. They were briefly re-united in the 90s when all of them landed at CBS.

I got to know Enberg better covering tennis since Bud Collins took me under his wing and often brought me along to various NBC-related events. One of my more vivid memories had nothing to do with NBC: Bud and I and Bob Basche, who worked with Bud at NBC forever, went out for a lengthy dinner in Paris one night and ended up back at the bar at the Hotel Crillon—where NBC stayed in those days—drinking something called Armanjac—not sure if I can spell it and I sure as hell couldn’t drink it. We were all on another planet when Enberg made the mistake of walking past the entrance to the bar, heading to bed with his wife Barbara.

“Monsieur Enberg!” Bud screamed in a bad French accent. “Monsieur Enberg!” He got up and chased Enberg down the hall, demanding he come have a drink with us. Enberg knew—KNEW—he shouldn’t go anywhere near us but he bravely walked into the bar, had a drink AND bought. The fact that I remember any of this is a miracle.

Dick and I were also witness one night to one of Al’s greatest calls. Duke and Arizona had played a game in the Meadowlands in 1989—a showcase for player-of-the-year candidates Danny Ferry and Sean Elliott. Duke was down two in the final seconds when Christian Laettner—who was a freshman—got loose, drove to the basket and got fouled with no time on the clock.

Everyone cleared the floor while the entire crowd—it was a sellout that included Richard Nixon—stood to watch Laettner. He missed. Game over. As soon as the shot rolled off the rim, Mike Krzyzewski raced onto the court, grabbed Laettner and pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t think for one second you lost that game for us,” he said. “You gave us a chance to win.”

That night, Dick, Al and I went to dinner in New York. “I’m gonna tell you something,” Al said. “I’ve seen a lotta things in basketball. What K did right there (he never tried to pronounce his name on or off the air) was one of the best coaching moves I’ve ever seen. I guarantee you—I mean guarantee you—that kid will never miss a big shot the rest of his career.”

If you follow college basketball, you know the rest.

Watching Dick the last few years has been a bit melancholy for me. CBS has treated him well and he was still their number one play-by-play man on tennis but he was reduced to small roles at The Final Four and The Masters (he’d be the first to tell you golf was never his strength) and fell behind Jim Nantz in the football pecking order.

I felt worse for him during the U.S. Open awards ceremony this past September. When Juan Martin del Potro asked if he could say a few words to the crowd in Spanish, someone in the truck was CLEARLY screaming in Dick’s ear something like, “no, no time, get to the corporate sponsors.”

Even at my level of doing TV I know what it’s like when someone is yelling in your ear, sometimes telling you to stop in mid-sentence because, “Pete has Coach so-and-so.” Or when you’re in the middle of telling a story about someone (something Dick always did superbly) and the producer says, “we’ve got a replay of the last foul,”-and throws it on the screen forcing you to break off in mid-sentence and say, “yeah, that’s a foul.”

This was worse. Del Potro had just won the U.S. Open and was very sweetly asking if he could say a few words to the Spanish fans who had cheered him on and some dope in a truck (I suspect I know who it was) is telling the great Dick Enberg to flack for a car rather than give the kid 60 seconds.

Awkwardly Dick said, “Sorry, no time,” and began doing the car schpiel. To Del Potro’s credit he listened and then asked again if he could speak in Spanish. “Okay,” Dick said. “Very quickly.”

Oy. It came off badly. Dick was SO caught in the middle there I really felt for him. CBS later “defended,” him saying it had contractual obligations to mention the sponsors. Fine. The broadcast had already gone past 7 o’clock on a Monday, the producer or director should have let Del Potro have his 60 seconds. What CBS should have said was, “there was a bad call made in the truck that made Dick look bad.”

Now Enberg is leaving CBS—at least for college hoops and the NFL. My bet is he’ll end up not doing tennis even though that possibility was left open. I know he loves baseball so I hope this new gig goes well for him. I’m just sorry I won’t see him on the road—or on CBS—anymore. At his best, he was the best. And he was—and is—always a class act.

---------------------------

One comment from yesterday’s comments: Gordon, a regular poster, made the point that Bill Clinton was not impeached because of his post-Monica Lewinsky attitude but because he lied under oath. Of course that was technically the reason for his impeachment but my point was Congress never would have had the nerve to do it had it not sensed that the public was very angry with Clinton about his approach to the whole mess. It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to the Tiger Woods, “I was wrong but the media is (always) more wrong,” apology. Time will tell.

A Night of Channel Surfing Leads to Good College Basketball Game

Last night was what my son Danny describes as, “a big night for my dad.”

I cooked dinner after picking him up from school, started a fire in the fireplace in my office (the main reason I bought this house) and sat down in front of the TV.

On nights like this—which are too rare as far as I’m concerned—it doesn’t bother me that much if there isn’t anything to watch on TV. I basically gave up on watching network shows years ago: I will watch the occasional ‘Seinfeld,’ rerun although I’ve even become selective about that. Festivus for the rest of us I’ll watch every time and the one where Steinbrenner goes to George’s house to tell his parents that George is dead and Mr. Costanza’s response is, “what were you thinking trading Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps!” I’ll watch every time. Some of the later episodes not so much.

Anyway, the way it works, I’ll surf around. If the Islanders are playing—especially these days now that I have the hockey package again (hallelujah!)--I’ll probably watch them. Is there someone on Long Island who can tell me what is going on at The Nassau Coliseum that they are currently on a two week, seven game road trip? During baseball season I can usually find a baseball game to watch and now that college hoops is underway there is almost always a college game I’m interested in for one reason or another.

If all else fails, I press two buttons and go to my ‘West Wing,’ DVD. I’m watching season two again right now.

Last night was what most would consider a slim pickings night. But two things drew me in—one briefly, almost like gazing at the scene of a car accident—the other for almost the entire game.

The car accident was a football game between Central Michigan and Ball State. It wasn’t that matchup that caused me to pause on the game. At 1-9, Ball State is a shadow of the team it was the last two years with Nate Davis at quarterback. Central Michigan is the MAC’s best team at 8-2, including a win over Michigan State. The game figured to be—and was—a mismatch.

What caused me to pause was ESPN showing a couple of The Ball State seniors being greeted pre-game because it was, “senior night.” The play-by-play guy—they really DO sound all alike don’t they—was talking about Ball State only having 11 seniors and how that really boded well for next year and Trent Dilfer, who I guess was trying out as a color man, went on about the team’s potential for 2010 so much I was wondering if Ball State might be ranked in the top ten preseason.

What got me though was this: the rain was pouring down as the seniors and their families walked onto the field. The far side of the stadium was just about empty—I mean EMPTY—because who is coming out on a miserable Wednesday night to see a bad team play football?

This was the memory those seniors and their families would take with them of their last home college football game. Look, it might have rained on Saturday—it’s November in Indiana. I lived there for a year, I get it. But a day game on a Saturday, you’re going to get a better crowd. Maybe the sun will come out for a while. There were no students in sight, they had better things to do no doubt on a school night with exams approaching. I just thought it was sad.

I know the genie is out of the bottle on these weeknight college football games but can’t there be SOME limits. Can’t the presidents intervene and say—no weeknight games after Halloween? The answer of course is no but I wish the president of Ball State would look at that tape and at least wonder if that was the way a bunch of kids who gave the school four—or five—years of hard work playing football wanted to go out. There’s nothing that can be done now about the 1-10 record. It would have been nice though if those seniors—who were a part of two bowl teams and a 10-0 start last year—could have gone out with a little more dignity than on a Wednesday night, in a pouring rain with literally almost no one but friends and family watching.

I watched one Central Michigan drive because their quarterback is supposed to be a pro prospect. Dilfer at one point said he was every bit as good a football player as Tim Tebow or Colt McCoy. I’m so glad no one on TV goes in for hyperbole.

Having heard enough of that I switched over to the Loyola-UMBC basketball game. As people know, this is one of my quirks—I love games like this. I know both coaches well—Randy Monroe at UMBC first gained national attention for throwing his team out of the locker room for a week, then built the team into an NCAA Tournament team a couple years ago. I wrote a column about him after the locker room incident and he said, “I know Knight has done it, I know Krzyzewski has done it. I figured they were pretty good role models.”

I’ve know Loyola’s Jimmy Patsos since he survived—the correct word to use—12 years as an assistant to Gary Williams at Maryland.

Patsos has worked tirelessly to get Loyola to the top of the MAAC since taking over a team that had been 1-27. He won 18 games two years ago but has never been able to get over the Siena-Niagara hump at the top of the league. Last year he got national attention for the wrong reasons—leaving his bench to sit in the stands during a game because he was upset with the officiating; holding Stephen Curry scoreless in a game by double or triple teaming him all night but losing the game by 30.

Is he nuts? He worked for Gary for 12 years, of course he’s nuts. He’s also a very good man who tries very hard to make playing college basketball more than just about basketball for his players. He makes them go to museums on the road. During one pre-game talk last year he quoted Harvey Milk, Shakespeare and Clarence Thomas (okay, no one is perfect).

He also has a pretty good team this year. He’s got a smart little point guard who can really pass and some experience up front, plus Shane Walker, a Maryland transfer who clearly has some potential. The game was back-and-forth the entire second half with both coaches screaming (and I do mean screaming) at their players on almost every possession. Loyola pulled it out late, running really good offense when it had to and getting the ball inside after settling for quick shots while blowing a 10 point lead.

My old pal Hoops Weiss (two mentions in a row for him this week) who knows every coach ever born frequently walks out after games saying, “I’m vurry, vurry (he’s from Philly) pleased for (fill-in-the-winning-coach’s-name) but vurry, vurry disappointed for (fill-in-the-losing coach’s-name. They’re both good friends of mine.”

I felt like Hoops last night. Vurry, vurry pleased for Jimmy, vurry, vurry disappointed for Randy. Once I finish the kids book I’m working on (it is set at Army-Navy and will be done by, I hope, Thanksgiving) I’ll get out and see their teams play in person.

I was going to write about Al McGuire this morning in response to a post yesterday after the Dick Vitale blog but he merits an entire blog—and more. Just too many Al stories to tell. He was a good friend—who wrote the introduction to ‘A Season on the Brink.’

I will leave you with one quick story because there really are a million. Al had instincts about people like no one I’ve ever met. During the year I was in Bloomington he came out to do a couple of games for NBC. Whenever he did, Knight would put together dinner the night before the game. On the night before the last game Al was working, he looked at Bob and I at one point and said, “this is kind of a sad night for me.”

Why, we asked.

“Because this is the last time I’m going to see the two of you together.”

Again we asked, why?

Al laughed. “Because once this book comes out, you’ll never speak to one another again.”

Like I said, he really knew people. More to come—a lot more—about Al on another day. Let me add one more thing: I really miss him.