Play by Play: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports - From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

by Verne Lundquist

Overview

The SEC. The Masters. The Olympics. March Madness. The Dallas Cowboys. Yes sir, Uncle Verne has seen it all.

Over the last fifty years, few voices have epitomized the sound of sports television quite like that of Verne Lundquist’s. A fixture on air since the 1960s—first broadcasting University of Texas baseball and Dallas Cowboys football games on radio before eventually joining the legendary CBS Sports team—Verne has covered just about every sport there is, and in the process he’s made some of the most enduring calls in the history of golf, football, figure skating—and everything in between.

In Play by Play, Verne goes inside those calls and his remarkable career, telling the behind-the-scenes story of how he ended up with the best seats in the house, giving voice to history time and time again. From Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beater in the 1992 NCAA tournament, to the saga of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the 1994 Olympics, to the shocking finish of the Iron Bowl in 2013, to Jack Nicklaus’s and Tiger Woods’s unforgettable victories at the Masters, Verne’s five decades as a sportscaster routinely put him in the midst of greatness. With his trademark humility and his goal to make the athlete the legend, instead of the call itself, Verne details his view of the plays that have captured our collective imagination for two generations, featuring an incredible cast of characters that includes names like Terry Bradshaw, Pat Summerall, John Madden, Scott Hamilton, and Tom Landry.

What emerges is an invigorating portrait of the games that matter most, in life and on the field. A moving recollection of the moments that make sports worth watching, Play by Play reminds us all that sports are about more than games played—they’re about the history that we share together and the voices that we remember long after the final whistle has blown.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062684462
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/17/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	305,438
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Verne Lundquist has been at the center of major sporting events in America for more than fifty years. He began his career at KTBC-TV 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.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Chapter 1 Names And Tunes 1

Chapter 2 Finding My Direction 14

Chapter 3 Cowboy Days 34

Chapter 4 California Dreaming, Dallas Realities 55

Chapter 5 New Horizons 83

Chapter 6 Beyond Borders 98

Chapter 7 Yes, Sir: A New Home At The Masters 114

Chapter 8 Let's Invent Us A Football Player 138

Chapter 9 The Gang's All Here 162

Chapter 10 Live From Lillehammer It's Verne And Scott Meet Tonya And Nancy 176

Chapter 11 Conference Lines And Passions 201

Chapter 12 The Tournament And The Shot(S) 225

Chapter 13 In Your Life: Tiger And Other Pga Tales 251

Chapter 14 Lasting Memories Of The Sec 270

Chapter 15 Matters Of Consequence 300

Acknowledgments 306

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2018
Lundquist's recounting of his 50-year career as a sports broadcaster displays a sweeping scope. Here, he recounts the Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys in the "Ice Bowl" for the 1967 NFL championship as well as Jack Nicklaus, at age 46, on the 17th green in the last round of the 1986 Masters, putting for the lead. Other notable sporting events include Christian Laetner's buzzer-beater giving Duke a 104–103 win over Kentucky in the regional finals of the 1992 NCAA basketball tournament, figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the 1994 Winter Olympics, and Tiger Woods chipping in from long range onto an impossibly breaking green on the 16th hole in the final round of the 2005 Masters en route to a playoff victory. Included are many more "greatest moments in sports." VERDICT Lundquist's comprehensive look at the world of sports from the 1960s through the current decade will be an exciting trip down memory lane for many a fan.—Jim Burns, formerly with Jacksonville P.L., FL

Library Journal

A textbook for would-be sports commentators and a pleasure for fans.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Uncle Verne made Saturdays better, he made the SEC better, and he made college football better. Thank you for sharing your story with sports fans everywhere. Readers are sure to be entertained by your powerful storytelling.” — — TIM TEBOW, Heisman Trophy Winner and New York Times bestselling author

From the Publisher

Uncle Verne made Saturdays better, he made the SEC better, and he made college football better. Thank you for sharing your story with sports fans everywhere. Readers are sure to be entertained by your powerful storytelling.

TIM TEBOW

2018-08-20

If there's a sport to be played, as this amiable memoir recounts, then Lundquist will be there to call it.

Recently retired after a long career, the author is known for his contributions to many areas of sportscasting, and so he has been for decades—or, as he puts it with characteristic enthusiasm, "for more than fifty years I've had a front-row seat to some of the greatest sporting events America has witnessed." True, and if he's done commentary on some of the dogs, too, he's done it with good humor, a colorful way with words, and a gelatinously shimmering belly laugh. But yet there are the big games, too, such as the 1979 match between the Dallas Cowboys and their archenemies, the Washington Redskins. Begins Lundquist, setting the scene for his pageslong analysis, "a great comeback is a beauty to behold, but it doesn't climb to the top of my charts if the results aren't of any real consequence." With matching records at season's end and an undying enmity, the two teams put on quite a show—and, writes the author, played their hearts out. Writing with the benefit of hindsight, Lundquist takes a moment to worry that Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach may have been an early sufferer of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a time when "tape an aspirin to your forehead was the league's concussion protocol." Every sport known to humankind, it seems, comes into consideration, for Lundquist is nothing if not versatile; it will surprise many of his viewers to know that he counts among the highest points of his professional career "my unlikely love affair with figure skating." That love affair began once his network lost a pro football contract, but even so, he writes, give him the choice between calling a Super Bowl and announcing the Winter Olympics with Scott Hamilton, and it'll be the latter every time out.

A textbook for would-be sports commentators and a pleasure for fans.

Kirkus Reviews