Brozek Gary - Play by play: calling the wildest games in sports--from SEC football to college basketball, the Masters, and more

This book is the summation of my professional life. My gratitude is owed to a lot of people.

First to members of my family. Thanks to my brother David and his wife, Meche, of Guadalajara, Mexico. To my brother Dan and his wife, Herbie Kay, of Austin, Texas. To my sister-in-law Clarice Lundquist of Dallas, widow of my late brother, Tom. To my sister, Sharon Zinn, of Lincoln, Nebraska. And to their children and grandchildren, all beloved people in our lives.

Thanks to the members of the SEC on CBS Sports family. To Craig Silver, the producer and a friend and colleague for more than three decades. To Bob Fishman and Steve Milton, terrific directors during my tenure, and to the remaining members of our seventy-five person production and technical group. We traveled the cities and towns of the south together for seventeen years, the most significant assignment in my more than fifty years in sports television.

To my on-air pals. To Todd Blackledge and Gary Danielson, men with whom I shared three and a half hours in the booth every Saturday in the fall. To Jill Arrington, Tracy Wolfson and Allie La Force, sideline reporters supreme. And thanks to Chuck Gardner, Butch Baird, and David Moulton, indispensable cogs in our on-air production. Their assistance in making our telecasts hum for fifteen weekends each fall was extremely important. And to Pat Haden, the former USC and Los Angeles Ram quarterback, with whom I shared both NFL and NCAA duties. Have I mentioned that he was also a Rhodes Scholar?

My thanks to some of my NFL partners. Hall of Famers Terry Bradshaw, Dan Fouts, Dan Dierdorf, and John Madden.

My gratitude to the late Steve Davis, QB of the Oklahoma Sooners in the early seventies, a team that went 34-1-1 with him under center. Steve and I worked together at ABC Sports and came to CBS together in 1982. He was a great friend and a wonderful broadcaster.

A shout-out to some of the men and women with whom I enjoyed televising both the NCAA college and NBA games. In college, gifted analysts such as Bill Raftery, Jim Spanarkel, Billy Packer, Len Elmore, Al McGuire, and Lesley Visser. In the NBA, Tom Heinsohn, Billy Cunningham, Hubie Brown, Chuck Daly, Danny Ainge, Clark Kellogg, and Doc Rivers. And the folks in the truck, producers Bob Dekas and Mark Wolf, directors Bob Fishman and Suzanne Smith.

Golf television remains an important part of my life, especially the Masters, where Ive been perched at the 16th hole since 2000. The late producer Frank Chirkinian put me there and Lance Barrow, the current producer, has kept me there.

Scott Hamilton and Tracy Wilson taught me to love figure skating and we worked together through three memorable Winter Olympics in France, Norway, and Japan. And were so ably produced during the last two by my friend David Winner.

Thanks to the presidents of CBS Sports during my time in the saddle: Neal Pilson, Peter Lund, and Sean McManus.

A special shoutout to Kevin OMalley, executive producer of college sports in the early eighties. He made a decision about my possibilities in October of 1982 and made a phone call to me that changed my life. And to the late Dave Lane, General Manager at WFAA-TV in Dallas, the man who recommended that I succeed him as the sports director at the station in 1967 and whose willingness to accommodate my wishes to be involved in network television made my career possible.

To Bob Rosen, who has been my agent since 1983.

During my life, Ive had an equal passion for sports television and an appreciation for music, thus I have great memories of singing in the Texas Lutheran University choir and of the more than three decades that Nancy and I have been involved in the Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs. Both connections have affected my life in an extremely meaningful way.

To Gary Brozek, whose love of words and whose ability to string them together until they become sentences and paragraphs and chapters has resulted in this book of memories. My thanks.

To Lisa Sharkey and Matt Harper of HarperCollins in New York City. Lisa, thanks for providing me with the opportunity to share my life in broadcasting. Matt, I truly appreciate your guiding vision for the book and handling all phases of what was once a mysterious process. Im indebted to you both for your faith in me.

Its been a joyous experience to share these stories of a lifetime in sports television.

There are more.

Lets do it again sometime.

Verne Lundquist

VERNE LUNDQUIST has been at the center of major sporting events in America for more than fifty years. He began his career at KTBCTV in Austin, Texas, a station owned by President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. Lundquist joined CBS Sports in 1982, and during his tenure has broadcast more than twenty sports for the network. Lundquist was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2016 he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sports at the 37th annual Sports Emmy Awards. He lives in Colorado.

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A s any competent play-by-play man would, Ive 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 doesnt 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 Ill never know. Obviously, he was of good Swedish stock and he likely figured Id grow up stout and strong as a result of toting that name around. Thats not quite the same as the legendary Johnny Cash and his song A Boy Named Sue, but thats okay.

It could have been worse. Both my parentsmy mother, Arda Christine, was Norwegiancame 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, theyd been married for a year. Im 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 deliverytwenty-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.