Play by Play

by Verne Lundquist

  In Seattle we met briefly with Chuck Knox, interviewed a couple of players, and then took a boat to Fort Ludlow for a fine afternoon out on the links. We flew to Phoenix. Joe Bugle, the head coach, was quite busy but accommodating, so we didn’t go to Flagstaff to the team’s camp. We did a conference call with him and enjoyed a nice round of golf. The same was true of the last city. Denver’s Dan Reeves couldn’t meet with us in Greeley, Colorado, as scheduled, so we had a free day. We flew to Steamboat, got in a round of golf, and enjoyed a fine luncheon that Nancy prepared. We met with Reeves the next day.

  In their wisdom, CBS decided that with all these teams of broadcasters scattered about, it made sense to have some kind of convocation or colloquium in New York City. We’d assemble there and do presentations sharing what we learned on our reconnaissance missions to each of the team’s preseason camps. I don’t know if the borough of Manhattan, in all its history from the time it was a small burg known as New Amsterdam to when Wall Street gained renown as one of the world’s great financial capitals, has ever been inundated by so much bullshit. Everyone, with the exception of John Madden, pulled information from orifices that weren’t normally data generators. Hank Stram, the Hall of Fame coach turned broadcaster, brought a steam shovel while the rest of us used spades. Even members of the production staff joined, concocting elaborate presentations where they demonstrated their mastery of rosters, among other things. I should add Pat Summerall to the list of exceptions. He didn’t prepare at all for his time to talk. He was so naturally gifted and knowledgeable that his off the cuff remarks should have been preserved for posterity.

  If nothing else, those two research projects illustrated a couple of things that I already knew. John Madden had considerable pull with the network executives. John took his job seriously and demanded excellence of himself, the crew he worked with, and of everyone associated with all NFL telecasts at CBS and not just the ones he worked on.

  I worked with John on-air a few dozen times in my career. For later summer and early fall Pat was still doing golf and then the U.S. Open tennis tournament. I filled in for him. John loved his work, loved the game, and loved the NFL. His passion for all three came through in every broadcast. John would have loved if everyone around him felt as deeply as he did. I can still picture his look of dismay when, following a game, everyone went about their business of wrapping things up to get out of the stadium to get to the airport to get home. John didn’t fly, of course, and he hoped that we could all get together after the conclusion of the broadcast to revel in the game play or talk about the finer points of the production that we might tweak to get it better next time.

  He had the unique ability to find some minuscule bit that most of us wouldn’t have noticed and bring it to viewers’ attention and riff on it. That was his genius. Pat’s was that he could call the game straight up and also somehow manage to wrangle John back to the main focus of the game. They were extraordinary together, the best I’ve seen, and surely deserved to be the number one broadcast team that CBS has ever had. Like Howard Cosell, John had the ability to not just keep an audience, but to bring an audience to the game. Even if you had no rooting interest in a particular contest, John and Pat were, as the expression goes, appointment television.

  One thing I found interesting about John is that he came to broadcasting after a playing and coaching career. John was a lineman, and so many of the analysts I worked with were quarterbacks—Terry and Dan, of course—but also Todd Blackledge, Pat Haden, Gary Danielson. Maybe I was predisposed to working with former signal callers or maybe it was just coincidence. In reflecting on this, three things come to mind. First, quarterbacks have to have vision. Their ability to scan the field is essential on the field and in the broadcast booth. (Clearly John Madden’s ability to do this means this trait isn’t the exclusive domain of quarterbacks.) Second, as far as networks are concerned, recruiting quarterbacks makes sense. They are names, known quantities among fans, and therefore may bring more eyeballs. Lastly, the quarterbacks I worked with were used to thinking on their feet, communicating succinctly, and had a better understanding of the big picture and little pictures in the game. I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here because I worked with Matt Millen and Dan Dierdorf, two outstanding nonquarterbacks who had the skills, if not the name recognition factor, that I listed above. Maybe this is somewhat like the belief that catchers in baseball, because they are the only players looking out on the whole field, make better managers and even broadcasters—think Tim McCarver, for example.

  Along with being the best analyst in the game, John is the most idiosyncratic person I’ve ever met. Some of his quirks are the stuff of legend, but once you’re involved personally in them, they take on a new light. I was fortunate that Nancy frequently traveled with me to games. During one of those preseason/early season substitution scenarios, Nancy flew with me to New York for a game I did with John. Our next assignment was in Pittsburgh.

  John graciously offered to let us join him on his famous tour bus that Greyhound provided. A lot of people assume wrongly that John was afraid of flying. That’s not strictly true. What John didn’t like was giving up control. That might have been part of his coaching mentality bleeding over into another area of life. Come to think of it, him leaving coaching might have had something to do with those control issues. John likely would have been fine flying if he could have been his own pilot. John likely would have been fine with traveling by train if he could have pulled the cord so that the train could stop whenever he wanted it to so that he could grab a cup of coffee, at a convenience store, have a meal, or whatever suited his fancy at that moment.

  Traveling by bus provided him with that level of control. Nancy and I found out the hard way that if you traveled by bus with John, you should know John’s Rules of the Road. On that trip we discovered that John, a large man, needed the bus to be chilled to an unpleasant for most 55 to 60 degrees. When we entered the bus and took our seats in the first section of it—behind the driver’s compartment and where a café table and chairs, a sofa, and an easy chair were positioned—we didn’t feel the chill at first. By the time we crossed the George Washington Bridge our gooseflesh let us know that something was afoot. We’d dressed and packed for August heat and humidity, not the tundra. We looked around and saw that John’s regular traveling companions, CBS broadcast associates—young men low on the corporate totem pole—must have been Boy Scouts. They came prepared. John had three full-size monitors suspended from the ceiling and a satellite dish on the roof. He watched tape, other broadcasts of games, and whatever else he wanted for entertainment.

  John’s entourage included the two bus drivers. One drove while the other rested so that the bus could be in motion continuously except for fuel stops and at John’s request. Sandy Montag of IMG accompanied John as well. Sandy is the most powerful agent for sports broadcasters today, but back then he was an assistant. I was glad that Sandy was along. He did what a good agent does—he negotiates. He knew that Nancy and I were on the verge of becoming frozen fish sticks. He mentioned this to John, and, knowing that turning the temperature up was not an option, suggested John allow Nancy to go to the back of the bus. There she could settle under the sheets and blankets of his queen-size bed. John agreed to that accommodation. Dave Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, was also along. He was working on a book with John but was also still writing a column. He reported that Nancy was the first woman to sleep in John’s bed while he was on the road.

  A small claim to fame, I suppose, but still noteworthy.

  Once we arrived in Pittsburgh and were properly thawed out, I went with John to Three Rivers Stadium. It was another of those horrible circular stadiums with sight lines from the booth that could disorient anyone. John was dressed in usual track suit type leisurewear, and we ambled across the field toward one of the baseball dugouts. John suddenly stopped. He turned to the Pittsburgh equipment manager, “Dirt” DiNardo, who had been talking with John. (John was
a very friendly guy.) He pointed into the dugout and asked, “Is that the one?”

  I had an inkling of what “the one” referred to.

  In 1972, his Oakland Raiders had come into Pittsburgh for a playoff game that became known for the Immaculate Reception. That disputed play cost the Raiders the game, and has been enshrined in NFL history as one of the greatest plays and one of the most controversial calls ever. Volumes have been written about it, generations have feuded over whether or not Franco Harris’s catch of a deflected pass should have been ruled a touchdown, and sixteen years after the fact, John was still steamed about the call that went against him. What particularly irked him, and accounts vary about just what exactly referee Fred Swearingen said or asked chief of officiating Art McNally, was that the officials on the field seemed not to agree on the ruling. Swearingen used a telephone in that dugout to call up to the press box to speak to McNally. He learned that it was a legal catch.

  Once John got confirmation that the offending phone was still extant, he stomped over and tugged and pulled and dislodged it. I worried that he might try to kick it, given John’s habit of always wearing tennis shoes. He tucked it under his arm and continued along his way, saying something about how he was finally going to get something from this damned stadium. The phone eventually took up a prominent place of (dis)honor on the bus.

  John and I got along well, but it was clear that he was most comfortable working with Pat. The two of them were a great team, but I can’t say that they were buddies. Pat suffered from alcohol addiction, and John didn’t seek out the nightlife. He had a routine in place wherever we stayed. He did not want to be on a high floor, generally asking for no higher than the third. He and the broadcast associates, one of whom was Richie Zyonts, who went to Fox with John and rose through the ranks there to be a lead producer, would order takeout dinners. They had their cuisine on rotation and enjoyed hanging out in a meeting room playing poker. I wasn’t a gambler, so I never joined them. John said that he didn’t go out to dinner because fans would inundate him and he wanted to be left alone. Yet he frequently sat in public places in the hotel and was warm and receptive to the people who would recognize him and chat him up. We’re all complicated individuals and have our contradictory ways, but I always noted that particular trait in John—he didn’t like to be alone. Some of that was likely his predilection for bus travel. The rest of us got to go home to loved ones between games. John was on the road, and his wife, Virginia, seldom joined him. His two sons, both Ivy League–educated young men, also were seldom on scene.

  John was diligent and well prepared. I only really saw him sweat once, and that had nothing to do with preparation. John didn’t like tight spaces, and one preseason game in Wisconsin put him to the test. Instead of the Packers facing off against the Giants in Green Bay, the Packers scheduled it in Madison. I’ve already said how much I liked Camp Randall Stadium and how big a role that Illinois–Wisconsin game played in advancing my career. In the intervening years, Camp Randall had undergone a renovation. A second deck was added and a short roof was constructed that jutted out over the broadcast positions. I walked into that small space with the canted roof and had the feeling that I was looking out on the field through the opening of a football helmet. John showed up after me, and I could immediately sense he was uncomfortable. After a minute or so, à la Terry Bradshaw, John broke into a flop sweat.

  He got in touch with the production staff and they put in a few calls to the Packers. They contacted the university’s facilities management folks and a few minutes later, workmen showed up. They knocked out an adjoining wall, extending our broadcast spot into the one beside it. John breathed easier, and I marveled at how quickly a solution was found. I’ll admit that I was a bit envious. John meant a lot to the company and the financial benefits of having him on our team are immeasurable but substantial. I should have been, I can see now, a bit more grateful and a little less dismayed.

  I have similar feelings about the position I was often placed in when taking over for Pat when it wasn’t another sporting event that prevented him from partnering with John. Pat was remarkable at what he did, especially considering that he was given a pass on attending our production meetings. He’d been at it so long, I suppose, that he didn’t feel the need to go and CBS wasn’t going to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. I could understand and accept that. I struggled with other of Pat’s absences.

  Pat’s battles with the bottle have been well documented, and I won’t dwell on them too much here. I tell this only to illustrate the effects that his drinking had on me directly. I was frequently called in to replace Pat when he “went down.” I’d get a call from one CBS executive or another letting me know in that coded language (as we would say of a player who was injured) that Pat was in a bad way and couldn’t do a broadcast. I understood the disease nature of alcoholism, and I had worked with and otherwise seen a lot of individuals who were afflicted with it. I was no teetotaler, but I was always able to do my job. This may sound harsh, but it sometimes rankled me that Pat’s struggles necessitated him receiving treatment I doubted I would have been given.

  His problems once offered me an opportunity that I might not have ever received. At the end of the 1990 season, just before the playoffs, Pat went down again. Midweek before the second to last weekend of the regular season, I got word from Neal Pilson that Pat had checked into the Betty Ford Clinic. That alcohol rehabilitation center was renowned for its effective treatment. I was sorry to hear that Pat was in tough shape again but glad that he was getting the best of care. I was also glad to hear that I was going to be moved from working with Dan Fouts to do play-by-play alongside John Madden. We’d be paired for the last two games of the regular season plus the playoffs. I’d done playoff games before, but only one round of them. Neal assured me that the switch was going to be in effect throughout the playoffs. I’d be doing the most high-profile games and that was a thrill. Jack Buck was going to be shuffled over to work with Dan.

  I was pleased to have the opportunity but it didn’t sit well with two other members of my team. Wolf and Cavolina were understandably upset. Breaking up an announcing pair that late in the season would upset the rhythm of the entire broadcast team. Heated exchanges ensued. Regardless of how upset they were, the final decision had been rendered. I reported to Chicago for a January 6, 1991, playoff game between the Bears and the Saints. Minutes before kickoff, the phone rang in our booth. John answered it. He let out a big “Hey! How are you! Glad to hear from you.” Then he hunched over and turned his back to me and continued the conversation. I figured it was Pat and that he was likely just calling to wish John well. We did the game. The Bears won, 16–6. We had a nice, tight broadcast, and I was looking forward to going on to New York the following week to cover the Bears versus the Giants. Two storied franchises. Two huge markets. Another opportunity to be on the first team.

  Before the game, I was down on the field. Neal Pilson walked up to me and put his arm around me. He said that he had some good news. Pat had been released from Betty Ford. He was doing well. His doctors okayed him leaving. He was going to New York and would do the game with John. I was not happy. I said so. I probably used far stronger language than that. I regret how I acted. I should have been happy for Pat and for the network. Pat was beloved among most of the folks at CBS Sports. I liked and respected him. I should have been more concerned about his welfare and less about my career prospects.

  That said, eventually my feelings about the Pat situation played a large role in another career decision I faced.

  Toward the end of the 1993 season, I was working with Dan Fouts again. We were doing a Cowboys–Jets Saturday afternoon football game at Giants Stadium. We stayed at the Hilton in adjacent Secaucus, New Jersey. Dan and I, along with our producer Mike Burkes, were having our production meeting. At one point we were waiting around for Jimmy Johnson, the Cowboys’ head coach, to join us. While we were waiting, Mike took a call. He excused himself for a moment a
nd when he came back into the room, he delivered the news. CBS, after thirty-eight years of televising NFL football, had lost the broadcast rights. Fox, the upstart network, had outbid us. We barely had time to let those words register when Jimmy came into the room. We all recovered enough to greet him. He looked at us one by one and said, “What’s with you guys? You look like you’ve seen a dead man.”

  “Kind of,” Dan said, “but we’re the dead guys. We just lost the rights to the NFL.”

  Jimmy, glib as ever said, “Goes to show you, boys, it’s a tough fucking business on both sides of the ball.”

  Amen to that.

  We finished out the season. Speculation about who would make the move to Fox ran rampant. Pat was the first to sign and despite what many believe, he wasn’t a part of a package deal. John was nearly signed, sealed, and delivered with NBC. At the eleventh hour, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of parent News Corporation, called John. He asked John if his decision was about the money. John reportedly said, “Isn’t it always?”

  For me, it wasn’t about the money. I was contacted about going to Fox and assuming my role as the number two guy there. I thanked the folks at Fox and said that I needed some time to think about it. That’s as far as it got. They inquired. I thought about it briefly and declined before any negotiations began.

  Why did I reject the idea?

  This may sound bitter, but it also has the ring of truth to it. Very high on my list of reasons was my desire to get out from under being number two to John and Pat. I didn’t like the idea of going to a new network and assuming the same responsibilities. I was okay with being number two, but I had enough of being called on to clean up other people’s messes. I understand how that sounds, but that was how I felt then. That said, that doesn’t diminish my feelings, more so now than then, that I should have been more concerned about Pat and what he was facing. Not for the first time in my career or in my life, I had to come face-to-face with my selfishness and my ambition.