Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220088
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
MCGUIRE CALLING HIS LAST GAME
"I know that I'm a passing fancy. I'll get a one- or two-year run and then others will get their run. I'm just Elizabeth Taylor in a nightgown. I'm walking through."Fifteen years after he said those words, Al McGuire will call his last college basketball game for NBC Sports today.
Borrowing from McGuire's own basketball glossary, he's been an "aircraft carrier" in the business - a big man.
It seems like yesterday, but it's been 11 years since McGuire - whose last coaching game was an NCAA championship victory for Marquette in 1977 - teamed with Dick Enberg and Billy Packer as the best college hoop-calling trio anyone has seen and heard.
When NBC lost the NCAA Tournament rights to CBS in 1982, Packer switched networks. Enberg and McGuire kept calling games, but NBC's commitment to college basketball dwindled. Today's UCLA-Notre Dame game (2 p.m., WSLS Channel 10) will be the last of only six NBC dates this season.
Packer and McGuire were wonderful together because they were so different. ON THE AIR JACK BOGACZYK McGuire would say something off-the-wall, and so-straight Packer would challenge him. You could feel their teasing affection for one another, and Enberg, through their remarks.
"When Billy leaves the room, it lights up," McGuire said during their early years. "Billy is the kind of guy who has a beer party and locks the bathroom door."
Enberg asked to call today's farewell game for McGuire, but the former coach will work with his partner of recent seasons, Don Criqui.
"Dick Enberg called this week and we talked for a while," McGuire said Thursday from his Milwaukee office. "He's gone skiing in Vail with his kids this weekend. Then, before he got off the phone, Dick said, `Al, I love you.' That was very flattering to me."
McGuire often calls Enberg "Dixie." McGuire was using basketball slang on the air before ESPN gave Dick Vitale a microphone. McGuire was calling easy opponents "cupcakes" when Vitale was still coaching against them at the University of Detroit. McGuire wasn't always great with names and phrases, but it was always "seashells and balloons" - fun - for McGuire.
There was the afternoon when McGuire called someone a "boa constructor" on the air. Enberg tried to correct his partner, but McGuire shot back, "No, Dixie, I'm talking about a snake that builds houses."
McGuire, 62, would like to continue working in television, and there has been speculation that CBS may hire him to do some NCAA Tournament games. McGuire, elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., last month, doesn't expect that to happen.
"It's been an excellent run at NBC," McGuire said. "I've met a lot of nice people, and they've let me do my thing. I've never been critiqued. I'd like to touch a few more people, be it on ABC or CBS or wherever.
"I'd like to work in the NCAA again, but there's nothing in concrete. I'm not trying to be cute, but I'm not a guy who likes to do his laundry in the newspaper. . . . I'm a saloon act now. There's no more center stage for me, and that's fine.
"I've really been compensated [$400,000 annually] not to work. We've only got six games. NBC has the Olympics in Barcelona, but that's an NBA deal now, so they'll use NBA guys there. That's fine. I took the money, and this is what there is for me to do."
McGuire said he's uncomfortable "talking about the memories until it's curtains." He's an emotional New Yorker, street-smart if not cocksure. In the final minutes of Marquette's NCAA title victory over North Carolina in '77, McGuire cried on the bench.
He's never had an agent. "They don't know how to deal with you if you don't have an agent," he said. "There's nobody there for them to say bad things about you to."
His contract assures him first-class travel. However, for today's game in South Bend, Ind., McGuire planned to ride a bus from Milwaukee to Chicago, then take a train to Notre Dame.
"I've always flown in coach," McGuire said. "I'm not a suite-oriented guy. When we used to do Saturday-Sunday games in the same weekend, we used to fly private jets. I have a problem walking off private jets. There's nobody there when you walk off a private jet."
The term "color commentator" couldn't fit a person better than it does McGuire. You can call him Al. On the air, he's the same as he was in his coaching days, which included 404 victories in 20 seasons, NIT and NCAA titles and 11 straight postseason bids.
Back in the late '50s, when McGuire started his college coaching career at Belmont Abbey (N.C.), the Crusaders visited Hampden-Sydney. Several minutes into the game, after several fouls on his team and none on the hosts, McGuire ran onto the court and tried to sling his sportcoat over Belmont Abbey's basket.
"What are you doing?" Roanoke referee Dan Wooldridge asked McGuire.
"I'm trying to put my coat over the basket," McGuire said.
"You can't do that," Wooldridge said. "If you do that, I'll have to call a technical foul."
"Good!" McGuire said. "At least then I'll know you can blow the whistle at this end of the floor."