3.18.2007

Fun With Open Mics, Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery Style

Good on March Madness on Demand for re-running the live pre-game open mic audio for the Purdue-Florida game. Lundquist and Raftery talk to each other and to guys in the truck and obviously aren't aware they can be heard as they prep for the game. It's largely uninteresting, but there are a few highlights:

Verne Lundquist saying right before the National Anthem "We have what you might call a sparse crowd here today. It's really awful." Lundquist follows this later with "Aww, man, this crowd is sad. You just can't talk about it too much." Maybe the NCAA went back to New Orleans a little too soon...

Raftery rather seductively tells Lundquist "Your voice sounds great," to which Lundquist, apparently battling a cold, starts doing vocal prepping "mimimimi"s. Lundquist: a true operatic voice.

Raftery gets into the Purdue band's rendition of "Soul Man," singing "badum da da da da"

Lundquist is apparently a bit unhappy with the PA announcer down in New Orleans, calling him "about 0-for-the-season" after mispronouncing Keaton Grant's hometown of Kissimmee, Florida as "Ki-seem-ee." The mispronunciation prompted a rather lengthy exchange between Lundquist and Raftery of "Is it Ki-seem-ee?" "It's Kiss-i-me" "Ki-seem-ee?" "No, Kiss-i-me" "Kiss-i-me." Lundquist sounded genuinely peeved at the PA guy.

Sadly, I still couldn't figure out who Raftery was referring to when he effusively said "He's got a nice, live body, doesn't he?" and prompted Lundquist to respond, "Ohhh boy, does he." (my guess is Corey Brewer, though, as he was just introduced prior to the exchange). Mmmm, nice live bodies...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The same thing happened last year with the same two announcers. I remember it lasted for like 2 minutes. I kept waiting for CBS to cut to commercial or a "please stand by" message or something.

I was hoping and praying for one of them to say something horrible but they never did. By the end I was thinking that it was possibly intentional. Like maybe CBS knew and had a guy ready to cut away if anything bad was said.

Its very interesting since its the same announcing crew. This topic needs to be researched further...but not by me.

Silly Cymberlin said...

I think Nate Barrett would fit well with these guys.... I mean... if you think his chemistry with "The Clis" was off the charts... you ai't seen nothing yet.

Anonymous said...

Same thing happened with Mike Patrick and Vitale calling the North Carolina/Clemson ACC tourney game this year. I watched it on ESPN.com and while away for a commercial break with a lot of time left, their mics were still on and Vitale said, "This one's over," to which Patrick responded, "Oh yeah."