I like Hubie Brown. I really do. Hubert Jude Brown has a wealth of basketball knowledge from his experience in the National and American Basketball Associations, as well as Cranford and Fair Lawn High Schools here in New Jersey. Although he has a career record under .500, Brown has an ABA championship with Kentucky in 1975 and was chosen NBA Coach of the Year twice. His resume is so dynamic that Brown is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor a well as in the College Basketball Hall of Fame. What makes him most remarkable is that at age 90, Hubie Brown still works games as an analyst for ABC and ESPN. He has almost become iconic.
Yet as good as Brown is, I still like the late Dr. Jack Ramsay more as a man who understood the game. Ramsay’s career highlights are similar—he won his NBA title with Bill Walton leading the Portland Trail Blazers, while Brown had Artis Gilmore on his Kentucky team. What separates the two is that Ramsay made the list of the Top 15 NBA coaches when the league celebrated its 75th anniversary. What makes that list impressive is that three head coaches are still coaching teams—Steve Kerr with Golden State; Gregg Popovich in San Antonio; and Eric Spoelstra keeps on running the show for Pat Riley, another Top 15 coach, in Miami.
Why am I addressing this subject? Because I had a reader feel that I did not adequately recognize how impressive Brown is broadcasting at his age. But I do. I just don’t like gravel-voiced analysts. No matter how much they know the game.
P.S. Neither one is among my favorite ex-jock/coach commentators in the NBA. I am not going to elaborate on this now. Suffice it to say that I believe I answered my critic.
I had thought about going to State College, Pennsylvania this upcoming weekend to take in the Rutgers-Penn State football game. It would have been a two-fold bucket list day—watching RU away from Piscataway, which I failed to do and finally seeing a Nittany Lions home game, something my wife and I did not do while our daughter was a PSU student.
While I was gung ho about the prospect of fulfilling two wishes, my decision not to go was affected by a few other things. First, we attended a Columbia University home game at the Baker Athletic Complex. The Lions play in Lawrence A. Wien Stadium which houses Robert K. Kraft Field. You might have heard of Mr. Kraft—he is the owner of the New England Patriots and a major benefactor to the university.
This locale was 18 blocks away from where my wife spent much of her childhood years at the Dyckman Houses. Those buildings sit on the site of the old Dyckman Oval, once a venerable sports venue until the landlord could no longer pay the bills and the City of New York took over the property.
It was a blustery day on West 218th Street in Upper Manhattan. The clouds obscured the sun enough to make the 50 degree temperature feel at least 10 degrees chillier.
The stadium is not much to look at. A lot of concrete with a turf field and track encircling it. The visiting stands have coverings, as the Lions rarely fill the stands to the listed 17,000 capacity.
The beauty of the location is that there is so much to look at outside of the fences surrounding the complex. Rising high above the stands are the bridges for the Henry Hudson Parkway. To my right were apartment towers in the Bronx, with a bubble for indoor use. On my left were older apartment buildings and a view of Hill Park and the trees with the different colors on the leaves making it feel truly like a fall setting. Sports Illustrated was right in calling this stadium the nicest in the Ivy League and one of the most picturesque in the United States.
So what were we doing there on a frosty early November Saturday? I have no direct ties to either Brown University, the visitors that day, or Columbia. In fact, I know one person who played football many years ago and I haven’t spoken to him in nearly 20 years.
It couldn’t be the rich history of Columbia football. Signs across from the home stands where we sat reminded us that the Lions won the 1934 Rose Bowl and were the Ivy League champions in 1961, their only title.
Even with the game going to overtime and Brown hanging on for a 20-14 win, the play on the turf was less than scintillating. My mind wandered in many directions—watching the multitude of trains on the Metro North line of the MTA pass by the baseball and softball fields behind the north end zone—to watching two middle infielders on the Columbia baseball team, which last went to the NCAA’s in 2022, work on their double play skills.
Or maybe it was taking in the sights and sounds of the Ivy Leaguers, dressed in all sorts of gear to insulate against the elements (except for the one guy who had to wear shorts to the game), reminding us that they were, in fact, regal Columbia graduates though their mannerisms and selective forgetfulness that others were in the stands who wanted to see the game rather than being repeatedly blocked when the consistently stood.
My real reason to attend this meaningless game (both teams could not win the Ivy League title and Columbia remains winless in the conference heading into Saturday’s clash with Cornell in Ithaca) goes back to my childhood. I devoured the sports pages on weekdays and especially Sundays. I would read up to five New York newspapers in addition to the New Brunswick paper. I was really enthralled reading the historical and highly descriptive articles in The Sunday New York Times. The colorfulness of the prose resonated with me, just like the classiness of the ads in The New York Times Magazine.
I had seen Columbia play at Rutgers twice, bicycling to Rutgers Stadium, parking my bike free of fear that it would be taken, then finding a discarded ticket stub which an usher on the visiting team side would look at for a second then waive me through. The battles between the Lions and Scarlet Knights were hard-fought, with RU winning in 1962, then coming up losers in 1965 to Archie Roberts, who was drafted by the New York Jets in the seventh round (as much a star as he was in high school and for the Lions, Roberts graduated from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and is credited with having performed over 4,000 open heart surgeries before retiring).
Columbia always wore its powder blue uniforms, which contrasted with the red of Rutgers. I loved the atmosphere at the Rutgers games, and with the prose enticing me, I made it a goal to some day see a game at Columbia, to experience what the writers were so enthralled with.
The spectacle wasn’t what it might have been nearly 60 years ago. Robert Kraft wasn’t there—he felt it was better to tag along with the team he owns which was playing the Indianapolis Colts in Frankfurt, Germany; his fiery speech to the team the night before didn’t help much, as the listless Patriots fell to the Colts.
Nor was Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce at the game. He felt it was much better to travel 5,600 miles to Argentina to see his mega-star girlfriend sing love songs to him. To each his own, I guess.
Having been in Allentown, Pennsylvania the week before for the Franklin and Marshall-Muhlenberg game and with prospect of more cold weather the day after Thanksgiving when the fast-sinking New York Jets host the Miami Dolphins in the first Black Friday NFL game, I felt it wasn’t prudent seeing Rutgers, another team adrift, get demolished by an angry Penn State team, whose offensive coordinator was fired by Head Coach James Franklin after no progress was made against a fired up Michigan squad, whose head coach, Jim Harbaugh, was suspended by the Big Ten for his team’s sign stealing fiasco.
Sitting in cold weather for this game and driving over 7 hours was a non-starter for my wife and daughter. Their intelligence and foresight trumped my eagerness to go. Rightfully so.
How might I get rewarded for not doing the stupid thing? Probably by listening to Hubie Brown. Oy. I guess it could have been worse.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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