maly, too: Obviously, Buzz Williams Has No Future In TV

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Obviously, Buzz Williams Has No Future In TV

By RON MALY

Buzz Williams has been on TV a lot this week.

Indeed, he's been on the air far too much.

Kurt Warner, front left,. Photo courtesy of AP/Waterloo Courier

Williams has been appearing on those NCAA tournament pregame, halftime and postgame shows that feature broadcasters, ex-players and coaches who either have already lost their jobs, or are on their way to losing their jobs.

Williams recently completed his first season as the coach at Virginia Tech.

It was a season he'd like to forget.

It was a nightmare.

His overall record was 11-22, and he was 2-16 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Williams not only didn't coach his basketball team very well in the 2014-2015 season, he also doesn't appear to be a very intelligent man.

He and TV viewers were watching yesterday when videotape of Kurt Warner, who had a standout career as a National Football League quarterback, addressing Northern Iowa's players was shown.

Warner, a former quarterback at UNI, was shown in the crowd [photo at the top of this column] and in the Panthers' locker room.

UNI advanced to Sunday night's game against Louisville by rolling past Wyoming, 71-54, in a second round game at Seattle.

Buzz Williams

"I didn't know Warner played football at Northern Iowa," Williams said. "In fact, I didn't even know Northern Iowa had a football team."

Obviously, Buzz Williams is not the sharpest guy sitting at the table.

*

Too bad Steve Alford and his UCLA team advanced to the NCAA's Sweet Sixteen today with a 92-75 victory over Alabama-Birmingham [aka UAB, the team that eliminated Iowa State on Thursday].

Steve Alford

That means Alford and his Bruins will be around to clutter up the tournament for one more game.

UCLA will play the winner of Sunday's Iowa-Gonzaga winner next Friday in the South Regional semifinal at Houston.

Obviously, I'm hoping it will be the Hawkeyes who knock UCLA out of the tournament, not Gonzaga.

Alford, of course, spent eight forgettable seasons [1999-2000 through 2006-2007] as the Hawkeyes' coach before being run out of town. His records at Iowa were 152–106 overall and 61-67 in the Big Ten. * TV viewers in eastern Iowa are caught in a mess with station KCRG in Cedar Rapids and DirecTV. DirecTV hasn't been offering KCRG to viewers for a couple of months because the station has refused to pay some sort of rights fee. Evidently, KCRG doesn't want to pay the same fee that competing stations KGAN of Cedar Rapids and KWWL of Waterloo are paying. Plenty of people in eastern Iowa are calling KCRG a cheapskate outfit, and I don't blame them. An Iowa resident made me aware of this situation, and forwarded this email to me that he has sent officials at KCRG: To KCRG-TV: I am informed that a member of my family with a DirecTV account in Iowa cannot receive KCRG-TV because of a conflict between the station and DirecTV. This distresses me very much and it distresses my family very much. This has been an ongoing problem, and it is my opinion that the matter should be solved immediately. It is horrible business being conducted by KCRG-TV to deny people in your viewing area of your services. How long do you think television viewers should have to put up with this type of business? I would like to know if you unwilling to pay DirecTV the same amount being charged to KGAN and KWWL, competing stations int he viewing area. Why should you people think that you should not pay your fair share, similar to what KGAN and KWWL pay? If I lived in your viewing area, I would give strong thought to dropping your station, which has proven it is not acting in good faith. It is my hope that you come to terms with DirecTV immediately. By the way, I live in an area where DirecTV and the ABC-TV outlet get along very well. Service is not, and has not, been interrupted by the same problems that are interfering with the service in eastern Iowa. The TV viewers in this area are very happy. It is a shame the same cannot be said for the KCRG-TV viewing area.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.