If you ever have time to kill, try this: Find someone in the TV business who doesn’t adore Verne Lundquist— professionally, personally and whatever’s left.
You’ll have killed time, all right, every second of it, wasted.
Merton Laverne Lundquist Jr., son of a Lutheran minister, is spending his 50th year in professional broadcasting, doing what he did in his 49th: Calling games and golf for CBS, no frills, no rehearsed signature stuff, no nuthin’ beyond a familiar and modest natural friendliness and the occasional scold — but only to let us know that he only can take so much.
There was a moment a few years back when he saw a college football player in a sustained, chest-beating celebration of himself, to which Lundquist, neither raising his voice nor breaking his stride, said, “I think he wants to appear on a certain network’s highlights.”
Fabulous! Lundquist as Ward Cleaver, explaining to Wally the behavior of Eddie (ESPN) Haskell.
Not many know this, but Lundquist, now 73, peaked at 39 — at least couldn’t go any higher — with a call that for those who were listening established him a pro’s professional, a sportsman, a gentleman and, as they say in Lutheran, a mensch.
The 1979 Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl is recalled for a dropped third-down, 11-yard would-be TD pass by 38-year-old backup TE Jackie Smith, who joined Dallas that season after a Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals.
At 21-14 Pittsburgh in the third quarter, had Smith held that Roger Staubach pass, Dallas would have been a PAT from tying the score. Dallas kicked a field goal, and would lose, 35-31.
Lundquist was the Cowboys’ radio play-by-play man. When that ball fell from Smith’s hands, he said this:
“Bless his heart, he’s got to be the sickest man in America!”
Lundquist didn’t need to holler what’s hollered today in service to bold, now-hear-this! game-casting. He didn’t shout and repeat, “You’ve got to catch that ball!”
He already had said Smith was open, had it, dropped it. So he next reminded his audience that Smith is a human, albeit one provided instant eligibility to forever suffer the slings and arrows of millions of humans.
“I’d interviewed Smith that Wednesday, knowing it likely would be his last game,” Lundquist said from Atlanta, where he called Saturday’s SEC Championship. “I asked him to describe the perfect ending to his career. He said, ‘To catch a meaningful pass Sunday’
“I heard that, again — the second that ball hit the ground.”
For all the warmth and mild breeziness that Lundquist broadcasts, he fears for the future of both sports and sportscasting. He’s convinced, for example, that “my kind” are nearing extinction.
“I’d never be hired today, not by any network. I have no shtick, no profile, no gimmicks. I wouldn’t get a second look.”
He laughs.
“I don’t even use social media. Why would I, unless I wanted to make trouble for myself? What would I do on Twitter? Not everyone needs to know what you’re thinking and doing all of the time. And why would they even care?
“The most destructive four-letter word in social media isn’t a cuss word, it’s ‘send.’
“In sports, what concerns me the most is the absence of civility. I detest the self-aggrandizement that has overwhelmed almost all sports. I fear for sports’ future as sports.
“I worry about where sports are now and why we’ve allowed them to get there. I know that can be dismissed as the take of some old guy, 50 years in the business, but, then again, I’ve watched it all change.”
Wilson, Kuechly make game fun to watch
As simply a matter of watching NFL guys play good football on TV — in other words, watching without Mike Mayock’s help — my candidates for 2013’s two best watches are:
Offense — Relatively diminutive Seattle QB Russell Wilson. At barely 5-foot-11, his rollout, side-stepping, eyes-wide-open approach makes all 10 of his per-play teammates better, as none can take a play off; they must remain in motion.
At 6-foot-4, would Wilson and Seattle’s offense have been half as creative, effective and entertaining?
Defense — Carolina LB Luke Kuechly. Linebacker? He plays all 11 positions — at once. His vision, speed, tackling and sense of circumstances are extraordinary. He just never seems further than a foot or two from the ball.
The widespread notion that QB Cam Newton “makes Carolina go” is badly overstated. Without Kuechly, Newton’s opportunities to make Carolina go would be minimized.
If only Rutgers were a comedy club instead of New Jersey’s largest state college. The next “search committee” it should form is a search committee to find a search committee.
After being forced to drop its scandalized basketball coach and athletic director, a search committee selected a new basketball coach who, it turns out, came with a bogus academic bio. Its new AD, it turned out, had significant “issues” during previous college stops.
Still, Rutgers president Robert Barchi last week insisted that AD Julie Hermann is a good choice.
“I am confident in Julie,” he said. “I have been since I hired her.”
In other words, Barchi has concluded that, “I agree with me.”
Fantasy overtakes reality
It didn’t take long for FOX and CBS to allow fantasy football to overwhelm the real stuff. Watch those bottom crawls as the 1 p.m. and 4:25 games reach their ends. Instead of learning which teams won or the score late in games, we’ll see piles of individual offensive stats.
Triple-A Day, An Albert Afternoon: Marv Albert calls Raiders-Jets on CBS, then Kenny Albert calls Giants-Chargers on FOX.
Not that ESPN’s in-game graphics normally show understanding of the game being televised, but by now one would think that a college basketball game that begins to a score of, say, 21-9, is in no need of a graphic explaining that one team’s “on an 11-3 run.”
Imagine Red Auerbach hearing about that Jason Kidd-Lawrence Frank hassle, and how Frank was one of six Nets’ assistant coaches. Old-timers coached alone. The team trainer — Auerbach’s Celtics man was Buddy LeRoux — would count fouls and timeouts. That was it!
Well, it’s Sunday, another day and night filled with WTF — what’s that flag? Another chance to watch NFL games determined by confused officials trying to prevent the collapse of games under the weight of an anvil called “Rule book.”
Guy about to go to the electric chair is asked what he wants for his last meal. He thinks about it a few seconds, then says, “What are ya out of?”