I was struck by the amount of support Verne Lundquist received last week after he announced that he would leave the college football broadcast booth after the coming season.
ESPN’s Paul Finebaum told the Huntsville (Ala.) Times that Lundquist was “one of the most important and iconic broadcasters of my lifetime.” “SportsCenter” anchor Scott Van Pelt tweeted, “He’s as great as you’d guess.”
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Verne Lundquist will leave the college football broadcast booth after this season.
Photo by: DAVID PATTERSON
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Lundquist still has one more season of calling SEC football games, so I asked CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus how the announcer’s farewell tour would look.
“We will certainly pay him tribute, but it won’t be the sort of thing that we’ll be doing every week,” McManus said. “That would make Verne uncomfortable and just is not the right way to go. We will definitely recognize and memorialize his last year in a significant way, but I wouldn’t look for a weekly feature on it.”
McManus said he expects schools and SEC fans to honor Lundquist before and after games.
“I would think that there would be some kind of social occasion that the school would want to be part of,” he said. “Much like when Keith Jackson retired, he had a number of parting gifts and celebrations. I would expect the same thing for Verne. Keeping in mind that he deserves all these accolades, we’d want to keep some perspective, just because he’s never wanted to be the focus of the story.”
Starting in the 2017 season, Lundquist will be replaced by Brad Nessler on play-by-play. Gary Danielson will remain the game analyst.
— John Ourand
