RIP Bill Flemming

Art Fleming of "Jeopardy?" No.

Fleming wasn't Art's real last name.

 

And who can forget the Slippery Rock scores?

 

You would be correct sir, my bad.

 

I recall, way back in my childhood, when the Ohio State basketball team with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek was among the best in the nation in the early 1960s. Most of their games were televised by a local Columbus station, but sometimes they were on the Big Ten game of the week, televised by a regional network late on Saturday afternoons. Bill Flemming was the announcer. He worked alone, without an analyst. Actually, what I remember most is the video coverage. Whereas the local station used only two cameras in the balcony, the regional network added another camera at floor level, mounted on a wheeled tripod near the corner of the court. It made St. John Arena look completely different on TV to have that low angle available.

 

I loved that show and watched it every Sunday morning before the NFL games came on. There was no SportsCenter back then, so it was the show with the most in college football highlights. RIP Bill.

 

When I was a kid, his enthusiasm made me even more excited about football.

RIP, sir.

 

I was too young to remember the Sunday morning show, but I have faint memories of Bill and Dave Diles, whom I thought (maybe wrongly) was behind the Slippery Rock thing....

 

Diles hosted the College Scoreboard show Saturday afternoons with a huge scoreboard in the background, the show was sponsored by Prudential I believe.
And cripes, couldn't USA TODAY'S Heistand have done a little bit more on Flemming and a little bit less on ESPN's NASCAR crap in his column?

 

Memory's fading, Slap. For starters, if you're talking "Jeopardy," it was Art Fleming. One M. Secondly, his real last name was Fazzin.

Must be the heat.

 

And if you'd have read seven posts above, Gilligan, you'd have read my retraction and apology...

 

Didn't the Slippery Rock score thing start at Michigan Stadium over the PA? Maybe Flemming and/or Diles picked it up from there. I know that when they had time, Diles had all manner of obscure scores on the "Prudential College Scoreboard."
ABC also had a trick up its sleeve for that. They used old mechanical scoreboards in the pre-electronic days, much like an election night telecast, and would deliberately change a score or two on-camera to make it look like they were up to the second. The touchdown might have been scored a half-hour earlier, but Diles would go, "and just in from ...." Presto! Scoreboard changes.

 

One of the best things about Flemming's Sunday morning highlights show was the music that ran during the closing credits. Not at the level of This Week In Baseball, but pretty close.

NFL Films used the same music over the Steelers' celebration at the end of the Super Bowl IX highlight film (and, interestingly, the TWIB theme earlier in the same reel).