Play by Play by Verne Lundquist

Author:Verne Lundquist
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062684462
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 9

The Gang’s All Here

As is true of any relationship, chemistry and communication are the keys to success. Communication without chemistry is like, well, a lecture on organic chemistry—a bit dry. Chemistry without communication can be fun but not very enlightening. As football broadcasters, our job was to entertain and inform. The pictures could tell only some of the story. With Terry, I knew my role and enjoyed it. He was great at being both entertaining and informative.

Sad thing is, over time I would rely more and more on the monitor to watch the action. My poor eyesight, even aided by corrective laser surgery and then cataract removal procedures, couldn’t keep up. I began this book by talking about getting the names right, and one of the other lasting memories I have of my time in the NFL is of doing a Vikings game and misidentifying Jake Reed as the receiver who had gotten loose behind the secondary to haul in a long pass. To my chagrin, it was actually No. 88 and not No. 86 who made that reception. I tossed and turned all night over my failure to adhere to one of broadcasting’s cardinal rules. I was the play-by-play guy, after all, and it was incumbent upon me to get the facts straight.

I don’t know how Terry would have felt about my mistake, but he would have taken it somewhere fun. I can be pretty sure that Dan Fouts, my next partner, would have refrained from saying anything on-air about my eyesight. He would have waited until later to get his digs in. As much as I cherished my relationship with Terry, Dan ranks right up there as a broadcaster and a lifelong friend. One of the reasons why Dan would have given me a pass on that misidentification is that he came to broadcasting with a greater appreciation for the art and craft of it than most. Dan’s father, Bob Fouts, worked in sports television and radio for more than fifty years. For many years he worked in the Bay Area doing 49ers games and local television. I met Bob years before I worked with Dan when I was still doing radio for the Cowboys.

John Madden was responsible in a way for arranging my first meeting with Dan. As the number one guy, John exerted considerable influence on CBS Sports management. In the off-season before the 1990 frame, John expressed his displeasure with some of CBS Sports activities. He believed that we weren’t focusing enough of our collective resources on pro football. John only did football, of course, and the rest of us play-by-play guys spent the football off-season covering other events. John felt that we needed to have a kind of preseason ourselves. John brought a coach’s mentality to broadcasting. We all needed to be prepared. We all needed to work together toward a specific set of aims and objectives. We needed to have a greater command of the fine points of the game so that we could better teach the American public its nuances.

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