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.
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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.
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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.
Showing posts with label Billy Packer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Billy Packer. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Possibility of Ovechkin vs. USA, will fans of the Capitals be torn at all?; Rooting for individuals vs. laundry
I was making my weekly appearance yesterday on “Washington Post Live,”—which is a pretty good show except for the fact that there has to be a Redskins segment EVERY DAY—when this question popped into my head: If the United States makes the gold medal game in Olympic hockey (which is now distinctly possible after the remarkable 5-3 upset of Canada on Sunday) and it faces Russia, will fans of The Washington Capitals be torn at all?
After all, Alexander Ovechkin may be the most popular non-Redskin in the history of the town. The only person I can think of who might have been as beloved as Ovechkin is Wes Unseld. Frank Howard was certainly popular years ago with the Senators but they were a bad team throughout his years in Washington.
You can’t walk 100 yards in downtown DC right now without encountering someone wearing an Ovechkin jersey. People here are firmly convinced the Caps are going to win The Stanley Cup this spring and if they do Ovechkin is going to be the main reason. It can be argued that Ovechkin is the first athlete to represent Washington since, I don’t know, Sammy Baugh? Who was THE best player in his sport. (Save your Sidney Crosby argument for another day. The point is he is 1 or 1-A at worst).
So, I wondered aloud on the air if Ovechkin—and fellow Cap Alexander Semin—are out there representing Russia, do Caps fans root for their guys or for their country?
Based on text messages sent to the station the verdict was overwhelming: USA-USA-USA. Naturally some people wondered if I was “crazy,” for even thinking there was a debate.
All of which reminded me how doing what I do gives you a different perspective than most people. When I was a kid I rooted ardently for the Mets, the Jets, the Knicks, the Rangers and, after I had bought my first car and could drive to Long Island as a high school senior, the expansion Islanders. I even rooted for the Nets while they were in the ABA and never hated the Yankees or the Giants. My instinct has always been to pull for underdogs so I was drawn to the expansion Mets. With the Jets it was more basic: I could get into the games.
I loved my teams. Like any fan there were individuals I picked out as my favorites: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee with the Mets; Joe Namath, Matt Snell and Verlon Biggs with the Jets; Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave Debusschere and Bill Bradley with the Knicks; Brad Park and the GAG (Goal-a-game) line with the Rangers: Vic Hadfield, Jean Ratelle, Brad Park and, later, Billy Smith, Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier and Mike Bossy with the Islanders although I always had a warm spot for Billy Harris even though he was traded before the team started winning Stanley Cups.
But in the end, I was a typical fan. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, I rooted for laundry.
I was furious with the Mets when they traded Seaver in 1977 and never stopped being a Seaver fan. In fact, one of my great thrills was covering the game in Yankee Stadium in 1983 when he won his 300th game while pitching for the White Sox.
But I was still a Mets fan—even after the Seaver trade.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I stopped rooting for laundry and started rooting for individuals. It might have been while standing in the Red Sox clubhouse in 1986 watching Bill Buckner answer question after question without blinking or complaining after his infamous boot of Mookie Wilson’s ground ball in game six of The World Series. As a Mets fan, I was thrilled with the way they had come back to win the game. Watching Buckner handle the situation with such grace made me feel awful for him. During game seven, even as I rooted ardently for the Mets, I couldn’t help but think about what this would do to Buckner.
To this day, when that World Series comes up, I point out to people—many of whom don’t remember—that the score was already tied when the ball went through Buckner’s legs. He did NOT lose the World Series for the Red Sox.
When Pat Riley became the coach of the Knicks, I stopped being a Knicks fan. I just didn’t like him and I hated his style of play. I’ve never gone back to the Knicks. In fact, I became a Celtics fan—a team I DESPISED as a kid—because of my friendship with Red Auerbach.
Other than being consistently lousy, the Jets never did anything to make me dislike them but when I did my book on the Ravens in 2004, I couldn’t help but want to see the Ravens do well since I got to know almost everyone in the organization. As luck would have it, the Ravens and Jets played that season, in the Meadowlands.
Darin Kerns, who was one of the Ravens equipment managers, had mentioned to the Jets equipment guys that I had grown up a Jets fan. So, before the game, Darin marched me to the Jets locker room where the Jets guys gave me a box of equipment—most of it for my kids. I walked back to the Ravens locker room carrying the box. When I walked in, Brian Billick said, “what’s that?”
“It’s a box full of Jets gear.”
“So let me get this straight, you’re in our locker room, you’re on our sideline, you’re in our meetings and you’re carrying a box of Jets gear around to take home to your kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Just so I’m clear on where you stand.”
Billick knew where I stood which was why he gave me a hard time about it. Now that Rex Ryan, who was an assistant on that Ravens team, is running the Jets I find myself pulling for the Jets again. If the Jets and Ravens played today, especially since a lot of the guys I knew back in ’04 are gone, I’m honestly not sure whose side I’d be on. I’d probably root for the team that needed to win the game more.
I AM still an Islanders fan. I covered the team in the 80s when they were still great and was thrilled to find that the players I’d loved watching play were, almost to a man, really good guys. (Of course hockey players in general are good guys). Al Arbour, the coach, was terrific to be around and, in addition to the big names, guys like Bob Bourne, Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies (who was actually a pretty big name) and Ken Morrow, made the job easy and fun. Even though the team has been mostly awful since it last played in The Stanley Cup Finals in 1984, I still have warm memories of that group that make me occasionally shout at the TV when the current team, still very young but (finally) with some potential, blows a 3-1 lead in the third period the way it did in the last game before the Olympics.
As for Duke, my alma mater, I’ve discussed my relationship with the school here in the past. I still pull for Mike Krzyzewski, because he’s been a friend for a long time but so have a lot of coaches including Gary Williams and Roy Williams and Oliver Purnell and Leonard Hamilton—just to name a few guys in the ACC. The games I get most into these days usually involve Patriot League teams. In fact, I think the most emotional I’ve been watching a game in recent years was the night Bucknell stunned Kansas in the 2005 NCAA Tournament. I still get chills thinking about that game. George Mason beating Connecticut to go to the Final Four in 2006 is right up there too, not because I don’t like Jim Calhoun (I do) but because it was one of the great underdog stories EVER and I got to cover it.
When Jim Larranaga raced over to where I was standing shortly after that game had ended and said, “I can’t wait to see (Jim) Nantz and (Billy) Packer in Indy,”—both had dissed the committee for putting Mason in the tournament—it was a truly sublime moment.
As luck would have it, I was having dinner in St. Elmo’s, the great steak house in Indy on Wednesday night that week when Nantz and Packer walked in. I’d already run into Larranaga because he and his team were eating in a private room in the back of the restaurant. When Jim and Billy stopped to say hello, I couldn’t resist.
“The George Mason kids are eating in a room in the back,” I said. “They can’t wait to see you guys.”
Nantz immediately headed back there to deliver his official apology. Packer never moved. “You aren’t going to apologize?” I said to him.
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said.
That’s one reason I loved Billy—he always stuck to his guns even when they were empty.
So, if the U.S. does play Russia in the gold medal game, I’ll be no different than most Americans, I’ll be pulling for the U.S. But it will have more to do with my affection for underdogs than with the letters on the front of the sweater.
After all, Alexander Ovechkin may be the most popular non-Redskin in the history of the town. The only person I can think of who might have been as beloved as Ovechkin is Wes Unseld. Frank Howard was certainly popular years ago with the Senators but they were a bad team throughout his years in Washington.
You can’t walk 100 yards in downtown DC right now without encountering someone wearing an Ovechkin jersey. People here are firmly convinced the Caps are going to win The Stanley Cup this spring and if they do Ovechkin is going to be the main reason. It can be argued that Ovechkin is the first athlete to represent Washington since, I don’t know, Sammy Baugh? Who was THE best player in his sport. (Save your Sidney Crosby argument for another day. The point is he is 1 or 1-A at worst).
So, I wondered aloud on the air if Ovechkin—and fellow Cap Alexander Semin—are out there representing Russia, do Caps fans root for their guys or for their country?
Based on text messages sent to the station the verdict was overwhelming: USA-USA-USA. Naturally some people wondered if I was “crazy,” for even thinking there was a debate.
All of which reminded me how doing what I do gives you a different perspective than most people. When I was a kid I rooted ardently for the Mets, the Jets, the Knicks, the Rangers and, after I had bought my first car and could drive to Long Island as a high school senior, the expansion Islanders. I even rooted for the Nets while they were in the ABA and never hated the Yankees or the Giants. My instinct has always been to pull for underdogs so I was drawn to the expansion Mets. With the Jets it was more basic: I could get into the games.
I loved my teams. Like any fan there were individuals I picked out as my favorites: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee with the Mets; Joe Namath, Matt Snell and Verlon Biggs with the Jets; Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave Debusschere and Bill Bradley with the Knicks; Brad Park and the GAG (Goal-a-game) line with the Rangers: Vic Hadfield, Jean Ratelle, Brad Park and, later, Billy Smith, Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier and Mike Bossy with the Islanders although I always had a warm spot for Billy Harris even though he was traded before the team started winning Stanley Cups.
But in the end, I was a typical fan. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, I rooted for laundry.
I was furious with the Mets when they traded Seaver in 1977 and never stopped being a Seaver fan. In fact, one of my great thrills was covering the game in Yankee Stadium in 1983 when he won his 300th game while pitching for the White Sox.
But I was still a Mets fan—even after the Seaver trade.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I stopped rooting for laundry and started rooting for individuals. It might have been while standing in the Red Sox clubhouse in 1986 watching Bill Buckner answer question after question without blinking or complaining after his infamous boot of Mookie Wilson’s ground ball in game six of The World Series. As a Mets fan, I was thrilled with the way they had come back to win the game. Watching Buckner handle the situation with such grace made me feel awful for him. During game seven, even as I rooted ardently for the Mets, I couldn’t help but think about what this would do to Buckner.
To this day, when that World Series comes up, I point out to people—many of whom don’t remember—that the score was already tied when the ball went through Buckner’s legs. He did NOT lose the World Series for the Red Sox.
When Pat Riley became the coach of the Knicks, I stopped being a Knicks fan. I just didn’t like him and I hated his style of play. I’ve never gone back to the Knicks. In fact, I became a Celtics fan—a team I DESPISED as a kid—because of my friendship with Red Auerbach.
Other than being consistently lousy, the Jets never did anything to make me dislike them but when I did my book on the Ravens in 2004, I couldn’t help but want to see the Ravens do well since I got to know almost everyone in the organization. As luck would have it, the Ravens and Jets played that season, in the Meadowlands.
Darin Kerns, who was one of the Ravens equipment managers, had mentioned to the Jets equipment guys that I had grown up a Jets fan. So, before the game, Darin marched me to the Jets locker room where the Jets guys gave me a box of equipment—most of it for my kids. I walked back to the Ravens locker room carrying the box. When I walked in, Brian Billick said, “what’s that?”
“It’s a box full of Jets gear.”
“So let me get this straight, you’re in our locker room, you’re on our sideline, you’re in our meetings and you’re carrying a box of Jets gear around to take home to your kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Just so I’m clear on where you stand.”
Billick knew where I stood which was why he gave me a hard time about it. Now that Rex Ryan, who was an assistant on that Ravens team, is running the Jets I find myself pulling for the Jets again. If the Jets and Ravens played today, especially since a lot of the guys I knew back in ’04 are gone, I’m honestly not sure whose side I’d be on. I’d probably root for the team that needed to win the game more.
I AM still an Islanders fan. I covered the team in the 80s when they were still great and was thrilled to find that the players I’d loved watching play were, almost to a man, really good guys. (Of course hockey players in general are good guys). Al Arbour, the coach, was terrific to be around and, in addition to the big names, guys like Bob Bourne, Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies (who was actually a pretty big name) and Ken Morrow, made the job easy and fun. Even though the team has been mostly awful since it last played in The Stanley Cup Finals in 1984, I still have warm memories of that group that make me occasionally shout at the TV when the current team, still very young but (finally) with some potential, blows a 3-1 lead in the third period the way it did in the last game before the Olympics.
As for Duke, my alma mater, I’ve discussed my relationship with the school here in the past. I still pull for Mike Krzyzewski, because he’s been a friend for a long time but so have a lot of coaches including Gary Williams and Roy Williams and Oliver Purnell and Leonard Hamilton—just to name a few guys in the ACC. The games I get most into these days usually involve Patriot League teams. In fact, I think the most emotional I’ve been watching a game in recent years was the night Bucknell stunned Kansas in the 2005 NCAA Tournament. I still get chills thinking about that game. George Mason beating Connecticut to go to the Final Four in 2006 is right up there too, not because I don’t like Jim Calhoun (I do) but because it was one of the great underdog stories EVER and I got to cover it.
When Jim Larranaga raced over to where I was standing shortly after that game had ended and said, “I can’t wait to see (Jim) Nantz and (Billy) Packer in Indy,”—both had dissed the committee for putting Mason in the tournament—it was a truly sublime moment.
As luck would have it, I was having dinner in St. Elmo’s, the great steak house in Indy on Wednesday night that week when Nantz and Packer walked in. I’d already run into Larranaga because he and his team were eating in a private room in the back of the restaurant. When Jim and Billy stopped to say hello, I couldn’t resist.
“The George Mason kids are eating in a room in the back,” I said. “They can’t wait to see you guys.”
Nantz immediately headed back there to deliver his official apology. Packer never moved. “You aren’t going to apologize?” I said to him.
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said.
That’s one reason I loved Billy—he always stuck to his guns even when they were empty.
So, if the U.S. does play Russia in the gold medal game, I’ll be no different than most Americans, I’ll be pulling for the U.S. But it will have more to do with my affection for underdogs than with the letters on the front of the sweater.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
DC Sports Bog lists decade's top ten events in DC sports – my #1 was Mason’s run; What is most thrilling moment in all of sports over the past decade?
My friend Dan Steinberg, who has done a remarkable job the past few years making his “DC Sports Bog,” a must read for a lot of us, has been doing (like so many others) various “End of the Decade,” rankings this week.
This morning’s list was the top ten events in DC sports. He ranked Maryland’s 2002 national championship No. 1 and George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 second.
With all due respect to Maryland and to Dan—wrong.
The rebuilding job Gary Williams did at Maryland was remarkable. I’ve said that and written that dozens of times, especially when the sharks—led by his athletic director—start to circle every time the Terrapins slide at all. I often re-tell the story about the Maryland alum who came up to me at a game midway through the 2001 season and said, ‘the time has come for Gary to go. The Sweet Sixteen is as far as he can take us. We need to get Mike Brey in here and start over.’
I kid that guy often about what happened next. Brey, by the way, who has done an excellent job at Notre Dame, still hasn’t been past the Sweet Sixteen.
Maryland’s national championship was a wonderful story of redemption, a program rebuilt in the aftermath of Len Bias’s death and the probation brought about by Chancellor John Slaughter’s idiotic decision to hire Bob Wade as the basketball coach. But in the end it was the kind of thing that happens in athletics all the time: a fallen program brings in the right coach, the coach catches a break or two in recruiting—Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter both being largely overlooked—and it all falls into place.
Dean Smith took over a program that was on probation at North Carolina in 1962. Mike Krzyzewski was 38-47 his first three years at Duke. Georgetown’s President asked John Thompson to “try and make the NIT every few years,” when he hired him in 1972. Most Connecticut fans thought U-Conn needed to get out of The Big East when Jim Calhoun arrived in 1985.
Great coaches build and rebuild. All those coaches are in the Hall of Fame because they rebuilt fallen programs and won a national title. Only North Carolina from that group had previously won a national championship. Someday, Gary should join that group in the Hall of Fame. Maryland cutting down the nets in Atlanta was a memorable story, one that I personally savor. I still remember the first thing Gary said to me on the court that night: “Fort Myer. You’re one of the guys who remembers Fort Myer. I’m glad you were here to see this.”
Gary had started his head coaching career at American University in 1978 and his team played home games at Fort Myer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia. The gym was cold and drafty every night and the locker rooms were actually weight rooms. My favorite memory from, “The Fort,” as everyone called it, was Gary having to talk the MPs out of arresting an opposing coach after he had kicked a wall walking into the locker room at the end of an overtime win for AU. Part of the wall fell in and the MPs showed up in the locker room wanting to arrest him for damaging government property.
I covered AU a lot back then: I was the kid reporter on The Post staff and it was apparent to me that Gary was a comer in the coaching business. Plus, I liked him and I liked his team---which won 24 games his third season and came within a missed jump shot of making the NCAA Tournament.
So, Maryland’s national championship was a thrill for me. I knew how low Gary had been in his early days at his alma mater.
Having said all that, George Mason’s story was the best in college basketball since Texas Western in 1966. The school didn’t even play Division 1 basketball until the late 1970s. It didn’t even have a FIGHT song until 1987. Seriously. I was there the night they unveiled it. Jim Larranaga had built a solid program after coming in from Bowling Green but that’s what Mason was: a solid CAA program, a contender in a league that hadn’t received a second bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1986. The closest any CAA team had come to a Final Four had been David Robinson’s run with Navy in that 1986 season. The Midshipmen made it to the elite eight before being crushed by Duke. THAT was a once in a lifetime experience since Robinson had come to Navy as a 6-7 kid recruited more for his potential as an engineer than as a basketball player.
He didn’t even start his freshman year, then grew six inches that summer and turned into, well, David Robinson.
Remember that a lot of people—led by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer—didn’t think Mason even deserved a bid. The Patriots had lost in the CAA semifinals to Hofstra, a game in which point guard Tony Skinn sucker-punched a Hofstra player in the worst possible place, causing Larranaga to announce he would be suspended for Mason’s next game, whether it was in the NCAA’s or the NIT.
A lot of people thought that Skinn’s suspension would be the difference between Mason getting in or not getting in. When the Patriots went up on the board that Sunday night, Nantz and Packer spent considerable time grilling basketball committee chairman Craig Littlepage on what they had done to deserve a bid. Nantz read through their schedule and asked, “what is in here that we’re not seeing that caused you to give them a bid?”
We all know what happened next: the Patriots stunned Michigan State (without Skinn); shocked North Carolina; beat Wichita State and then, in one of the most dramatic upsets in tournament history, beat Connecticut in overtime to make The Final Four. To be honest, I thought they’d blown it when U-Conn tied the game at the buzzer in regulation. To be even more honest, I couldn’t believe the game was close.
I still remember the first thing Larranaga said to me when I shook hands with him on the court: “I can’t wait to get to Indy to see Nantz and Packer.”
He got his chance early. On Wednesday night, Mason was having dinner in “St. Elmo’s,” the great steakhouse in downtown Indy when Nantz and Packer walked in. I happened to be in there with some friends and when they stopped to say hello I couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, George Mason’s in the back, I’m sure you guys want to go and say hello.”
To his credit, Nantz made a beeline for the back room. Larranaga told me later he congratulated everyone and said he and Packer had been wrong and they had been proven wrong. Packer lingered at our table, talking.
“Well,” I said finally, “Aren’t you going to go in there and apologize?”
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said. “I still think what I said was right when I said it.”
That was one thing I loved about Billy: he always stuck to his guns even when the whole world was saying he was wrong.
Mason’s run inspired a lot of people who had never heard of the school prior to March of 2006. Even Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun shook his head in the aftermath of what had to be one of the most disappointing losses of his career and said, “this is why basketball’s a beautiful game.”
As it happens I have a fair number of George Mason T-shirts. They’re actually swimming shirts because I’ve worked out through the years at Mason since the swim coach there, Peter Ward, is a friend of mine. A couple of months after the ’06 Final Four, I was in Coral Springs, Florida for the Masters short course national championships. I was wearing a Mason swimming T-shirt one morning when I walked across the pool deck to jump into the warm-up pool.
As I was walking, I became aware of the fact that people were applauding and apparently the applause was directed at me. Maybe they really liked my new book on Q-school? No, not this crowd. Finally I heard a few of their voices: “George Mason, way to go, great job!” They were applauding for my shirt.
I’ve worn a lot of shirts from a lot of different places through the years. Occasionally I’ll get a pat on the back from ONE person someplace if I’m wearing Navy gear. But that’s about it.
Maryland fans were thrilled by Maryland’s national title. The entire country was thrilled and inspired by George Mason.
-------------------
Since the question has been raised, let’s broaden it a little: Last ten years, what’s the most thrilling moment you remember in sports? I can honestly say Mason is probably number one for me with Jason Lezak’s anchor swim in the 4x100 freestyle relay in Beijing a strong number two and Paul Goydos’s win in Hawaii three years ago (yes, that one is personal) after all he’d been through in his personal life, probably number three. If Tom Watson had parred the 18th at Turnberry this past July it would have blown everything else away and been number two on my all-time list behind the U.S. hockey team at Lake Placid.
This morning’s list was the top ten events in DC sports. He ranked Maryland’s 2002 national championship No. 1 and George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 second.
With all due respect to Maryland and to Dan—wrong.
The rebuilding job Gary Williams did at Maryland was remarkable. I’ve said that and written that dozens of times, especially when the sharks—led by his athletic director—start to circle every time the Terrapins slide at all. I often re-tell the story about the Maryland alum who came up to me at a game midway through the 2001 season and said, ‘the time has come for Gary to go. The Sweet Sixteen is as far as he can take us. We need to get Mike Brey in here and start over.’
I kid that guy often about what happened next. Brey, by the way, who has done an excellent job at Notre Dame, still hasn’t been past the Sweet Sixteen.
Maryland’s national championship was a wonderful story of redemption, a program rebuilt in the aftermath of Len Bias’s death and the probation brought about by Chancellor John Slaughter’s idiotic decision to hire Bob Wade as the basketball coach. But in the end it was the kind of thing that happens in athletics all the time: a fallen program brings in the right coach, the coach catches a break or two in recruiting—Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter both being largely overlooked—and it all falls into place.
Dean Smith took over a program that was on probation at North Carolina in 1962. Mike Krzyzewski was 38-47 his first three years at Duke. Georgetown’s President asked John Thompson to “try and make the NIT every few years,” when he hired him in 1972. Most Connecticut fans thought U-Conn needed to get out of The Big East when Jim Calhoun arrived in 1985.
Great coaches build and rebuild. All those coaches are in the Hall of Fame because they rebuilt fallen programs and won a national title. Only North Carolina from that group had previously won a national championship. Someday, Gary should join that group in the Hall of Fame. Maryland cutting down the nets in Atlanta was a memorable story, one that I personally savor. I still remember the first thing Gary said to me on the court that night: “Fort Myer. You’re one of the guys who remembers Fort Myer. I’m glad you were here to see this.”
Gary had started his head coaching career at American University in 1978 and his team played home games at Fort Myer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia. The gym was cold and drafty every night and the locker rooms were actually weight rooms. My favorite memory from, “The Fort,” as everyone called it, was Gary having to talk the MPs out of arresting an opposing coach after he had kicked a wall walking into the locker room at the end of an overtime win for AU. Part of the wall fell in and the MPs showed up in the locker room wanting to arrest him for damaging government property.
I covered AU a lot back then: I was the kid reporter on The Post staff and it was apparent to me that Gary was a comer in the coaching business. Plus, I liked him and I liked his team---which won 24 games his third season and came within a missed jump shot of making the NCAA Tournament.
So, Maryland’s national championship was a thrill for me. I knew how low Gary had been in his early days at his alma mater.
Having said all that, George Mason’s story was the best in college basketball since Texas Western in 1966. The school didn’t even play Division 1 basketball until the late 1970s. It didn’t even have a FIGHT song until 1987. Seriously. I was there the night they unveiled it. Jim Larranaga had built a solid program after coming in from Bowling Green but that’s what Mason was: a solid CAA program, a contender in a league that hadn’t received a second bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1986. The closest any CAA team had come to a Final Four had been David Robinson’s run with Navy in that 1986 season. The Midshipmen made it to the elite eight before being crushed by Duke. THAT was a once in a lifetime experience since Robinson had come to Navy as a 6-7 kid recruited more for his potential as an engineer than as a basketball player.
He didn’t even start his freshman year, then grew six inches that summer and turned into, well, David Robinson.
Remember that a lot of people—led by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer—didn’t think Mason even deserved a bid. The Patriots had lost in the CAA semifinals to Hofstra, a game in which point guard Tony Skinn sucker-punched a Hofstra player in the worst possible place, causing Larranaga to announce he would be suspended for Mason’s next game, whether it was in the NCAA’s or the NIT.
A lot of people thought that Skinn’s suspension would be the difference between Mason getting in or not getting in. When the Patriots went up on the board that Sunday night, Nantz and Packer spent considerable time grilling basketball committee chairman Craig Littlepage on what they had done to deserve a bid. Nantz read through their schedule and asked, “what is in here that we’re not seeing that caused you to give them a bid?”
We all know what happened next: the Patriots stunned Michigan State (without Skinn); shocked North Carolina; beat Wichita State and then, in one of the most dramatic upsets in tournament history, beat Connecticut in overtime to make The Final Four. To be honest, I thought they’d blown it when U-Conn tied the game at the buzzer in regulation. To be even more honest, I couldn’t believe the game was close.
I still remember the first thing Larranaga said to me when I shook hands with him on the court: “I can’t wait to get to Indy to see Nantz and Packer.”
He got his chance early. On Wednesday night, Mason was having dinner in “St. Elmo’s,” the great steakhouse in downtown Indy when Nantz and Packer walked in. I happened to be in there with some friends and when they stopped to say hello I couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, George Mason’s in the back, I’m sure you guys want to go and say hello.”
To his credit, Nantz made a beeline for the back room. Larranaga told me later he congratulated everyone and said he and Packer had been wrong and they had been proven wrong. Packer lingered at our table, talking.
“Well,” I said finally, “Aren’t you going to go in there and apologize?”
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said. “I still think what I said was right when I said it.”
That was one thing I loved about Billy: he always stuck to his guns even when the whole world was saying he was wrong.
Mason’s run inspired a lot of people who had never heard of the school prior to March of 2006. Even Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun shook his head in the aftermath of what had to be one of the most disappointing losses of his career and said, “this is why basketball’s a beautiful game.”
As it happens I have a fair number of George Mason T-shirts. They’re actually swimming shirts because I’ve worked out through the years at Mason since the swim coach there, Peter Ward, is a friend of mine. A couple of months after the ’06 Final Four, I was in Coral Springs, Florida for the Masters short course national championships. I was wearing a Mason swimming T-shirt one morning when I walked across the pool deck to jump into the warm-up pool.
As I was walking, I became aware of the fact that people were applauding and apparently the applause was directed at me. Maybe they really liked my new book on Q-school? No, not this crowd. Finally I heard a few of their voices: “George Mason, way to go, great job!” They were applauding for my shirt.
I’ve worn a lot of shirts from a lot of different places through the years. Occasionally I’ll get a pat on the back from ONE person someplace if I’m wearing Navy gear. But that’s about it.
Maryland fans were thrilled by Maryland’s national title. The entire country was thrilled and inspired by George Mason.
-------------------
Since the question has been raised, let’s broaden it a little: Last ten years, what’s the most thrilling moment you remember in sports? I can honestly say Mason is probably number one for me with Jason Lezak’s anchor swim in the 4x100 freestyle relay in Beijing a strong number two and Paul Goydos’s win in Hawaii three years ago (yes, that one is personal) after all he’d been through in his personal life, probably number three. If Tom Watson had parred the 18th at Turnberry this past July it would have blown everything else away and been number two on my all-time list behind the U.S. hockey team at Lake Placid.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The 2nd worst idea in college sports; Stories on Cremins, Billy Packer
There’s an item in The Sports Business Journal this morning reporting that the NCAA has opened preliminary talks about a new TV contract. This isn’t news. Everyone knows ESPN is dying to swoop in with its Disney money and steal the tournament away from CBS, which has televised it since 1982. Anyone who thinks loyalty will play a role in this negotiation—CBS has literally spent billions helping to build the tournament into the mega-event that it now is—also thinks that there’s no football playoff because of concern about the ‘student-athletes.’
The important part of the story concerned the make-up of the tournament. Apparently the NCAA is looking into expansion—going from the current 65 teams to 96 in order to add a week of TV that would add more money to the new contract.
I can’t call this the worst idea I’ve ever heard because the BCS still exists. But it is a solid No. 2.
The perfect number for the NCAA Tournament is 64. The only reason a 65th team was added was (surprise) a money grab by the BCS commissioners who didn’t want to give up an at-large spot when The Mountain West Conference became eligible for an automatic bid, upping the number of automatic bids from 30 to 31.
Unfair as the play-in game is, it is a minor kink in an otherwise smooth-running machine. With a 65-team field, making it into the bracket is an accomplishment. Sure, there are always a handful of coaches screaming that a horrible injustice was done when they get left out but that’s kind of the beauty of Selection Sunday: who will get in and who won’t. The committee doesn’t always get it right and occasionally a team is left out unfairly. But more often than not, the deserving teams get in and when they do they feel as if they’ve actually done something.
Compare that—for example—to the bowl system where 68 of the 120 teams playing Division 1-A football make postseason. All you have to do—literally—is be mediocre and you can play in a bowl someplace. In basketball, the only time a team that hasn’t played well all season gets in is when someone comes from the depths of a conference to win a conference tournament and get an automatic bid. Even when that happens, the team in question has to be playing well when it matters most to pull off that sort of an upset.
(The football-basketball talk reminds me of a story. If I’ve told it on the blog before, forgive me but I think it bears repeating. Years ago, during an ACC coaches meeting Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins was complaining to Commissioner Gene Corrigan about the extra pressure on basketball coaches to make the tournament.
“But Bobby,” Corrigan argued. “There are 64 bids out there. That’s a lot.”
“Sixty-four bids out of how many teams?” Cremins asked.
Corrigan shrugged. “About 300,” he answered.
Cremins turned to Dean Smith and said, “Dean, you’re the math major, what’s 64 into 300?”
“A little more than 21 percent,” Smith answered.
“Okay,” Cremins said turning back to Corrigan, “how many football teams make bowls?”
“Well, there are 26 bowls right now,” Corrigan said. “So that’s 52 teams.”
“Out of how many?” Cremins said.
“About 100,” Corrigan said.
Cremins turned back to Smith. “Okay Dean, 52 into 100, what percentage is that?”)
Back to our story for today.
So now the NCAA, which went to the 64 team bracket in 1985 is talking about expanding to 96 teams. If it happens they will claim this is being done in the name of fairness which is, of course, a lot of hooey. It will be done to up the TV money and to appease all the whining coaches who think expanding the field will help them keep their jobs.
You see, Cremins wasn’t wrong. There IS tremendous pressure on coaches, especially those at the big-time schools, to make the tournament every year. Jim Boeheim went two straight years without a bid and heard sniping all around him. Gary Williams missed three years out of four and if his team hadn’t rallied last season to make the tournament you can bet his AD would have been trying really hard to find a way to force him out at Maryland.
But the theory that more bids means more job security doesn’t really work. You see right now an NCAA Tournament bid MEANS something. If you expand to 96 teams and the ACC gets nine bids every year instead of six or The Big East gets 12 instead of eight then you’ve got the bowl system—except that a real champion does eventually get crowned.
Making a bowl does not guarantee these days that a coach keeps his job because AD’s know that it is often meaningless. In the BCS leagues, you can schedule three home games against weak opposition and go 3-5 in league play and presto! You are on your way to the Insight Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the fabulous St. Petersburg Bowl where you get to go to Florida—to play indoors.
If there is one thing the NCAA gets right every year (except for the play-in game) it is the basketball tournament. It hit on 64 as the right number 25 years ago and—with good reason—has kept it (almost) right there.
That reminds me. Apparently my good friend Bill Hancock, who is now executive director of the BCS (it is sad when a good man goes to work for the forces of evil) is trying to defend the BCS by talking about ‘bracket-creep,’ in the basketball tournament. Bracket creep? The tournament has expanded by ONE team in 25 years and he calls it bracket creep? Bill also claimed that if there was an eight team playoff this year there would be terrible controversy because two of the four two-loss teams in the major conferences would have been left out of the field. Think about what he’s saying: It is okay to leave three UNBEATEN teams out of the national title picture but really awful to leave out a couple of two-loss teams.
For his next trick, Bill will tell us that if unemployment went down it would be unfair to those still unemployed so maybe it would be better for unemployment to go UP.
I love Bill, I really do. He’s coming to dinner with us Friday night in Philadelphia before Army-Navy. Maybe I can perform an exorcism and save him.
Meantime, the NCAA needs to NOT expand the basketball field. If money is the issue do this: Tell the BCS schools that beginning in 2010 there will be an NCAA Football Bowl Sub-Division Tournament. If an invited team declines to play, none of its other teams can participate in any other NCAA postseason tournament. The NCAA would make more than enough money by having a football tournament to make the dumb idea of expanding the basketball tournament go away. The BCS would go the way of The Edsel, New Coke and pet rocks. And Bill Hancock’s soul would be saved.
-----------------------
One clarification on yesterday’s blog: I was NOT implying that the replay official got it wrong when he put one second back on the clock in the Texas-Nebraska game. Some hysterical Texas fan claimed that by saying he put one second back on the clock I was implying he got it wrong. I was simply saying he put the second back and almost certainly got it right but wondered if he would have gotten it right if the second had belonged to Nebraska. I stand by that statement. The same fan also went into a long diatribe about why Texas deserves to play in the national title game. I’m not saying Texas does NOT deserve to play in the game. I’m saying under this ridiculous system NONE of us knows who deserves to play in the game. That’s why the question should be resolved through actual competition rather than hysterically bleating that MY TEAM is the best. If your team is the best, it should get the chance to prove it on the field. Period…
One more note: Several people asked last week how I feel about Billy Packer. I like him both personally and professionally. We agreed on almost nothing but arguing with him has always been great fun and I always believed he broke down a basketball game better than anyone. I missed him during last year’s tournament especially during the Friday practices at The Final Four. We had an unofficial tradition of sitting together and arguing about everything while the practices were going on. My favorite year doing that was 2006 when I waved Jim Larranaga over during George Mason’s practice and said, “Billy wanted to be sure he had a chance to congratulate you.” Billy never missed a beat. “Great playing,” he said. Then he turned to me as Larranaga walked away and said, “It still doesn’t mean I was wrong you know.”
Actually it did. But that’s okay.
The important part of the story concerned the make-up of the tournament. Apparently the NCAA is looking into expansion—going from the current 65 teams to 96 in order to add a week of TV that would add more money to the new contract.
I can’t call this the worst idea I’ve ever heard because the BCS still exists. But it is a solid No. 2.
The perfect number for the NCAA Tournament is 64. The only reason a 65th team was added was (surprise) a money grab by the BCS commissioners who didn’t want to give up an at-large spot when The Mountain West Conference became eligible for an automatic bid, upping the number of automatic bids from 30 to 31.
Unfair as the play-in game is, it is a minor kink in an otherwise smooth-running machine. With a 65-team field, making it into the bracket is an accomplishment. Sure, there are always a handful of coaches screaming that a horrible injustice was done when they get left out but that’s kind of the beauty of Selection Sunday: who will get in and who won’t. The committee doesn’t always get it right and occasionally a team is left out unfairly. But more often than not, the deserving teams get in and when they do they feel as if they’ve actually done something.
Compare that—for example—to the bowl system where 68 of the 120 teams playing Division 1-A football make postseason. All you have to do—literally—is be mediocre and you can play in a bowl someplace. In basketball, the only time a team that hasn’t played well all season gets in is when someone comes from the depths of a conference to win a conference tournament and get an automatic bid. Even when that happens, the team in question has to be playing well when it matters most to pull off that sort of an upset.
(The football-basketball talk reminds me of a story. If I’ve told it on the blog before, forgive me but I think it bears repeating. Years ago, during an ACC coaches meeting Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins was complaining to Commissioner Gene Corrigan about the extra pressure on basketball coaches to make the tournament.
“But Bobby,” Corrigan argued. “There are 64 bids out there. That’s a lot.”
“Sixty-four bids out of how many teams?” Cremins asked.
Corrigan shrugged. “About 300,” he answered.
Cremins turned to Dean Smith and said, “Dean, you’re the math major, what’s 64 into 300?”
“A little more than 21 percent,” Smith answered.
“Okay,” Cremins said turning back to Corrigan, “how many football teams make bowls?”
“Well, there are 26 bowls right now,” Corrigan said. “So that’s 52 teams.”
“Out of how many?” Cremins said.
“About 100,” Corrigan said.
Cremins turned back to Smith. “Okay Dean, 52 into 100, what percentage is that?”)
Back to our story for today.
So now the NCAA, which went to the 64 team bracket in 1985 is talking about expanding to 96 teams. If it happens they will claim this is being done in the name of fairness which is, of course, a lot of hooey. It will be done to up the TV money and to appease all the whining coaches who think expanding the field will help them keep their jobs.
You see, Cremins wasn’t wrong. There IS tremendous pressure on coaches, especially those at the big-time schools, to make the tournament every year. Jim Boeheim went two straight years without a bid and heard sniping all around him. Gary Williams missed three years out of four and if his team hadn’t rallied last season to make the tournament you can bet his AD would have been trying really hard to find a way to force him out at Maryland.
But the theory that more bids means more job security doesn’t really work. You see right now an NCAA Tournament bid MEANS something. If you expand to 96 teams and the ACC gets nine bids every year instead of six or The Big East gets 12 instead of eight then you’ve got the bowl system—except that a real champion does eventually get crowned.
Making a bowl does not guarantee these days that a coach keeps his job because AD’s know that it is often meaningless. In the BCS leagues, you can schedule three home games against weak opposition and go 3-5 in league play and presto! You are on your way to the Insight Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the fabulous St. Petersburg Bowl where you get to go to Florida—to play indoors.
If there is one thing the NCAA gets right every year (except for the play-in game) it is the basketball tournament. It hit on 64 as the right number 25 years ago and—with good reason—has kept it (almost) right there.
That reminds me. Apparently my good friend Bill Hancock, who is now executive director of the BCS (it is sad when a good man goes to work for the forces of evil) is trying to defend the BCS by talking about ‘bracket-creep,’ in the basketball tournament. Bracket creep? The tournament has expanded by ONE team in 25 years and he calls it bracket creep? Bill also claimed that if there was an eight team playoff this year there would be terrible controversy because two of the four two-loss teams in the major conferences would have been left out of the field. Think about what he’s saying: It is okay to leave three UNBEATEN teams out of the national title picture but really awful to leave out a couple of two-loss teams.
For his next trick, Bill will tell us that if unemployment went down it would be unfair to those still unemployed so maybe it would be better for unemployment to go UP.
I love Bill, I really do. He’s coming to dinner with us Friday night in Philadelphia before Army-Navy. Maybe I can perform an exorcism and save him.
Meantime, the NCAA needs to NOT expand the basketball field. If money is the issue do this: Tell the BCS schools that beginning in 2010 there will be an NCAA Football Bowl Sub-Division Tournament. If an invited team declines to play, none of its other teams can participate in any other NCAA postseason tournament. The NCAA would make more than enough money by having a football tournament to make the dumb idea of expanding the basketball tournament go away. The BCS would go the way of The Edsel, New Coke and pet rocks. And Bill Hancock’s soul would be saved.
-----------------------
One clarification on yesterday’s blog: I was NOT implying that the replay official got it wrong when he put one second back on the clock in the Texas-Nebraska game. Some hysterical Texas fan claimed that by saying he put one second back on the clock I was implying he got it wrong. I was simply saying he put the second back and almost certainly got it right but wondered if he would have gotten it right if the second had belonged to Nebraska. I stand by that statement. The same fan also went into a long diatribe about why Texas deserves to play in the national title game. I’m not saying Texas does NOT deserve to play in the game. I’m saying under this ridiculous system NONE of us knows who deserves to play in the game. That’s why the question should be resolved through actual competition rather than hysterically bleating that MY TEAM is the best. If your team is the best, it should get the chance to prove it on the field. Period…
One more note: Several people asked last week how I feel about Billy Packer. I like him both personally and professionally. We agreed on almost nothing but arguing with him has always been great fun and I always believed he broke down a basketball game better than anyone. I missed him during last year’s tournament especially during the Friday practices at The Final Four. We had an unofficial tradition of sitting together and arguing about everything while the practices were going on. My favorite year doing that was 2006 when I waved Jim Larranaga over during George Mason’s practice and said, “Billy wanted to be sure he had a chance to congratulate you.” Billy never missed a beat. “Great playing,” he said. Then he turned to me as Larranaga walked away and said, “It still doesn’t mean I was wrong you know.”
Actually it did. But that’s okay.
Friday, December 4, 2009
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.
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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.
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.
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