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  Dedication

  For Nancy,

  Your warmth and generosity, along with your kindness

  and your sense of humor, have made the path we have taken together

  so wonderful that it’s almost beyond my ability to describe.

  You’ve still got the greatest smile I’ve ever seen.

  I love you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter 1: Names and Tunes

  Chapter 2: Finding My Direction

  Chapter 3: Cowboy Days

  Chapter 4: California Dreaming, Dallas Realities

  Chapter 5: New Horizons

  Chapter 6: Beyond Borders

  Chapter 7: Yes, Sir: A New Home at the Masters

  Chapter 8: Let’s Invent Us a Football Player

  Chapter 9: The Gang’s All Here

  Chapter 10: Live from Lillehammer It’s Verne and Scott Meet Tonya and Nancy

  Chapter 11: Conference Lines and Passions

  Chapter 12: The Tournament and the Shot(s)

  Chapter 13: In Your Life: Tiger and Other PGA Tales

  Chapter 14: Lasting Memories of the SEC

  Chapter 15: Matters of Consequence

  Acknowledgments

  Illustrations

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Preface

  History has a funny way of sneaking up on you. One day you’re sitting at a radio control board in Austin on November 22, 1963, having your boss shouting at you to put him on the air, and then seemingly seconds later you’re talking with your bosses about winding down your days covering South Eastern Conference football. No, it doesn’t happen that fast, but it sure feels like it in retrospect. At first you’re eager to get on the air to make a name for yourself, and then before you know it, you’re contemplating how to exit gracefully, avoid hanging on too long.

  So when Sean McManus and I had those first conversations in the spring of 2016 about my ending my seventeen-year relationship with America’s premier football conference, I was ready to figure things out with him. I was grateful to Sean and the rest of the management team at CBS for allowing me to have some input into how my career would wind down. Corporations don’t always do that, and I understood and appreciated another unique opportunity they were offering me. I was also pleased that they’d let me know early on in the process that Brad Nessler would be filling my role. Not that my opinion carried a lot of weight, but I agreed wholeheartedly with the choice. Brad is a great sportscaster, had worked with my partner and friend Gary Danielson before, and I was familiar with his outstanding work.

  I am proud of what we built at CBS in covering the SEC all those Saturdays, and it was comforting to know that the games would be in great hands, in the booth, in the truck, and back in New York. After the announcement was made that the ’16 season would be my last, I went about my business as usual preparing for another great season of NCAA football. At our annual pre-season seminar, I made it clear to everyone that business as usual was how I wanted things to go. This was no farewell tour; this was no victory lap. The games were the thing, the student-athletes and their coaches and families the storyline.

  Everyone nodded and agreed.

  Seems like some people had a different idea, and as the season went on they wanted to recognize my years covering the SEC. I was okay with that; just so long as what people chose to do for me didn’t interfere with all of us getting the job done in telling the most compelling stories we could about a game and a league we all loved.

  I don’t mind telling you that as I sit here in my office back home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, many of the mementos I received from that last year are hung on the walls or have taken a prominent place elsewhere in the room. Jerseys, footballs, plaques, and other memorabilia mean so much to me. I’m an avid collector (okay, I’m a rat-packer and have copies of rosters and other things dating back to my first days in radio), so these things mean a lot to me. More than that, much more, in fact, they are a reminder of the wonderful people I met along the way. I’ve been blessed that people seem to like me in this world. I know that I was called Uncle Verne by SEC Football fans, and sometimes derisively. But I consider that a warm compliment. I like being in people’s homes and I never take that for granted.

  When I think of all the names and faces, it can get pretty crowded in here—Archie and Peyton Manning, Steve Spurrier and Jeremy Foley, Nick Saban and Joe Namath. Heck, the entire University of Georgia band is crammed in here spelling out “Yes Sir!” I apologize in advance for not listing and naming everyone and every school that showed me such great kindness. That would take up an entire book on its own. I am enormously grateful and humbled by the time and attention that went into those various salutes. I could not have imagined back in my first days in radio in Austin, and before, that I’d receive that kind of a send-off for simply doing something that I so dearly love to do.

  That last season was a memorable one on the field as well. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting some of my favorite haunts from Auburn, Alabama to College Station, Texas and all points in between as our crew crisscrossed the conference. From Alabama’s stirring 48–43 victory over Ole Miss to Tennessee’s last-second win over Georgia to the double-overtime thriller between Texas A&M and Tennessee, the games stayed center stage and dramatic.

  As hard as it may be for some to believe, there’s more to my story than just SEC football—a lot more. For more than fifty years I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the greatest sporting events America has witnessed. I’ve been blessed to be present at events where something truly significant has broken out in front of me. You go into a broadcast with high hopes every week, every event, every night that something special will break out, and if you’re really, really lucky, it will. In my case, I’ve been really lucky a half dozen times or more. Then you hope that you’re up to the moment and capture it with words that are appropriate to the significance of the event. I’m very proud of the fact that for the most part, I have done that.

  I have always seen myself as a teller of stories and not the story itself. My role as a play-by-play man is to relate the facts so that those watching can know where we are in the unfolding story of the game. If that means time, score, down, and distance in football, how much time is left on the shot clock in basketball, and not a whole lot more, I’m okay with that. I was never on the scene to make headlines or have my calls of a game go down in history. I leave the history-making to the athletes and coaches, the other true participants in the games and contests I’ve covered. I suppose, like the old adage that a baseball umpire has done his job if no one notices his presence, then that has been my life’s ambition. To tell the story but not be the story.

  To a degree this book is the exception to that rule. After more than fifty years I think I’ve earned the right to step out from behind the camera and have my say about what went on behind the scenes of some of the events I’ve covered in that span. I’ve no interest in spoiling your memories of the things that happened or diminish your sense of what some of the most famous athletes and broadcasters of the day were like. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be honest, but I also live by the example my minister father and my gracious mother set. If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.

  I’ve met and worked with some fascinating and some frustrating figures, and have been witness to history on the playing fields and in the streets. Consider the recollections that follow postcards from my past. I was there, but my heart and my head were always filled with thoughts of you all back home listening and watching. I loved the sense that I was sharing and that we were all bound together in
a community. I’m of the generation of Americans whose lives and whose viewership weren’t quite so fragmented by choice as they are today. Things change; I know that and I’m fine with that. I’m just happy for one more opportunity to share with you again, to take on my role as storyteller. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

  Chapter One

  Names and Tunes

  As any competent play-by-play man would, I’ve always considered myself duty bound to get the names right. I suppose that I ought to do the same here. I was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in July 1940 and was christened with the name Merton LaVerne Lundquist, Jr. For some reason “Uncle Merton” doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? “Uncle LaVerne” would cause all kinds of confusion. Why my father, Merton LaVerne Lundquist, Sr., bequeathed that hefty name on me I’ll never know. Obviously, he was of good Swedish stock and he likely figured I’d grow up stout and strong as a result of toting that name around. That’s not quite the same as the legendary Johnny Cash and his song “A Boy Named Sue,” but that’s okay.

  It could have been worse. Both my parents—my mother, Arda Christine, was Norwegian—came from a long line of really weird names, I mean really weird. My paternal grandfather was Ebenezer. My paternal grandmother was Edla. My dad was the oldest of five; he was Merton. There were also Clinton, Orvin, Roland, and Leona.

  Dad was born in Kansas. His people were all farmers, wheat farmers, and they tried to eke out a living in the Dust Bowl days. He and my grandparents had some ambition for him beyond struggling. He was fortunate and smart enough to attend Augsburg College in Minneapolis. He had his sights set on becoming a Lutheran minister. Between completing his four-year degree and starting seminary, he attended the Lutheran Bible Institute. It was while there that he met my mother. By the time I came along in 1940, they’d been married for a year. I’m an inveterate pack rat, and I must have inherited that trait from my parents. At some point years later, they showed the receipt for my delivery—twenty-five dollars. After serving as a student pastor for three months in Duluth, Minnesota, we settled in to live in Rock Island, Illinois, where my father attended seminary at Augustana College. He graduated on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and was assigned to Zion Lutheran Church in Everett, Washington.

  My earliest memories are of the cramped parsonage we lived in. It was adjacent to one of the two churches he served, the one in downtown Everett. The other was in nearby Lake Stevens. My father was very present in my formative years since his office was just a few steps from our home.

  One Friday afternoon in 1947, I stepped out of the parsonage with my father to run a weekly errand with him. The state of Washington was still dominated by the logging industry, and the smell of fresh-cut cedar and spruce battled, and took a whipping from, the chemical odors coming from the pulping operations at Weyerhaeuser Timber and others. Eyes blinking against the stench, we headed to the studios of radio station KRKO at the outskirts of town. The studios were in a small, squat, garage-like building, and out in front stood a large tower, the transmitter that broadcast the signal throughout much of Snohomish County at 1380 on your radio dial. As part of KRKO’s programming they did public service announcements, and my dad was there to deliver the church notes. The First Baptist Church was hosting a potluck dinner; the Luther League—our church’s youth group was meeting at seven thirty Sunday night, that sort of thing. We stepped into the cozy quarters of the radio station, and my eyes were instantly drawn to a man wearing headphones behind a glass partition. In front of him hung a microphone that craned out from a large black metal console with illuminated dials, switches, and other mysteries. I was enthralled. I could smell superheated dust and cigarettes. A man wearing spectacles and a white shirt and black tie sat squinting at some copy as he read the news. I saw his lips moving but it took a few seconds for the sound to come out of a nearby speaker. The Cleveland Indians had signed Larry Doby. Following Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier, Doby would be the first African American to play in the American League.

  To that point, radio had figured largely in my life. I know that many of you might not be old enough to recall pre-Internet and pre-smartphone existence, but once upon a time the only moving images we saw on-screen were in a movie theater. For news, sports, and entertainment, we relied on sound waves only. Though my father made very little money, we did have two radios. A smaller version about the size of a toaster oven sat on a kitchen counter. A larger wooden console Motorola radio stood in the living room. The furniture there was arranged around the radio so that, strangely but typically, we could have a good view of the cabinet and its speakers. Ralph Edwards’s Truth or Consequences, The Roy Rogers Show, and, of course, The Jack Benny Program were all popular in our household.

  Of equal interest to me was the Mutual Radio Major League Baseball game of the day. The play-by-play man was Al Helfer, a name that likely won’t ring many bells, though he was one of the giants of his day. At the time guys like Red Barber and Mel Allen, who were the first two recipients of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award—the greatest honor a baseball announcer can receive—had huge followings in New York. That was their local market. Al Helfer’s voice went nationwide, reaching many more people.

  Radio always fascinated for its ability to bring distant events near to us, into our living rooms and kitchens. As I sat there and listened to live sporting events, it was difficult for me to fathom the technology that it took that allowed me to hear simultaneously what was going on thousands of miles from my home in Everett. On a Saturday morning, I could tune in and listen to a man in South Bend, Indiana, describe the arc of a football field goal attempt. Fridays I could hear a man describe another arcing ball—a long drive over the Green Monster in Boston’s Fenway Park. I’d sit there and visualize the path those balls traveled through sunlit skies, the roar of the crowd tickling my stomach, and marvel at the world we lived in.

  Family legend has it that—and I have to believe it to be true because my parents would never lie—my interest in play-by-play men began long before I pursued any job in the field. We were only thirty miles from Seattle and today Everett has been subsumed into the large Seattle metro area, but back then it seemed like a far-flung outpost. We weren’t so far away that we couldn’t tune into KRKO to listen to the Seattle Rainiers’ broadcasts. The Rainiers were a Triple-A minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. They played in the Pacific Coast League along with teams like the Hollywood Stars, the Los Angeles Angels, and the Portland Beavers. KRKO was part of the Seattle Rainiers baseball broadcasting network. We got the broadcast each night of the season, and Leo Lassen’s voice became as familiar to me as anyone’s in my circle of family and friends. According to my folks, I would stand in the kitchen with an upturned broom in my hands serving as a microphone and imitate Leo Lassen in my high-pitched pipsqueak squeal.

  I enjoyed sports of all kinds and participated in as many of them as I could. As much as I loved listening to baseball games, my passions were unrequited. In Everett and later on as we moved to Austin, Texas, in 1952, I played a fair amount of sandlot and organized ball. I was the unlikely combination of catcher and second base. I was a little guy, only reaching five feet three inches in height by the time I started high school. I couldn’t hit a lick, especially breaking balls. I once struck out fourteen times in a row. Upon making contact, a weak dribbler to the pitcher, I received a standing ovation from the guys in the dugout. The writing was in the batter’s box dirt, and any dreams I had of playing the game seriously were swept away well before they could fully form.

  That was no real heartbreak, really. Basketball captured my imagination and passion in a way that baseball didn’t. Baseball was great to listen to, but its stop-and-start nature didn’t entice me the way that the more continuous action of basketball up and down the floor did. I liked its combination of set plays and improvisation. I also developed a fondness for the game because of my exposure to another, more enticing phenomenon coming
on the scene in my last days in Everett. A block away from our church/home on Colby Avenue was a Sylvania store. They sold radios primarily and, toward the end of our eight-year stay in Everett, televisions. The vast majority of people in Everett couldn’t afford a luxury item like a television, which was about one-third the price of a new car.

  Recognizing this, the owners of the Sylvania store put a DuMont console model at the front of the place. It faced out toward the sidewalk and the large glass storefront afforded a view of the roughly ten-inch screen. Undeterred by that small view, each Friday or Saturday night somewhere between ten and twenty Everett residents gathered to catch a glimpse of the flickering black-and-white spectacle. Of course, I was as fascinated as everyone else and was grateful for every opportunity afforded to me to gather there with the others. They were few and far between, what with schoolwork and the rest, but that indelible vision of the future was powerful. I can’t say that I was wise enough to predict just how much impact that device would have on the world generally and me specifically. Still, the same principle applied to television as it did the radio. It brought the world and its people and events closer to me.

  Most often when I got to go and watch, it was to see the University of Washington Huskies basketball team take on one of their Pacific Coast Conference rivals. They had two stars. Bob Houbregs went on to play in the early days of the National Basketball Association. But the guy I really admired, because he was relatively small and quick like me, was Joe Cipriano. “Slippery Joe” went on to coach the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers and one of my earliest jobs in television in Austin was covering the University of Texas (UT) Longhorns. I idolized this guy as a young man and not too many years later, when Nebraska played at Texas I was interviewing him at the Villa Capri Hotel in downtown Austin a few hours before tip-off. Small world.

  Sports and broadcasting are, obviously, intertwined in my mind. During my formative years, my imagination was captured by another larger-than-life figure who ran up the middle of our living room on Saturdays. His exploits were captured by another great storyteller. I became initially a fan of Southern Methodist University running back Doak Walker through the descriptions of Bill Stern. He was the play-by-play man on national radio college football broadcasts. Later on, I’d get to meet them both, and Doak played a big role in my development as a broadcaster. In his football-playing days, Doak won the coveted Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best player in 1948. Doak was truly a do-it-all player. This was the World War II era, when many young men who otherwise might have played in college put in their time in the military. In fact, Doak left SMU for the 1946 season to serve in the Merchant Marine. When he won the Heisman in 1948, he gained 532 yards on 108 carries for a 4.9 per-carry average—not huge numbers, but you have to keep in mind that he also threw for six touchdowns as a halfback and went 26 for 46 with 304 yards gained on those passes. He also caught 15 passes for 279 yards and three touchdowns. Defensively, he was responsible for three interceptions. On special teams, he had a 42.1-yard average punting the ball. He also was the team’s placekicker. Along with his 11 offensive touchdowns, his kicking brought his points total to 88. He also served as the team’s punt and kick returner. Given all that, his name came up quite a bit during Bill Stern’s calling of the game. No wonder I idolized Walker.