Play-By-Play

Calling the Wildest Games in Sports – From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More

By Verne Lundquist

At one point, apropos of nothing, Terry spoke up. “Fellas, I’ve got an idea. Let’s invent us a football player.”

I took one for the team and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, here’s my idea. You all know what happens. In every punting and kicking situation everybody gets told the name of the kicker or punter and the return men. But when those collisions take place in the middle of the field, nobody is really sure who is doing what two teams to who.”

He paused briefly. He was making some sense.

“Hell, we’re only going to be seen by a few thousand people, several cowboys, some pigs and sheep. Let’s have some fun!”

Fun meant creating a faux football player. He was the guy we’d credit with being involved in those special teams tackles. Regardless of who was playing, Willie Anderson, a free agent defensive back from Colby College in Maine, would be in on the tackle.

I would do the call straight up and then Terry would chime in with, “Bubba, that was some lick that Willie Anderson of the Lions laid on the return man. That free agent out of Colby “I’ll tell College sure can hit!”

We never mentioned Willie’s number. The next week we were in Tampa Bay for a game against the Falcons, another point-to-point telecast.

I decided to get tin on the action, “It’s fourth down and eight. The Buccaneers are in punt formation. Elmore Leonard is back to punt, He sends it high and deep and it’s grabbed by Mickey Spillane for Atlanta at his own twenty. He’s got some room! The forty; he gets a tremendous block at the forty-five, is across midfield, and is finally tackled as he reaches the Tampa forty-yard line.”

“I’ll tell you what, Bubba, that was a sensational block by Willie Anderson, the free agent defensive back from Colby College in Maine.”

Willie Anderson played in all fourteen games that year, becoming the first player in NFL history to suit up for a different team each week. We were never found out. I can’t imagine what would happen in today’s branded and packaged NFL.

Things got complicated only once. The last game of the year was the rematch between Atlanta and Tampa. I had to be sure that Willie showed up on my spotting board on the Buccaneers defense this time. Mike Burks, our terrific producer, wanted to present each of us with a memento to commemorate our first year together. We may have been the point-to-point leaders among CBS’s NFL broadcast teams but we had a lot of fun. Mike called the sports information director at Colby College. He wanted to buy eight Colby T-shirts to give to members of the team and present them to us at the production meeting.

He reached the SID’s office in Maine. He introduced himself and his affiliation with CBS.

“CBS Sports! Can you tell me what the hell is going on with you people! We get phone calls all the time from people wanting to know more about some guy named Willie Anderson!”

He went on yelling, insisting that he’d scoured the record books and couldn’t find the guy. Mike felt bad for him, and he wanted the T-shirts, so he confessed to the deception. The SID was a smart man.He realized that the school was getting free publicity. He was also grateful that the mystery was solved. The T-shirts arrived at our hotel room in Tampa. We all wore them to the production meeting—held aboard a yacht owned by the founder of Krispy Kreme donuts—and had a photo taken. I don’t know how Mike got us on that boat, but like any good producer, he was a master of resourcefulness.

(Lundquist 2018, 149-151)

References

Lundquist, Verne. 2018. Play by Play: Calling the Wildest Games in Sports-From SEC Football to College Basketball, The Masters, and More. N.p.: HarperCollins.

ISBN 978-0-06-268444-8