Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270060
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BONNER GETS ANOTHER NCAA CALL
On the road to the Final Four, Dan Bonner stalled in Roanoke.Bonner, the former Virginia forward who has been doing telecast analysis of ACC basketball for more than a decade, has been selected by CBS Sports to work the NCAA Tournament for the third straight year.
"I'm just as thrilled as the first time I was asked," Bonner said. "It's like when you were a player. You spend the whole season working games, and then when it's time for the tournament, you want to be there. It's a culmination of everything you've done during the year."
Well, maybe not everything, Bonner admits. He laughed about the so-called glamour of television in the middle of last week, when Bonner was making a late-night drive from his Staunton home to Winston-Salem, N.C., where he had an ESPN assignment of Maryland-Wake Forest.
"I was on I-581 and my car just stopped," said Bonner, who lived in Roanoke before being transferred to Staunton in his assistant district manager's job with the Social Security administration. "It died, right there by the Elm Avenue exit."
Bonner went to a phone, got his car towed to a Franklin Road gas station and hitched a ride to Roanoke Regional Airport to rent a car. He's working today's Virginia-Wake Forest telecast for the ACC network (1:30 p.m. WSET), and plans to pick up his resuscitated car on the trip before heading home to Augusta County.
"It's a good car, a 10-year-old Nissan, with 122,000 miles," Bonner said, laughing. "Don't all TV guys drive cars like that?"
Bonner, 39, will work at least the first and second round of the NCAA, teaming with play-by-play man Mel Proctor - best known as the Baltimore Orioles' telecast voice on Home Team Sports - for the second straight year. Last year, Bonner was shocked when he was assigned to work at the Greensboro Coliseum, where Duke began its title run.
"Wherever they send us, I don't care," he said. "I just enjoy doing it. I don't know why I was asked back, and I didn't ask. With Ted Shaker gone (he was fired as CBS Sports executive producer and replaced by Rick Gentile), I didn't know if they would ask me again. I was hoping, but it wasn't something I could count on."
Bonner, who works two or three games weekly for the ACC and ESPN, was in New York earlier this week for NCAA production meetings at CBS. Although this will be his ninth NCAA on the air - he worked for NCAA Productions from 1985-90 before CBS acquired exclusive rights to the event - he still pokes himself when he's rubbing elbows with the likes of Al McGuire and Greg Gumbel.
"People think you're somehow different when they see you on TV," Bonner said. "I'm just having fun. I'm there with those people in New York and I'm saying, `There's no excuse for someone like me doing something like this.' "
The reason Bonner is successful is just that attitude. He dissects a game with opinion, analysis and wit. He said there is no chance this husband and father of three he will feel self-important, no matter how used his car.
"A couple of weeks ago I was home one afternoon," Bonner said. "One of our kids asked if I'd be staying for dinner that night."
\ NBA MOVING: NBA viewers will have to switch channels next Sunday. The weekly NBA doubleheader from NBC Sports moves locally on March 7 to WJPR/WVFT (Channels 21/27). With WSLS pre-empting pro hoops and other programming for the Easter Seals Telethon, the Fox Network affiliate has grabbed 5 1/2 hours of the NBA from NBC. The Cleveland-Boston and Portland-Golden State doubleheader will begin with the "NBA Showtime" pregame show at 12:30 p.m.
\ PIT STOPS: The Nashville Network continues to try and prove it wants to be the NASCAR network.
Not only does TNN have the first New Hampshire 300, an addition to the Winston Cup schedule, in July. The network and Pocono International Raceway have signed a five-year contract for the Champion 500 to move to TNN (from ESPN) beginning in 1994.
This year, TNN has seven Winston Cup races and 17 from the Grand National circuit, including the Miller Genuine Draft 500 at Martinsville Speedway on March 21. TNN's schedule begins today and Sunday with GN and Winston Cup races at Rockingham, N.C.
\ AROUND THE DIAL: Bill Foster's last radio show of the basketball season will have a touch of class. The Virginia Tech coach and host Bill Roth will be on the air from the Metro Conference tournament reception at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 11. Black tie is optional. . . . Because of a new advertising commitment with NationsBank and telecast syndication package, this year's CIAA basketball tournament championship from Richmond won't air on cable's BET network tonight. . . . HTS' Proctor will make a second appearance Wednesday on NBC's new series "Homicide." Proctor, an acquaintance of the show's producer, Barry Levinson, plays police beat reporter Glenn Besser in the show. Proctor's previous credits include "Hawaii Five-O," when he was a Honolulu sportscaster in the mid-70s. . . . In what may be the first for an NFL assistant coach, new Houston Oilers' defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan has signed to do his own radio show.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING