Monday Morning #Pickem to Start the Week Right
Some people like to start their week with a cup of coffee. Others prefer a nice yoga session. Me? I go with #pickems that were created well over three years ago. Just a quick hypothetical $15 spent and I'm ready to dominate the week.
You have $15 to build your perfect broadcast team for a college basketball game
Play-by-play: Dave Pasch $1 (Remaining: $14)
Holy hell, what a tough decision right off the bat. Gus Johnson is right there for the taking but you need a good game for Gus to really shine. I wanted Verne Lundquist so that I could get Verne Lundquist making funny faces and random noises when he's excited but $3 is pretty steep in an exercise where I need every dollar. I'll play it safe and go with Dave Pasch. Your play-by-play announcer can't always make the game but they can definitely break a game. Pasch is Steady Eddie and he's worked with Bill Walton, Jay Bilas, JVG & Mark Jackson, Doris Burke, etc so I know he can hold his own with anybody.
Color analyst #1: Bill Raftery $5 (Remaining: $9)
Raft could have been $14.99 and he'd still be on my team. My only regret here is that I couldn't put him and Ian Eagle together so that Raftery could call him "Bird" for the next three hours. Either way, Pasch is the perfect straight man for Raftery's SHENANIGANS. I can't wait until Raftery is calling every single shot "short" before it leaves the shooters hand and how Pasch baits him into admitting he stayed at the hotel bar until 3 am the night before the game.
Color analyst #2: Doris Burke $4 (Remaining: $5)
Gimme good ol' DB here to play off of Raftery. Doris is smart enough to make good points about the game in realtime, quick enough to play off of Raftery's rants and wise enough to know when to let the game breathe without talking over it. It's rare to find an analyst with all three and it's even rarer to find them for $4. A steal.
Sideline reporter: Tracy Wolfson $3 (Remaining: $2)
Another bargain! Whether it's college basketball or football, anytime I see Tracy Wolfson standing beside a pissed off coach and the security behind him at halftime, I know we're about to get a good interview. She'll ask the obvious questions but in non-obvious ways so as to not piss off coaches that are ready to snap at anything. And I don't think I've ever seen her hold a coach for too long trying to get a good soundbite. She knows when to cut them loose and throw it back to the booth.
Studio Analyst: 2 Charles Barkley's $2 (Remaining: $0)
Ok, so I bent the rules a little bit but one studio analyst is nonsense! Imagine that I've got this great broadcasting team and only get to throw it to Jon Rothstein sitting alone in the studio. I'll have none of it and thus I'm taking two (2) Charles Barkley's: One to say very inaccurate information about the current game because he hasn't watched a college basketball game since 1991 and one to confirm that Bill Raftery shut down the hotel bar at 3 am because he left Chuck #2 with the tab. Tremendous.
Pasch- Raftery- Burke- Wolfson- Barkley's
Who you got?