The Best of (and worst of)..

My friend and fellow sportscaster Jermaine Ferrell and I were chatting about this last week--what are some of the best sporting events that I've worked over the last 21-years, and that's inspired me to take you on a tour of some truly great events, and more--on the worse side to boot!

If you read my first entry on this blog, you got a taste of some of those events--from the Bowl games, to a Final Four, to a college baseball & a college softball World Series, an NFC championship game, to a golf major, and meeting about every guy's wet dream of a modern day tennis star (I'll give you a hint: she never won a major singles title). So, with all that in mind, I'm going to do some ranking of the best of the best of those events--with my reasoning behind it. And yes, I'm biased when it comes to some of what's to follow, but remember, this is American, Jack!

BEST BOWL GAME VENUE: Rose Bowl. Can't argue with "The Granddaddy of them All". Nestled between two golf courses with the San Gabriel Mountains on all sides? Ewsome.

WORST BOWL GAME HOSPITALITY: Rose Bowl. Tradition of the bowl (Pac 10 vs. Big 10) sours on Big 12 teams, and I was covering two Big 12 teams at two different Rose Bowls. Chilly reception both times.

WORST BOWL GAME VENUE: None. Covering a bowl game is nothing but a hospitality grab, and we sports guys do that with gusto because we don't get paid enough not to.

BEST BOWL GAME HOSPITALITY: Cotton Bowl. Hands down. For us media types, an open media room with food and drinks 24-7, internet, games, media guides, free ducats to the New Year's Eve Cotton Bowl Ball (in 2004, the entertainment was "The Temps"--no, not a cover band called "The Temps". No, I'm talking about the original "The Temptations"!! Ab fab!

BEST BOWL GAME BRANDING: Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Every time you entered the perimeter of the stadium "park", a bowl staffer at any of the stadium entrances asked you, "Do you have your bag of Tostitos?". And, then you got a bag of them. I must have had two dozen bags on game-day alone. And, I couldn't eat Tostitos for a year afterward.

BEST FAMILY ATMOSPHERE EVENT: Women's College World Series softball in OKC. I grew up in OKC, but had never been to the Hall of Fame Stadium until 2007 when I covered both Baylor and Texas A&M, who both earned berths--and man did I miss out all those years. Packed houses, fans on the edge of their seats, tailgaiting in the parking lots. Thoroughly impressed.

WORST FAMILY ATMOSPHERE EVENT: Final Four, Indianapolis 2005. Only because half of the Hoosier Dome was cut off for the Women's National Championship (to make the seating around 29,000), and about half of the seats set up for the venue were so high up that the players must have looked like specks--not kid friendly. I could say the same thing about a men's final four played in the same type of venue, so let's not play the gender card, ladies.

MOST ELECTRIC ATMOSPHERE EVENT: College World Series baseball. There's a charm to Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium that's almost impossible to describe. All I can say is walking from the media room where we record the game to the stadium concourse then onto the field? You get the feeling that these guys still play for the love of the game--and the venue creates that type of vibe.

MOST MEMORABLE BOWL GAME: 1999 Independence Bowl. And for two reasons: 1) 'Twas **the last** football game of the 20th-century--it ended around 10:30pm on New Year's Eve (Deuce McAllister and Ole Miss beat OU on a last second field goal); and 2) All of us in the press box waited 'til the clock struck midnight to see if the "Y2K scare" would come to friution. It didn't, but every single one of us in the Independence Bowl press box in Shreveport, LA said, "But we know exactly where we were when the century turned!"

MOST CROWDED SIDELINE: NFC Championship Game, 1993. If you moved, you lost your spot and you weren't getting it back. Paaaaacked!

BEST CLOSE-UP PLAY: 1996 Fiesta Bowl, Nebraska vs. Florida. Huskers were bludgeoning the Gators, who had no answers not only for Tommie Frazier and Lawrence Phillips on offense, but a blitzing linebacker in Jamel Williams, who slammed Gators' QB Danny Wuerffel into the end-zone turf for a safety--about 8-feet from the spot I was occupying. The chunk of grass hanging out of Wuerffel's helmet after he slowly got up made a real cool piece of video!

BEST JOCKEYING-FOR-VIDEO-POSITION: 1996 Fiesta Bowl. Getting in position with my video camera to get the coaches handshake at the game's end--I'm dead center about 3-feet in front of NU's Tom Osborne and about 10-yards in front of UF's Steve Spurrier, and the scrum begins, and I refused to give ground. I felt like a pinball between bumpers, but I didn't lose the shot. If you ever watch replays of the game and see the handshake, you can't miss me--I'm the guy in the short-sleeve red shirt, and I was the only guy in short sleeves that night, as it got down to about 50-degress at game's end, and in the desert, that's cold for the natives.

BEST "WALK" EVENT: Senior PGA Championship, Oak Tree in Edmond, OK. Walking down a fairway pretty much right next to Fuzzy Zoeller, and it's like he's a hacker just like you and me. Then another fairway, with Tom Kite, then another with Dr. Gil Morgan. Wow.

BEST EVENT FOR GUYS WANTING TO LOOK AT WOMEN: Surprise here: Women's College World Series. In my single days, my response would have been, "A LOT of talent around here!"

BEST EVENT FOR WOMEN WANTING TO LOOK AT GUYS: Hell, I don't know. I don't look at guys.

And finally, BEST EVENT OF ALL: None of the Above. No, that one would be one that I got to have a part in and had somebody else cover: the 1982 Oklahoma State High School Basketball Class 5A State Tourney, where the Northwest Classen Knights dismantled future NBA All-Star and All-Time Free Throw leader Mark Price and Enid 81-69, to win the state championship, and did it on statewide TV.

Knight on.