Play by Play

by Verne Lundquist

  I was an inadvertent (and reluctant) host of it. In 1974, a few years into my play-by-play radio duties, my television general manager, Mike Shapiro, called me into his office at WFAA. He informed me that the station had acquired the rights to a franchised show. A group out of Baltimore named Claster Productions sold the rights to Bowling for Dollars and the children’s educational program Romper Room. Entire generations of kids started to learn as part of that television classroom; entire generations of adults hoped they’d get a chance to earn cash and prizes on the bowling show. I was vaguely aware of Bowling for Dollars—trivial stuff like the fact that in Boston it was known as Candlepins for Cash—but I had no real interest in hosting it.

  I told him that I wasn’t interested.

  He asked me if I was his employee.

  I told him I understood.

  He said that he figured I would be resistant to the idea. He gave me a number to call. I spoke to Chick Hearn, the Los Angeles Lakers legendary broadcaster. He did the program in LA and assured me that it was a ratings winner. They were up against Walter Cronkite’s evening news and were slaying him in the seven P.M. time slot. I hesitated a bit. I told him I was a bit worried about my reputation. I’d just gotten the Cowboys gig and I worried about being associated with a show of that type. He laughed and said not to worry. The people who listened to him doing the Lakers games had no idea that Bowling for Dollars existed. His advice was to do the show, save up the money from it to build a pool in the backyard, and enjoy myself. Very LA of him.

  I told Mike I’d do it.

  Before the first taping, I got a briefing on the format and procedures from the producer. Each show consisted of six contestants (I was told in no uncertain terms to always refer to them as “contestants” and not as “competitors”) coming on to roll two balls. They wrote into the station and were selected. Viewers could also opt to participate by becoming a Pin Pal. The on-air bowler would be playing for someone at home who’d also receive the prizes awarded. Depending on how well they did, they’d earn a cash prize of a dollar per pin. If they got two strikes they earned the jackpot. It was a combination of a cash prize that accumulated each week by ten dollars until someone won it. They also won an all-expense-paid three-day trip to Acapulco with deluxe accommodations at the Regency hotel, right on the beach. (I ended up hosting 511 of those shows and that bit of patter is indelibly etched in my cortex.)

  When I showed up that first Monday at nine thirty, I went into the makeshift dressing room they’d set up for me. A makeup person gave me a quick going-over and then I was shown my wardrobe. I nearly lost my breakfast. In fact, the shirt I was instructed to wear looked like it was splattered with someone’s upchucked omelet. This was the mid-1970s and bold patterns and prints were just coming into fashion for younger men.

  A bit red-faced and anxious—we did no pre-interviews so I was meeting the contestants for the first time with the cameras rolling—I had ninety seconds to get the lowdown on their lives. I had a cheat sheet that helped me with names and pronunciations but I was basically flying blind. They’d roll their two balls and another contestant would be spit out of the machine, then step out from behind the sliding doors. I’d ask them the same questions as they stood bug-eyed in front of the cameras and the live audience. Six of those per show, six shows in a day, six new shirts and sport coats that defied (not defined) the style of the day.

  I was in a kind of bizarre Rube Goldberg machine, but I learned over time to really enjoy it. Even though the people on the show were mostly cut from the same cloth and provided many of the same machine-punched answers—I like hunting and fishing—every now and then a bit of humanity shone through that made me glad I was a part of it. I even got used to the clothes. Folks at the station told me that many viewers of the program took pleasure in wondering what in darnation that Verne fellow was going to show up wearing next! I didn’t have to worry about being associated with Bowling for Dollars and having that overlap with my radio and sportscaster roles. People thought of Verne the Bowling for Dollars guy as a character I played.

  Forty-three years later and at least once a month someone will approach me and ask if I’m Verne Lundquist from Dallas and didn’t I once do that bowling show. I went from fear of embarrassment to being proud of my participation in it. It filled a gap in people’s lives, gave them a chance to do something that I sometimes took for granted.

  At just about the same time I was settling in to my spot on BFD, I got my first chance to do a nationwide television broadcast for one of the major networks in November 1975. September 18, 1974, I walked into work at one o’clock to find a pink message slip the receptionist had left for me. It said to call Chuck Howard at ABC Sports in New York. He was the senior vice president of production, which meant that he did all the hiring.

  As it turned out, this call from Chuck Howard had been set in motion by a chance meeting I’d had with ABC’s Jim McKay a couple of years earlier. In 1973, McKay had written a book about his role in the Munich Olympic games. He came into town to promote it and was booked on our television station. My boss suggested that I do the interview with him rather than either of the news guys. I jumped at the chance. For a lot of reasons, I had long admired Jim. After we did the on-air interview, Jim and I spent some time chatting. I took a chance and showed him a human interest piece that I’d been working on. He liked it and told me I should send it to Chuck in New York. I did as Jim suggested and now the pink slip I held in my hand—a bit ironic, as it would eventually turn out—felt like a ticket to the big time.

  When I called Chuck, he told me that ABC wanted to use me on a couple of the fall telecasts. The caveat was that they were simultaneously going to use a guy from New York City named Sal Marciano—essentially, it was a tryout for the fourth team on their college football broadcasts.

  And so my first game for ABC was Ohio University at Kent State and Sal’s first game was Air Force at Oregon. I so wanted to do this right and I so wanted to be prepared, which meant doing a bit of research. To give you an idea of how primitive things were, I got on a long-distance phone call with the sports information director (SID) at Kent State, who gave me the team’s depth chart. I spent a good hour on the phone in my little cubicle of an office with a yellow legal tablet writing down numbers 1 through 88 along with the name, height, weight, and position of every player. I recorded the hometown of every player on the roster. I did the same thing with the depth chart.

  The production team all stayed at the Holiday Inn in Kent, Ohio. The billboard out front said HOLIDAY INN WELCOMES ABC SPORTS TO KENT. I thought, Boy, is that something. I’m part of this crew. And we had a broadcast associate—an entry-level position for people who want to become producers and directors. I still remember her name was Barbara Roche and there was no such thing as a Chyron machine or a graphics machine. You used a menu board. I couldn’t sleep so I went out and walked around the parking lot two or three times at two in the morning. And I happened to walk by Barbara’s room, which was down in almost a different wing from mine. We were all ground level and she was sitting on the bed with a menu board in front of her, taking the small plastic letters you’d usually see in a cafeteria saying MAC AND CHEESE SPECIAL $0.69 THIS WEEK to spell out players’ names for the on-screen graphics. The starting quarterback for Kent State was named Greg Kokal. I still remember that.

  The next week we switched. Sal did Holy Cross–Harvard and I had North Carolina–Maryland. At the end of the two weeks we both waited by the phone and I got a phone call from Chuck saying “You’re the guy.” My next game was Brigham Young at Arizona and I worked with a variety of different analysts all that year, no steady partner. But I did do the entire season.

  And then as a reward, at the end of it, I was assigned to the Division III championships, the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl in Phenix City, Alabama. I wound up doing three of those over the years. I was working hard those football seasons—five nights a week in Dallas, Bowling for Dollars on Monday, a college game on Saturday, a
nd a Cowboys game on Sunday. The more I did it, the more I wanted to do more of it. More didn’t necessarily mean more games.

  On Thanksgiving Day 1975, Texas was facing Texas A&M down in College Station. This was a game with huge regional interest as well as a match-up of two top-five teams—with one defeat Texas was at number five while the undefeated Aggies were ranked number two behind the Woody Hayes–coached Ohio State Buckeyes. Never mind the turkey and say farewell to the pie. I was going to take a Thursday road trip. I brought along my best buddy and spotter, the guy in the booth who helped me identify who, what, when, and where: Joe Cash. The analyst would be none other than Frank Broyles of Arkansas. Frank would go on to fame following his tremendous coaching career, partnering with Keith Jackson for ABC telecasts as the number one team.

  My situation couldn’t have been better. I was going to be calling a game between two teams I knew incredibly well, I’d have a great analyst by my side, and a nation at holiday leisure would be tuning in. Don Ohlmeyer, who would become one of the more famous sports producers in TV, filled that role and Roger Goodman, who produced all of ABC’s news shows, was the director. Trust me, that’s a who’s who of TV production at work in the truck. That year, Texas had the great Earl Campbell in the backfield. A bulldozer of a man-child, Earl went on to enjoy an outstanding NFL career with the Oilers and gained entry into both the college and pro football halls of fame. In 1975 he would earn All-American honors at fullback, lead the Southwest Conference in rushing with more than 1,000 yards, and establish himself as the legendary “Human Wrecking Ball.” Only thing is, A&M’s defense would have none of him in their 20–10 victory. Texas was held to a paltry six first downs and 179 yards of total offense. Campbell carried the ball 15 times for 40 yards.

  I don’t mind telling you that I was feeling like I was a BFD after that first taste of the fruits of national television. I kept on my gold-yellow-drab ABC sport coat as Joe drove us back toward Dallas, our waiting wives, and a Thanksgiving dinner for conquering heroes. Joe egged me on, asking me to imagine all those folks from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, who sat there drumstick struck as I wove my stories of the action. About a third of the way into the drive we pulled into a filling station in Fairfield, Texas. The pump attendant came out; Joe went in to use the restroom. The young man checked the tires, popped the hood, all the while eyeballing me surreptitiously. When he got to washing the windshield, I thought that he recognized me.

  I sensed that he was going to say something about the game that he’d just watched, congratulate me on a good job on national television. He took a rag out of his back pocket and went to work on a stubborn insect stain, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. Suddenly he straightened up and said to his pal in the filling station, “Rudy! Rudy! God almighty, get out here. It’s that Bowling for Dollars dude on the TV!”

  Still, I’d worked hard at my craft. I use that word with neither a sense of shame nor an inflated sense of self. I’m certainly no artist and I’m proud to be a craftsman—a furniture maker or cabinetmaker comes to mind, someone who makes an object. Though what I did produced something less tangible, less permanent, I still kept that notion in mind. I worked with tools—my voice and words—to produce an image. For my own use, I did create lasting objects of my work. During my early days doing play-by-play with the Cowboys, I always carried a small reel-to-reel recorder. I’d tape its microphone to the broadcast one. I’d review those tapes to listen for redundancies, overuse of adjectives, and tempo. Being studious about the work before and after the games taught me a lot. I could gauge my own improvement and so that call from ABC to do the Thanksgiving Day game was a real boost in confidence.

  That game fanned a young but already growing flame. As my years at WFAA went on, I was gratified by the work I was doing. But I wasn’t by any means satisfied. I’d gotten the national exposure I’d wanted, just as Tex Schramm had predicted back when he convinced me not to take the job in Los Angeles. He’s just one among many whom I thank for helping me move my career down the field.

  As my star was rising, another was setting. The Cowboys would continue to be one of the top teams in the NFL but after that 1978 season they wouldn’t return to the Super Bowl until 1992, when Jimmie Johnson came aboard and helped revitalize the franchise. Famously, the new owner, Jerry Jones, brought him on. The former Arkansas teammates made the Cowboys into America’s Team once again. I was no longer doing the radio broadcasts by then, but as an outside observer, I wasn’t pleased by how that regime began. Admittedly, Tom Landry had lost his touch as a coach. A 3-13 record in his final year to cap three sub-.500 finishes and no playoff appearances had fans howling. I’m a very loyal person, so to have a front-page photo of Jerry and Jimmy dining together before the purchase agreement fully went into effect didn’t sit well with me. It was obvious what Jerry was going to do, but Landry was still under contract. Tom was twisting in the wind to begin with and though he didn’t stay up there long, he’d been with the Cowboys organization long enough to deserve better. Firings are hard, I know, but they can be handled with class and Tom’s wasn’t. When Clint Murchison owned the team, when Tex Schramm was running things for them, the Cowboys were the epitome of class and character. Bum Bright’s brief tenure as owner took some of the shine off that fancy finish.

  Under Jerry Jones—and this may be true of all franchises as the game grew in popularity and their value increased greatly—the game became a “product.” The bottom line became profitability and not people. I suppose it’s a case of reality setting in. I’m not naïve. I witnessed a similar kind of thing in so-called amateur athletics with the NCAA and its ongoing issues with college football and basketball. It’s sad to see the NCAA and FBI mentioned in the same headlines instead of in different sections of the same newspaper. Greater minds than mine will have to sort all of that out. I know that ignoring those issues won’t make them go away, but as I’ve eased into semiretirement, I prefer to think about the moments of joy and pleasure and not the pain.

  Well, sometimes a little bit of pain was the result of too much pleasure seeking. As I’ve mentioned, Tex treated the press so well. In 1976, we were in Philadelphia. The club had made arrangements, as they usually did, for a private room at a restaurant. All the media, the coaching staff, and front office personnel who’d made the trip were invited to dine and drink on the Cowboys’ dime. Even the flight crew and flight attendants from the charter were in attendance. Tex, Joe Bailey, and Al Ward represented the front-office people and they were marvelous hosts.

  On this particular trip, we were at Bookbinders in Philly, a famous seafood joint. Before we ordered dinner, we were offered cocktails. Tex was famous for his love of J&B and the rest of us were familiar with various kinds of libations. Also, the Cowboys always hosted a hospitality room with an open bar at whatever hotel we stayed at on the road. Tom Dillard was the head of the photo department for the Dallas Morning News. He normally didn’t make the trip to help organize and supervise his team of photographers. This time his underling was under the weather so he made his rookie debut. He enjoyed the hospitality on offer at the hotel and staggered onto the bus chartered to take us to the restaurant. He looked a bit lost in the dining room at Bookbinders, unsure of the protocol or unclear of vision I can’t be certain.

  In any case, he waited for a long time before taking a seat. Instead of joining his fellow members of the fourth estate, he staked a claim at the coaches’ table. He plopped himself down in a chair between Alicia Landry, Tom’s wife, and Ernie Stautner, the defensive line coach and a Hall of Famer to boot. Tom was to his wife’s left. At our table, we noticed this but didn’t make a move to redirect him.

  The first course was turtle soup and things proceeded normally for a while. Mid-course, we noticed a commotion. We looked over to where Alicia Landry sat looking slightly aghast. Tom Dillard had passed out facefirst in his soup. Stautner grabbed him by the nape of the neck and kept him from drowning. Mrs. Landry, the very definition of genteel, uttered a sligh
tly disapproving “Oh, my.”

  Dinner went on. Tom Dillard was hauled up and loaded into a cab to take him back to the hotel.

  Collectively, we media guys decided to award Dillard the Soup Nose Award for his drunken display. Eventually we named a weekly winner of the award and kept a point tally to crown a season champion of making a drunken ass of himself. I only earned the coveted (?) title twice. I still claim innocence on the first of the pair.

  We were in Chicago staying at the Executive Inn Hotel, in the Loop. The hospitality room was on the thirty-second floor. Glass doors on one wall led to a patio balcony. A few of us stepped outside to take in the night air and the lovely view. I had been with the Cowboys only for about three years at this point. Jokingly I spread my arms out wide and said, “Someday, this will all be mine,” indicating the Sears Tower, the John Hancock Center, and the rest of the city shouldered up against the lake. I turned dramatically and ran straight into the glass doors and fell on my ass. The rest of the media crew swore that I was both inebriated and serious in making that proclamation. I will admit to having had a few but I was not serious.

  We did have some sense of decorum. Though Tex was eligible for the award and could have earned it on a few occasions (I’m being conservative in my estimates here), we never voted for him. No Cowboy would look a gift horse in the mouth. We all got a kind of schoolboy thrill of pleasure in voting for the winner on the plane and even more so in making the presentation the following Monday at the weekly Landry’s Luncheon. We’d always do that before Tom came into the room. We’d sit there like innocent little angels after that with Tom none the wiser.

  That said, I have no idea how Tom Landry would have felt about another little scheme I had going for a while. Ermal Allen was a former University of Kentucky quarterback. He served as Tom’s head of research and development. In that capacity, he had access to the scouting report of the opposition. I didn’t receive the Cowboys’ game plan, but Ermal did slip me a copy of that assessment document. To be honest, much of it was technical jargon and gibberish. There were a few valuable nuggets in it that I mined for use on the broadcast. Mostly, though, I relied on Ermal, who sat in the coaches’ booth adjacent to the radio booth to signal me what play would be run next. We’d developed a code to silently transfer that information. We didn’t utilize it too often, but every now and then I’d get on a roll of successfully “predicting” what the Cowboys were going to do.