Play by Play Quotes

“Barry had done some negotiations on my behalf and he agreed that I would go to Columbia, South Carolina, the first week of March to do a Gamecocks contest against University of Nevada–Las Vegas (UNLV). This was a limited regional broadcast through six affiliates—four in South Carolina and one in Reno and one in Vegas. He sounded very pleased with himself. My guts roiled. “But I’m still at ABC. My contract with them doesn’t end until after that game is long gone and in the history books. Now you want me to put on a blue blazer and do a basketball game?”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“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.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“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, and 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.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“was fond of Steve because I was able to glimpse the other side of him. I liked how he kept things in perspective. As driven and perfectionistic as he was, he stuck to his Friday-before-game-day ritual—a haircut and nine holes of golf. One year, my partner Todd Blackledge and our sideline reporter Jill Arrington were in Gainesville before a game. We went to Steve’s office. It was a virtual museum with memorabilia covering nearly every square inch of the place. Jill was relatively new to the team. Steve welcomed us all in and could see Jill scanning his office. He showed her a photo of one of his Duke University teams. This was obviously before he took over at Florida and attained so much success. That he was proud of the job he’d done at that school spoke volumes about him. He wasn’t going to brag about himself or his better-known squads. He pointed out some of the players and what they’d gone on to do in other things besides playing in the NFL. His evident pride in them impressed me.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“In 2000, I was covering the Kentucky–Florida game. Florida had a great football tradition, and, well, let’s say that Kentucky had a great basketball program. UK had never beaten the Gators during Steve’s time at the helm. As I recall, the Gators were putting a whipping on the Wildcats, 45–7, with less than a minute to play. Florida had the ball just their side of midfield. Most coaches would have just let the clock run out. Not Steve. He called in the play and Jesse Palmer (who later went on to become TV’s Bachelor) dropped back and threw a perfect strike for a touchdown. Final score, 52–7. After the game, Steve was asked in a peevish tone by one of the writers why he’d called that last play. In so many words, Steve said that nobody had scored half a hundred on Kentucky and he wanted to be the first to do so. His grin was a lot louder than the silence that followed his utterance.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“Earlier that year, back in November, the Dick Nolan–coached 49ers beat the Cowboys 31–10 on a blustery Thanksgiving Day in Dallas. At that point, the 49ers had former Heisman Trophy winner Steve Spurrier at quarterback. Their veteran signal caller, John Brodie, had gone down with an injury and Spurrier had stepped in. In the regular season, Spurrier had gone 6-2. leading the team to the Western Division crown. I’d get to know Steve later on, when he was the head coach at Florida and later at South Carolina.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“That was what I learned from Frank and what I tried to put in practice as much as possible in my career: the human ear can only take in so many notes. I wanted to keep to the facts—down, distance, time, and, periodically, score—mixed with concise descriptions of the action. That served me well in Chicago and from then on.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“That’s been one of the guiding principles of my professional career. If you tried to fake it; if you tried to create a false image of who you weren’t, then you were doomed to eventual failure if not as a television personality but certainly then as a person.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“The highlight of my time in San Antonio, in retrospect, was interviewing a Texas state congressman by the name of George Herbert Walker Bush.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“That trip pushed me once again to set my sights to bigger horizons. Hoping to make a real name for myself, I twice auditioned for a job at WFAA in Dallas, the ABC affiliate there. Both times I didn’t get it. I was pleased that for the first time in my career, in 1966, someone came calling to offer me a job. WOAI, the NBC affiliate in San Antonio was looking for a newsman, someone to anchor the six and ten shows.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“Because LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson owned the station, we were told we’d be given a private tour of the White House. LBJ’s press secretary, a former UT student and KTBC radio guy, Bill Moyers, met us outside the West Wing to apologize. Neither the president nor he was going to be able to spend any real time with us. Instead, he turned us over to LBJ’s trusted aide, Walter Jenkins. That same day, we toured FBI headquarters. J. Edgar Hoover still reigned over the office, but his number two man, Cartha Libby, led us around the facility. The real highlight of all of this was a complete surprise. I was given a number to call at CBS in New York City. I found a pay phone and dialed the number. At first I thought that the traffic noise and the general hubbub that is the streets of Manhattan were playing tricks with me. The female voice on the end of the line said, “Walter Cronkite’s office, how may I help you?”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“remember we were airing the agricultural report, which was on tape, when I got a phone call from my boss’s daughter, Nita Louise Kellam, who was also a high school classmate of mine. She was calling to tell me that her father had given me the night off and that they were going to let somebody take my place as the DJ that night so I could be her escort to go hear President Kennedy speak. We weren’t dating; it was simply a chance to go hear President Kennedy speak. As I was on the phone with Nita Louise talking about our plans that night, Hal Nelson, who was one of our newsmen, came barging into the control room. It was shortly after 12:30 P.M. “Put me on the air immediately—the president has been shot!” shouted Hal. I did as I was told. I was twenty-three years old. The rest of the day became one of the most memorable events of my life.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“That’s how, at the age of twenty-three, I was at the station on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. I was working the control board at KTBC-AM-FM-TV in Austin, the radio-television station owned by Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird. The station was officially in Mrs. Johnson’s name, but the vice president had a big impact there and was pretty hands-on, from what I remember.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“As I pulled out of Rock Island in the spring of 1963, I left one other thing behind besides a potential career—my “La.” Let me explain. The evening before I went on air at WOC in Davenport, Bob Gifford and I had a brief meeting. “LaVerne.” He looked as if he’d just bitten into something disagreeable. He went on, “Take a seat.” I did. “LaVerne,” he said again, drawing my name out. A look that was half smile, half grimace spread across his face. He shook his head slowly. I feared the worst. “I just don’t see it. I don’t hear it.” He looked me square in the eye and said, “I can’t put you on the air.” My heart fell and my mind raced. An eternity lapsed. “ ‘LaVerne’ just won’t cut it. You go on tonight as Verne. You understand?” I nodded and left the room breathing easy for the first time in minutes. I’ve been Verne ever since.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“In order to make up for any shortfall, I got a second job, working in the kitchen at the theological school. I’d get home from DJing music to make out by, grab a few hours of sleep, get up before sunup to get to the cafeteria’s kitchen, and then hustle off to my eight o’clock class in classical Greek.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“I took up residence on the second floor of the Clinton YMCA, just across the street from the studio. For $8.50 a week, I got a tiny room, a single cot, and a mini-refrigerator. In there I kept cans of Spam, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and Ritz crackers. From June to the end of August I kept myself fed on sandwiches and little else.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“Finally, by my senior year, my perseverance paid off. I got the job, earning $1.05 an hour. At the beginning of the school year, my job consisted of showing up at the studio just before sunrise. I was shown what switches to throw and what dials to turn and what meters to monitor. Sounds more complicated than it was, but switching on a radio station gave me a thrill of power that’s difficult to explain. Other aspects were even harder for me to understand, but I did them out of rote memory. Most of the weekend programming was remote—church services, primarily—and I had to unplug and plug in various cables.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“Similarly, pre-enrolling in seminary—I had to get a bachelor’s degree before I could formally attend—was another kind of start. It got me moving in a direction. Whether that would end up my final destination was uncertain. I was a Christian, of course, but whether I had a calling beyond devotion was still to be decided.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“At the end of that school year, my ninth, my dad told me to get my church clothes on. We were going out for the evening. He didn’t tell me where we were going, but as it turned out, we were invited to the awards banquet for the radio department students. I was presented with a diploma and a note of thanks from Radio House at the University of Texas. As I sit here writing this, I can look up and see that piece of parchment framed on the wall of my office. It was signed by the two administrators of the program—Gale Long and Gale Adkins. I don’t know if those two men understand the impact they and their program had on a young boy’s life.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“Two or three weeks after the six-week segment had started, Mrs. Burleson took me aside after class and said that she had gotten a call from Radio House at the University of Texas. Back then UT had no television department. But they did have Radio House and undergraduates could major in radio. Part of the program entailed radio students tape-recording half-hour dramas every Tuesday night. These dramas would later be distributed by the university to public broadcasting stations throughout Texas and perhaps even beyond that. She said they needed an adolescent, a person with a boy’s voice, to come over that night to take part in this taping with the college student actors. If I was interested, I would go and play the role of a ten-year-old Indian boy. I said, Oh, my gosh, yes. I got my dad to take me to Radio House, and we were there for three hours taping this recorded play.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“After our move to Austin, I attended University Junior High School, on the campus of the University of Texas. That name was quite a mouthful, so we called it UJH. Lessons come in many forms, and I quickly sized up my chances of playing football at UJH—they were as small as I was. Still, I wanted to be involved, so I got myself a job as one of the water boys for the squad. I know that position can make you the butt of jokes and the object of derision, but I never experienced any of that. I wasn’t too proud to admit that I wasn’t capable of playing the sport. I wasn’t so vain to believe that contributing to the well-being of the team was beneath me.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“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.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“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.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

“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.”
― Verne Lundquist, Play by Play:: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports—From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More