Sports squawk

In preparing for my role in this weekend's Super Bowl special section, I get the opportunity to interact with the national network producers and broadcasters. It's usually done via conference call, but I'll get the chance to speak with the guys from Fox, CBS and NBC.
This year it's NBC broadcasting Sunday's Patriots-Giants Super Bowl game. When you spend more than an hour on the phone, you don't get to write everything you hear into a story. That's why in this post, I'm giving you some transcriptions of questions and answers among NBC broadcast personnel.

Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison, part of NBC's Football Night in America crew, were asked about the Boston-New York rivalry.

Tony Dungy: I grew up in Detroit and watched the Knicks and the Celtics, the Yankees and the Red Sox and you just had this rivalry for as long as I could remember. You've had great players, great coaches, great managers. It is polarizing, but there have been some tremendous athletes and coaches in both of these cities.
Rodney Harrison: From an historical standpoint, I don't really know the history between New York and Boston. I knew that once I came to this team in New England, they basically told me the first week I was there if you're going to hate anybody, hate the New York Jets -- hate any New York team. That first week of being there, you fell into that whole mindset that anything in New York you hate.

Dungy and Harrison were also asked about that gawd-awful Pro Bowl game that was played on Jan. 29 in Hawaii. It was bad even by Pro Bowl standards.

Harrison: I watched the Pro Bowl and I was very disappointed in the players. You understand from a player's standpoint, you figure out that I made it through the season and maybe they don't want to get injured. If you don't want to play -- I played in a couple of Pro Bowls -- if you don't want to play and if you don't want to give 100 percent, you should sit on the sidelines and allow someone else to get that opportunity. I was actually embarrassed by some of the players. When I played in the Pro Bowl, we played hard.
Dungy: I've coached in it several times as an assistant and as a head coach, and I can remember the first one I coached in 1984, we had Kenny Easley and Howie Long and there were no free passes in that game. The defense came to play. The offensive guys knew it. It was like a regular game. I coached again in 1999 and Randy Moss, I think it was his second Pro Bowl and he wanted to show the world he was the best player in football. You just had that competitiveness. I didn't see that the other night.

Al Michaels has done six Super Bowls for ABC and now two for NBC. He was asked about what many fans see as a key matchup, the one between Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the Giants' Eli Manning.

Michaels: The matchup is tremendous. If you're going to put a couple of guys' names up in lights on the marquee, obviously, it's going to be Eli and Tom Brady. It's the first time in history that two guys that have won Super Bowl MVPs are going to face off against each other, that's never been done in the past. Brady is one of the greatest of all time. No matter what happens on Sunday, if you're having a conversation about the greatest quarterbacks of all time, Tom is very much in that conversation. Eli, on the other hand, is emerging now and becoming a major star -- always playing in the shadow of his brother. Now, with the opportunity in the house his brother built, to have one more Lombardi Trophy than his brother has. Eli has also captured the fancy of everybody around the country.

Bob Costas said that, when he hosted his first Super Bowl in 1986, he thought a two-hour pregame show was long. Now, he's hosting the show that starts at noon. He was asked about the importance of the Super Bowl.

Costas: I'm certainly not the first one to say it, but the Super Bowl has long since become an undeclared national holiday. Although most Americans watch football on a fairly regular basis, much moreso than any other sport, there are people who watch the Super Bowl who don't pay all that much attention to the league during the course of the year. You've got all of the avid fans, then you have all the casual fans and it's all built in with a lot of parties. At the center of it is a great game.

Thought you might find this all interesting.

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Other than how my cold is doing, the one question I have been asked over and over the last few days is "Will UMass make the NCAA basketball tournament?"
To that, I say I'm not sure. If Selection Sunday was the same day as Super Bowl Sunday, I'd say no. But that doesn't mean I think this is not a worthy team.
As of early in the week, the Minutemen of Derek Kellogg would need to keep on winning and advance to at least the Atlantic 10 Conference semifinals in order to be considered for an at-large berth in the tournament. Of course, if the Minutemen win the A-10 title, they'd get an automatic bid.
Barring a cataclysmic collapse, UMass has guaranteed itself a slot in the NIT. It is a nice consolation prize considering that Kellogg hasn't gotten the team that close since he arrived.
There is one thing I do know -- the buzz is returning to UMass basketball. There was a near-capacity crowd at the Mullins Center on Saturday as the Minutemen beat Saint Louis 72-59.
"It actually brought back some memories for me, to have 8,500 people in the gym," Kellogg said. "Hats goes off to the crowd, I thought that was fantastic, and to the students for supporting the guys.
"I think they deserve it. I think they're playing a fun brand of basketball. We're competing at a high level."
It was actually 8,399, but who is going to quibble about 102 people?
"I thought the crowd, and the student section, being the way it was, really gave our team a boost," said Kellogg. "They were excited coming when they came into the locker room and seeing those people out there."
What made Saturday's game so important for Kellogg and the Minutemen isn't that there was a large crowd. That's nice, but the real important factor is that UMass won the game.
"It was big because I think that was kind of the next step for the program," said Kellogg. "If you recall, the Rider game, the place was packed for the first half. We were down, everybody left, and we ended up coming back and winning by 10 after being down by 21.
"Since I've been here, we've given away some opportunities with a good crowd. This was the first time as a program that we've taken advantage in a long time."
The proof will be in the pudding if the Minutemen draw well for their next home game on Feb. 8 against St. Bonaventure.

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are two matches -- at 132 pounds and 145 pounds -- from Mount Greylock's 57-21 wrestling dual win at Taconic on Thursday night:

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why not hear it from him?

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read this week that the University of Cincinnati extended head football coach Butch Jones' contract, which means that Williams College graduate Mike Bajakian has a job for a few more years. Bajakian is the offensive coordinator there.

That got me thinking about where the guys on the Williams College basketball family tree are and how they're doing.

Dave Paulsen's Bucknell men are 15-5 and 5-0 in the Patriot League. The Bison look again to be the class of the Patriot League. One of Paulsen's Williams assistants, Dane Fischer, is on the staff at Bucknell.

One of Paulsen's former players, John Fitzgerald, is in his fifth season as the director of basketball operations at the University of Denver. The Pioneers are 15-5 and 5-2 in the Sun Belt Conference and doing very well.

Pat Duquette of Dalton, who played for Harry Sheehy, and former Paulsen assistant Jim McCarthy are on the staff of Bill Coen at Northeastern. The Huskies are 9-10. They have had some good wins and some not-so-good losses.

Boston University is a pretty impressive 11-11 under first-year coach Joe Jones. It's a rebuilding year on Commonwealth Ave., and Shaun Morris is one of the assistants on Jones' staff. Morris was on the staff of current Eph coach Mike Maker on both runs to the Division III Final Four.

Kevin App, a former Williams assistant, is now an assistant under Zach Spiker at Army. The Black Knights of the Hudson are 9-11.

Paul Culpo didn't play or coach at Williams, but he is as much a part of the Harry Sheehy/Williams tree as anyone. Culpo's Castleton State team is 10-7 and 9-1 in its league.

Devin Gotham, who left Paulsen's staff at Williams to coach at MCLA, is the women's coach at Nazareth, where his team is 9-8. Gotham gets to coach with twin brother Kerry.

Then there's former Paulsen assistant Pete Hutchins, who is the head coach at New Hampton Prep in New Hampshire. New Hampton is one of those power prep schools where players head to big-time D-I programs. He has two going to big programs: point guard Oliver Hanlan will be playing for Boston College, head coach Steve Donahue and former Williams assistant Woody Kampmann. Power forward Zach Auguste is going to Notre Dame.

And if you watched New Hampton at the Hoophall tournament, yes, the assistant coach with the Larry Bird-looking blonde hair was former Williams player Harlan Dodson. Dodson is teaching at New Hampton and assisting Hutchins.

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today (Jan. 24) would have been Warren Zevon's 65th birthday. The musician and frequent David Letterman guest died in 2003, but not before releasing a lot of outstanding music -- much more than you'd ever hear on the radio, which only seems to play his lone top-40 hit, "Werewolves of London."

Zevon had a couple of great songs, in fact, about sports. From his 1987 album "Sentimental Hygiene," here's a live version of "Boom Boom Mancini," about the former WBA light heavyweight champion boxer:

My personal favorite came from Zevon's 2001 album "My Ride's Here." Penned by author/sportswriter Mitch Albom and composed/sung by Zevon, here's "Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)":

Writer/director/hockey lover Kevin Smith has written a "Hit Somebody" movie, based on the song. And if the voice of the fan in the song sounds familiar, that's because it's Letterman yelling "Hit somebody!"

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are three contested matches from Mount Greylock's 66-6 wrestling dual win over Monument Mountain on Wednesday night at MGRHS:

Posted by Matthew Sprague, Eagle Sports Editor at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)