Verne Lundquist used the phrase “dinosaur offense” to describe Alabama football last season, which is the kind of phrase that sounds both experiential and ironic when it comes from a 75-year-old. Alabama fans, being Alabama fans, were not happy, so they tweeted angry remarks about a man who does not have Twitter.
This is a ritual of the fall. A Saturday down South. The SEC’s premier game at 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS, complete with “Uncle Verne” tweaking fans and naming the wrong players on the wrong plays and mispronouncing anything he darn well feels. I’m going to miss it so damn much.
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Lundquist is retiring after this college football season. He’s 75, and he has every right to retire. The venerated play-by-play man behind “Yes, sir!” and “There’s the pass to Laettner” is leaving the booth, and all the Alabama fans and all the LSU fans and all the Auburn fans and all the Florida fans and all the Georgia fans and all the rest are celebrating because Brad Nessler is a pro’s pro who will do a thoroughly competent job calling these games and probably never accuse a running back of tackling his own wide receiver on fifth down.
Brad Nessler, though, is not your uncle. If Lundquist is not Vin Scully’s peer, he’s the closest thing that nationally televised football will allow. He has a terrific voice that carries games and seems persistently amused at the very fact that there’s a sports game going on in front of him. He’ll tell a story, but he also will make sure to back off enough to let his fantastic partner, Gary Danielson, break down the action. He’ll put in his two cents and laugh off his own mistakes because he’s the only one who gets that even SEC football is still just a game.
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This isn’t an age thing, either. Rewatch that Laettner shot against Kentucky from 1992. Lundquist lets the scene unfold slowly.
“There’s the pass to Laettner,” he says as the ball has almost reached the Duke star’s hands. “He puts it up,” Lundquist quickly follows. And as the ball swishes through the basket, a simple, mighty roar. “YES!” It’s not “YESSSSSSSS!” or “YES! HE DID IT! IT’S GOOD!” or anything to remove the power of the moment. It’s “YES!” It’s a great sports thing that just happened, and Verne Lundquist is only a tiny part of it. He recognized that, where colleagues and rivals such as Brent Musburger and Jim Nantz refuse. Lundquist was spectacular on college basketball for all those years as well as football — perhaps more so — because he understood his place in the action.
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Lundquist looks a whole lot like David Huddleston during his time as the grandfather on “The Wonder Years.” Huddleston played Albert “Gramps” Arnold, a recurring character who always showed up just long enough to screw something up, mess with son Jack’s head and give grandsons Kevin and Wayne a buck or two and maybe a car or dog. You were always happy to see Gramps, even if he was always kind of a mess. That’s Lundquist.
“Uncle Verne” is going to run out one more season of college football. The SEC is kind of a toss-up this season, with Tennessee once again swearing this is the year and Arkansas, LSU and Ole Miss all posing real threats to Alabama’s supremacy. The stakes are going to be high, in other words, as they always are. And fans are going to get riled when Lundquist messes up a name or yardage situation on a big play. He may not see the game quite right these days. Then again, maybe he sees it perfectly.
