Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993 TAG: 9303270037
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
He can't use a telestrator. He doesn't even know the name for the device, which allows telecast analysts like McGuire to draw on a screen and have millions of viewers see it.
"Anybody who can work one of those things is not a coach," McGuire said. "The day a coach works one of those, he's not a coach anymore."
Sometimes Al's thoughts come from, shall we say, way beyond the baseline. Maybe that's because he doesn't know the game so much as he feels it.
"I'm one of those street basketball people," said McGuire, who is in his second year working the NCAA Tournament for CBS Sports. He spent 16 years with NBC, where college hoops have become all but non-existent.
McGuire will work today's Southeast Regional championship game (3:30 p.m., WDBJ) here with Dick Stockton, and there's little question the former Marquette coach is enjoying a revitalization on the tube.
"I think that is the case," McGuire said, starting to laugh. "Maybe it's one of those deals where the light bulb, just before it goes out, gets real bright."
McGuire sat Wednesday afternoon at the Charlotte Coliseum, furiously taking notes on four practicing teams for the regional semifinal doubleheader. The names were different, but McGuire received the same reaction.
"What's scary is the respect people show me now," said McGuire, 64. "They come up to me, and it's almost like they're talking to John Wooden.
"Hey, I'm no Wooden. He won 10 championships at UCLA. People act like it's time for me to pick up his banner, but I'm no threat to him. I'm a 180 [degrees] away from his style.
"I'm treated so nice. I'm not that nice a person. Well, I'm not a bad guy, but even Mussolini thought he was a nice person."
McGuire said that in his last few years at NBC, "I was paid not to work, paid not to go to another network." NBC lost the NCAA Tournament in 1981, then trimmed its college hoops annually and McGuire said he missed the atmosphere.
"I'd have been better off to have gone somewhere else and not to have been paid," he said, laughing.
His former NBC on-air basketball partner, Billy Packer, coaxed CBS to hire McGuire for last year's tournament. There was one problem.
When CBS had a lawyer call to negotiate with McGuire, the network learned the ex-coach does not have an agent. "I told them whatever they offered, I'd take."
He did. McGuire said what he'd like now is to "get tied in with a conference for a year or two," hopefully the Big Ten or the Great Midwest, so he won't have to travel too far from his Milwaukee home.
"Maybe I can do the games and something for halftime, you know, as my last spring before the tapioca," McGuire said.
He still marvels - as he once did with Dick Enberg - about his play-by-play partners like Stockton, who perform to perfection when people are screaming at and around them.
"Those guys are intelligent," McGuire said. "I can't absorb all of that. They just lock in and go. Those who have stood the test of time as color analysts, it's not because they're smart. It's because they make a connection.
"I've said that Dick Vitale belongs in a rubber room. If he changed though, he wouldn't last. As for Packer, he has the IQ of a bagful of rocks."
McGuire said he thinks Packer helped get McGuire into the Hall of Fame. McGuire is so grateful that he continues to make his former sidekick one of his favorite targets.
"Just call him `Washroom Billy,' " McGuire said of Packer. "When the check comes, Billy's one of those guys who is always in the washroom or standing in front of the jukebox. Not that he's up there to put any money in it. He's just staying away from the table until someone else picks up the check."
Describing his on-air style, McGuire said: "I never talk much unless it's in prime time and if the game is close. That's when the coach in me takes over."
Not only does McGuire look at his job differently than most, that's the way he sees the world. He isn't a cable TV subscriber. No basketball junkie, McGuire "is comfortable now being a Q-Tip," he said. "I know there's a lot of moss on me."
What bothers him is when someone calls him "mister." He likes being "Coach."
"I always thought that was a nice honor," he said.
Any other thoughts?
"Well," McGuire said, "somehow I look at people who use Federal Express as not having done their work. I mean, here's someone paying $12 to send me something they could have sent two days earlier for 29 cents."
In his Charlotte hotel room, McGuire had some tapes to watch on the Southeast Regional teams. One problem. He never had operated a VCR.
"I couldn't figure out how to get the tape out," McGuire said. "I called Dick Stockton, and he said to hit `stop' and `reject.' "
That's eject, Al.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "The words on this thing are so small, I can't see them."
by CNB