Too Bad McKay Never Called College Basketball

Today much of the sports broadcasting world is mourning the death of legendary sportscaster Jim McKay, who died of natural causes this weekend at the age of 86.

I remember McKay as the guy who called all those great summer and winter Olympics for all three major networks and for his work on “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.” He was such a wonderful journalist, storyteller poet. He made some of the most uninteresting and mundane sports like barrel jumping, water skiing and bobsledding sound like they were American staples like basketball, football and baseball.

But it was McKay who was the American staple. If you’re old enough you still hear him talk about “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” in the opening of “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

As a kid I was always glued to the TV for the two weeks of Olympic coverage hosted and covered by McKay.

Besides the Olympics, McKay called some of the world’s biggest sporting events such as the Indianapolis 500, the FIFA World Cup, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. McKay will always be remembered for being on the air in 1972 in Munich, West Germany covering the tragic “Munich Massacre” which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered by an Islamic terrorist group.

I think the closest McKay ever got to covering college basketball was during the Olympics back when the basketball team was made up of only college basketball players. From the 1972 travesty which the U.S. was beaten by the referees more than the Soviet Union for the gold to 1984 team – the last to win the gold with all college players.

But wouldn’t it have been great to have him do some of his wonderful work and storytelling for college basketball? Can you imagine him telling stories about some of the great players and coaches who came from poverty and other disadvantages and hardships to reach the pinnacle of college basketball’s elite?

Or how about McKay waxing poetically about some of the teams that became Cinderella stories over the years and the interesting and incredible tidbits about the small towns from which they came?

Or telling stories about the teams that made the tournament for the first time and what they went through to get there. Or how about him telling us about the teams that didn’t make it to the Big Dance and how much it would have meant to the players in their last season.

I think he would say something like, “for some of these teams, it was like getting all dressed for the prom only to be jilted by their date at the last minute.”

With the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, it’s going to be hard to watch knowing that McKay isn’t there covering it and telling some of his wonderful stories about the athletes and events for the first time in my life.