Billy Paultz Reconsidered

I didn’t enjoy John Madden’s work as much as everyone else apparently did, but he did have an amazing and interesting career.
Many of you are too young to remember Madden as the Oakland Raiders’ coach.
[His career numbers are supposed to be here, in a graphic, via profootballreference.com, but WordPress hopelessly garbled them.]
Anyway, Madden was 71 games […]

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You have to start, of course, with The Voice.
A football coach - I think it was his college coach - once famously said of Walter Payton, “What God had in mind there was a football player.”
When He made Harry Kalas, what God had in mind was a broadcaster. Try to hear him in your head […]

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The guy’s been broadcasting college hoops since well before John Wooden quit coaching it. I don’t hate Packer, which evidently makes me a cult of one. Deadspin, in its’ understated fashion, today referred to him as ”The Archangel of Death.”
We can assume Phil Martelli and Dick Jerardi shared a long, tearful, celebratory hug. Maybe still are. And they aren’t […]

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I have never seen what others seem to in Don Nelson, the longtime NBA coach regarded by many basketball people as an eccentric near-genius. When Nelson took over the Golden State Warriors last season  and oversaw a modest turnaround and then an impressive defeat of Dallas in the first round of the playoffs, I thought […]

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I know what you’re wondering, Avid Reader: Tell us, wise and benevolent one, what you think of Dick Vitale being voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame?
Glad you asked, AR. I’m torn, actually. For me, Dick Vitale’s career has always seemed like a Saturday Night Live sketch about a deliberately annoying sports broadcaster. That anyone […]

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