After another Vols touchdown, they were up 34–26, and with exactly five minutes left the Gators took over on the change of possession from their own 33-yard line. We cut to shots of the Tennessee band and threw up a graphic identifying Todd and me as the commentators, then I noticed some activity down on the field. The officials were marching off fifteen yards against the Volunteers. At first I hadn’t seen a flag, and my spotter hadn’t, either. Fulmer wanted an explanation, and so did we. All we knew was that it was for a personal foul.
Before we could get that explanation, Florida snapped the ball and ran a trick play. A streaking wide receiver took a direct snap while in motion to the left side; he handed off the ball to a wide receiver on the right side, then threw a pass back across the field to another wide receiver. They picked up only nine yards on the risky call, and it’s that factor again that came into play—speed. The Tennessee defense swarmed all over and kept that play relatively in check.
From that point on, what we had all said might happen did. Grossman led the Gators down the field, completing 5 of 6 for 54 yards and a touchdown to bring the Gators within two at 34–32. Eighty-six ticks remained on the clock. Spurrier didn’t hesitate. We’d been saying throughout the drive that he had to go for the tie by attempting the two-point conversion. They needed two yards. Spurrier’s offense came out in a four-wideout formation. Jabar Gaffney, an All-American, was lined up against Buck Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had never started a game. He had only 26 tackles in his entire career. Those are the kind of match-ups you want. Grossman had thrown for 362 yards to that point. We didn’t have time to set up all of that, and Todd and I just let the play unfold.
Grossman took the snap and Tennessee’s cover guys were all over their men. He danced around a bit before firing wide of his target, Gaffney. The ball wasn’t close. Gaffney signaled that he was held, but the play stood.
We broke away for commercial and did our usual game-scoring recap when we returned. A minute and ten seconds remained. Florida lined up for an onside kick. The ball bounced high in the air and Tennessee’s mountain of a block tight end, John Findlayson, leaped as high as Rocky Top and brought the ball down. Tennessee ran out the clock and won in the Swamp for the first time since 1971. Albert Haynesworth of the Volunteers later delivered a memorable line stating that the Vols had made it into “a little old pond.”
The lasting image I have is of Casey Clausen climbing the bandleader’s ladder and waving the baton to conduct the Pride of the Southland Band in “Rocky Top.” I didn’t mind that he’d exceeded the average number of times the tune was played. What a stirring ball game that was.
Only later did we learn that the two-point incompletion was more controversial than we thought. At least that was true in the mind of Spurrier and many Florida fans. Some went so far as to say that the no-call on pass interference was a makeup for what happened the previous year when Gaffney scored the winning touchdown on a ball that many believed he didn’t catch. More than a decade later, in 2013, Jeremy Fowler wrote a piece that appeared on CBSSports.com about the no-call. He got in touch with the two coaches and their versions of that last-gasp effort are enlightening.
“Guy was hanging all over him, but no interference,” Spurrier said. I believe that what he meant was that no interference penalty was called.
Fulmer said that it was great defensive play and added, “It kind of makes up for one in Knoxville where Gaffney dropped the ball and official called it a touchdown.”
Nice to see that fans and coaches alike can stoke the fires of what might have been/what should have been. I’m glad that we didn’t get into any of that. There were plenty of near misses—balls that could have/should have been intercepted, a penalty call or two that might have been on the edge. Instead, I prefer to think of what had happened and the excitement those plays generated in the moment.
As the saying goes, upon further review, they still thrill.
Chapter 12
The Tournament and the Shot(s)
I’d been calling NCAA tournament games for CBS since I started with the network, but it was a special thrill to partner with the legendary Al McGuire in 1999 for the opening weekend. During that 1998–1999 season, Bill Clinton was in the White House. Monica Lewinsky was in the headlines. The Broncos beat the Packers in Super Bowl XXII. The movie Titanic had all kinds of Oscar buzz. I wasn’t on top of the world; I was in Charlotte, North Carolina. Still I was pretty thrilled to be doing my first tournament games with Al McGuire. Al had coached the Marquette Warriors for a number of years. He led them to the NCAA title in 1977 in his final year as head coach. He went into broadcasting with NBC and was courtside in 1997 for the famous Indiana State/Larry Bird versus Michigan State/Magic Johnson title game, which many say launched the NCAA tournament into the stratosphere.
Al’s exuberant style stood in contrast to Billy Packer’s closer-to-the-vest, analytical style. Dick Enberg kept the high-wire act from falling to the net. By the time I worked with Al for that 1999 tournament, he’d been doing games for so long that he believed he really didn’t need to prepare much. He was a basketball lifer and he’d let the game come to him. That also included letting the names and numbers come to him—he didn’t bother with memorization. I can kind of understand why. I’ve always said that the first two days of the tournament, with four games to do, are the longest day in sports broadcasting. They can take a toll on you. Even when you are at your best and most prepared, mental fatigue can set in and you can make mistakes.
We got through the first game, Delaware versus Tennessee, in decent shape. Following that, we had to endure what I still say is one of the worst college basketball games ever. Southwest Missouri State took on Wisconsin. It was almost surreal. The Badgers fell, 43–32, and during the intermission between games I felt like I’d been badgered into submission. At least the giant stack of papers that I had prepared with notes was then halved. Duke, the top seed in the regional, destroyed Florida A&M. That left us with College of Charleston against Tulsa. Bill Self was at the helm of a very good Tulsa team.
During the break, I approached Al and asked him, “Coach? Anything I can do for you in this last game?”
He shook his head.
I went about my business reviewing my now very thinned pile of papers. I looked over at Al and he was sitting and staring ahead, lost in thought. We made our way back to the broadcasting position. I noticed that Al had nothing in front of him. Not a roster. No notes. Nothing.
I thought maybe he had an eidetic memory or was somehow otherwise very familiar with the two clubs. Still, I wanted our coverage to be good, so I asked him again if I could do anything to help him out.
“No. They’ll take their warm-ups off, and I’ll get the names and numbers. You’ll do the bulk of it for the first few minutes. I’ll pick things up. I’ll be okay.”
Who was I to argue with a legend?
Just before tip-off, the Charleston players came off the court and stood near their bench. The starters slipped off their long-sleeved tops. I saw numbers. I saw no names.
I looked down the line at the Tulsa bench. Same thing. Numbers. No names.
Al leaned over to me and said, “Son, you might have to help me out. I think I’m screwed.”
We made it through the game and on to the next weekend. Unfortunately, that was the last time Al would do an NCAA tournament game. We all knew he was ill, but as far as I know, no one knew how virulent the leukemia was that he was battling. That was his last broadcast, and, sadly, he died in 2001. I was grateful that I got to do those games with him, and have fond memories of him. He was one of the great characters in the game. So much so that the headline of his New York Times obituary was “Al McGuire, 72, Coach, TV Analyst and Character Dies.” I don’t know about you, but going down in history as a “character” sounds like a pretty good indicator of a life well lived.
Al was idiosyncratic, to be sure. That year we were working together we were in Chicago. I sat solo at a table for four. The rest of the sp
ace was nearly empty. Al strolled in, spotted me, and took a seat at an adjacent table. We exchanged greetings. I had to ask him: Why did you choose to seat yourself near me but not with me? “This way I can see the whole room.” I raised an eyebrow. The “whole room” consisted of empty tables and chairs and a lone waitress who soon figured in our little drama.
Before she did, Al sat craning his neck and rolling his head from side to side. “I know you think I’m a bit unusual,” Al said, “but I’ll tell you this. I’ve made millions being this way.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
Nor could I not take his side when he engaged in a debate with a waitress that reminded me of the famous diner scene in the Jack Nicholson film Five Easy Pieces. Al’s battle wasn’t over a chicken salad sandwich but in his case a poached egg. It was lunchtime, the place was empty, but given the irrefutable logic of meal service, he couldn’t get the waitress to meet his simple request for two poached eggs. Doggedly, Al labored on: “I’m a betting man, you see. I’m willing to wager that somewhere back there in that kitchen are some eggs. Dozens of them.” He paused for dramatic effect. “You do have eggs back there.”
The waitress blanched. “We do. But we don’t serve them after eleven.”
“I’m not asking you to serve the eggs. I’m asking you to serve me. Two eggs poached. I bet if you ask the chef, he’d be able to do that.”
He was. Al never raised his voice or condescended. He just had to figure out the right approach.
It was a small victory in comparison to him walking away from his coaching job at Marquette after winning the national title. I admired him for making that move. As I’ve said, so few of us go out on top.
I was also privileged to work with Tommy Heinsohn, doing NBA and NCAA games. What a contrast to Al. If Al was a Tesla automobile—sleek, silent, and swift—Tommy was a muscle car—just as fast but louder and more what you see is what you get direct. Back in the 1980s, CBS used to do a late Thursday and Friday night NCAA basketball telecast. It started at 11:30 on the East Coast, so, by necessity, it generally featured teams from out west. We were sent to broadcast the game between Texas Western and LSU. That game was preceded by Bob Knight’s Hoosiers taking on George Washington University.
Contractually, the winning coach in each of the games is required to come over and spend five minutes with the host television broadcast network. After the Indiana win, their PR guy stood with Coach Knight and pointed towards us. Tommy and I were standing on the court near the mid-court line. We watched as Knight shook his head emphatically.
I said to Ed Goren, our producer in the truck, that he’s not going to come over; he’s shaking his head. Ed replied that in New York they were demanding the interview. Knight has to come over. We had a deal. I suggested to Ed that he’d better send somebody from his staff into the locker room to explain this to Coach Knight. We had thirty minutes between games so we were out on the court and doing our rehearsal and our warm-up for LSU and Texas Western. The camera guys had to get it right because I’m five feet nine and a half, and Tommy is easily a full foot taller. All of a sudden, I said to the guys in the truck, “Roll the tape. Here comes Knight and he doesn’t look like he’s in a happy mood.”
The cameras were rolling. Bob came up to the two of us and he looked at me; he didn’t look at Tommy at all.
He said, “They tell me I’ve got to talk to you guys. Okay. Here’s the deal. Verne, I will talk to you, but”—he touched Tom with his finger in his chest—“him I’m not speaking to.”
Tommy was incredulous and said, “Do we have some kind of an issue that I’m not aware of?” Knight looked at him and got right in his face. “Yeah. I’ve got a beef with you. Did you just write a book?”
Tom said, “Yeah, it was just published about two months ago.”
Knight shook his head. “Well, on page two hundred forty-nine of your book you said your son was a football player and not a basketball player but were he a basketball player you would never have allowed him to play for Bob Knight at Indiana.”
By the time Knight got all that out, his face was crimson.
Tom said, “That’s how I feel. I don’t think you treat your players right. I think you abuse them.”
That set Bob off and for the next two minutes they went at it, verbally, chest to chest like a baseball umpire and a pissed-off manager.
We chewed up a chunk of time and we had to get the interview done. I said as much to Bob. In a split second, Bob turned around to me with this big smile on his face. He put his arm around my back and said, “Now, Verne, what was it you wanted to ask me about the game we just played?”
That all happened that fast, and he just flipped the switch. As far as I know, he and Tommy never spoke again. Coach Knight and I always had a cordial relationship, but seeing how quickly he could turn on someone was a valuable lesson for me. For my part, Coach Knight and I always got along well. I kept my judgments about him to myself. He was a great basketball coach, but his temper did get the best of him at times.
In 2000, I was paired with Bill Raftery as my analyst. Talk about another character. Until I stopped covering the tournament in 2018, we worked together for 15 years. Ironically, Al McGuire’s brother Frank, then the head coach at South Carolina, played a role in my first meeting with the Big Irishman. In 1983, I’d just started working for CBS and got a call from New York telling me to pack my bags and get to Columbia, South Carolina. A fascinating regional rivalry game between the University of Idaho and the Gamecocks. I’m sure that the East Coast was riveted to their tens of millions of seats. In any case, I was further informed that my partner would be a man named Bill Raftery. He was my age. He had once been the head coach at Seton Hall and before that, Fairleigh Dickinson.
If this sounds like the beginning of a story about a blind date, in a way it is. Bill and I met for the first time, he clarified for me that his name wasn’t Rafferty, and the two of us became instant friends. I can’t remember a thing about the Idaho–South Carolina game, but Billy and I were paired again in Columbia the following week as they took on Marquette. Doc Rivers was their point guard and the two of us would eventually be paired as broadcast partners years later during my TNT days.
Bill had said to me the previous week, “Listen, this is so much fun, I want you to meet Joanie, and I’m going to bring Joanie and I want you to bring Nancy, and the four of us will have dinner and the ladies will go to the game.” So the two women came to Columbia, and Bill and his wife, Joanie, and Nancy and I hit it off right away. And one of the reasons for that is that Bill knows and knew everybody of any consequence in the sport. And among those who were living in Columbia was Frank McGuire.
Bill said, “I’ve arranged for the four of us to be hosted by Frank and his wife at their dinner club in downtown Columbia.” So this was Saturday night, and the game was Sunday. First we met at Frank’s house for drinks. Then we had dinner and cocktails. Then we went back to Frank’s house for a nightcap. We stayed up and watched a late-night basketball game on something called ESPN. And I swear that was one of the first dozen times I had ever seen the network on the air.
Finally, we stumbled back to our hotel, and I learned then about Raftery’s resilience. The next morning, I got up at seven thirty or eight o’clock with not much sleep, and I went down the elevator, and I looked like hell and felt like it. Still, I was determined to get the Sunday New York Times and the local paper and go up and shower and shave and do my notes and get ready. As the elevator got to the lobby floor, the doors opened and there was Raftery in his coat and tie. He held a cup of coffee, and he was whistling.
I said, “Where in the heavens have you been?”
He said, “I went to Mass at seven o’clock.”
That was my baptism by firewater with Bill.
And we did the second game and we got a call from New York, one of the things that you always hope for. One of the executives said, “Boy, you guys sounded great together. We can’t wait to hear you together agai
n.” That was in 1983. The next time we were assigned as partners—now, there was probably a game or two in the next seventeen years—but we did not become full partners until 2000. Maybe CBS was thinking of the health of our livers.
Even though we didn’t become full partners until then, we kept in touch and whenever possible got together. A particularly memorable New York trip when Billy was working a game at Madison Square Garden and proved that he had the kind of staying power that he was so well known for. Dinner at eleven thirty. Drinks following. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I vaguely recall him calling Joanie from a phone at the bar and telling her, “I’m going to be a little late tonight.”
Bill was, and is, a great storyteller and hugely fun to be around. In some ways, he carefully cultivates that barfly image. While he enjoys the nightlife, I can say this for him: not only does he outlast the rest of us, he always comes to the games prepared. Al Maguire was quite the character and could spin a yarn with the best of them, but Bill would never let himself get caught off guard the way Al did that memorable day in Charlotte.
Bill is a real student of the game, and he brought a coach’s sense of preparation to the broadcast. In the midst of all the bubbling personality and the warmth and the Irish wit and the shtick, Bill Raftery is as prepared as any man I’ve ever worked with in any sport. And so I’ve often told people, “Don’t let that Irish humor and that casualness deceive you. This guy is meticulously prepared.” And in part, that has to do with his interaction with coaches and their willingness to share things with him. He doesn’t rely on his memory or his partner. Like a baseball pitcher who keeps a book on all the opposing hitters, every year Bill gets a basketball scorebook and starts taking notes. It’s got a basketball court diagram at the top of the page so he can illustrate to himself particular plays and defensive schemes. And then below that are small, tiny handwritten notes that only he can read. It’s Raftery’s way of using hieroglyphics to prepare for a broadcast. But he gets it all in. I mean, sometimes he just rushes to get it all in. He used to do the Maui tournament to kick off the season in November and he keeps that note-taking going through March. Keep in mind that he’s a guy who will work every weekend throughout the season, sometimes doing more than one game. As you can imagine, that book is thick with insights, but I don’t think anyone would ever be able to decipher any of it.
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