Latest news with #Lampley
Indianapolis Star
18-05-2025
- Sport
- Indianapolis Star
Indianapolis high school sports: 3 finalists for Marion County Female Athlete of the Year
The Marion County Athletic Association will soon name its City and County Athletes of the Year, an award that dates to 1950 and grew to include girls' achievements in 1979. The awards are geared toward athletic achievement, but almost every winner over the years has exhibited impressive credentials in and out of their athletic, academic and personal areas. Generally, multi-sport athletes are given consideration over single-sport athletes, though in some cases a single-sport athlete has been so outstanding that he or she has been selected as the winner. Here are the three finalists for County Female Athlete of the Year (last year's winner was Maddie Rocchio of North Central): Lampley, a Mississippi State signee, led Lawrence Central to a Class 4A state championship as a junior and went on to be the runner-up for Miss Basketball as a senior and earn Indiana All-Stars honors. Lampley, a four-year letterwinner in girls basketball for the Bears, was named the Gatorade Player of the Year for Indiana as a junior after averaging 18.0 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.1 steals per game in a 29-0 season. As a senior, Lampley averaged 21.2 points, 5.6 rebounds, 2.4 steals and 1.8 assists per game for a team that finished 22-2, losing to eventual state champion Lawrence North in the sectional. Lampley is the all-time leading scorer in school history with 1,802 points. She also set program records for rebounds (580) and steals (209). She was a four-time selection as a first teamer to the All-Marion County team. Lampley was twice named the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference Player of the Year. Lampley, a distinguished honor roll student, has goals of playing in the WNBA and working in the medical industry. Matthews, a six-time letterwinner in cross-country and track and field, won the 800 meters at the Marion County track meet as a sophomore and senior and helped her teams to county championships as a sophomore, junior and senior. She was also part of the 4x800 meter relay team that won the sectional championship as a freshman, sophomore and junior. That team also won regional titles in 2022 and '24. Matthews' girls track team won a state title her freshman year, won the sectional every year of her first three years of high school and the regional championship twice. She won the 800 meters and 1,600 meters this spring at the MIC meet. Matthews also won the MIC indoor 3,200 championship. She is part of the school record holding relay teams in the 4x800 and distance medley relay. In cross-country, Matthews is a three-time All-Marion County honoree and three-time All-MIC selection. Her cross-country teams won sectional titles in 2022 and '23, also winning a regional in '23. Matthews plans to attend Marian University to run cross-country and track. She will major in mechanical engineering with a goal of working in motorsports as an engineer. Matthews is a member of the National Honor Society. Thomas, an eight-time letterwinner in basketball and track and field, will play basketball at Northern Kentucky and study psychology. The 6-1 Thomas, a two-time All-Marion County selection, averaged 12.3 points and 4.8 rebounds as a senior to help Lawrence North to a 19-8 season and Class 4A state championship. Her team as a sophomore reached the final game of the semistate and won the MIC basketball championship. Thomas was a three-time MIC selection. In track and field, Thomas was a two-time MIC shot put champion and two-time MIC indoor shot put champion. She was part of three sectional championship teams in track and was twice named All-MIC track and field. Thomas, a distinguished scholar and member of the distinguished honor roll, earned the Lawrence North physical education/health award. She volunteered her time for elementary reading programs at Mary Castle and Sunnyside Elementary. Thomas plans to use her psychology degree to help people overcome adversity and issues in their lives.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jim Lampley wasn't supposed to fall in love with boxing. Instead, he became its voice
Jim Lampley poses next to his photo at the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., in June 2015. The longtime boxing broadcaster says his life story "reads like a fictional narrative." (Alex Menendez / Getty Images) Jim Lampley has been the voice of boxing for a generation of Americans, which is remarkable because the assignment was only supposed to last one fight. In the winter of 1986, Lampley had a new contract and a new boss who wanted him out. So Dennis Swanson, the head of the ABC's sports division, ordered Lampley to cover Mike Tyson's first fight on network TV in the hopes, Lampley said, he would embarrass himself and slink away. Advertisement Instead, Lampley nailed the assignment and a year later began what would be an unparalleled three-decade career calling fights for HBO. 'I knew from the moment I called that first fight I was home,' said Lampley, 76, whose work earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. 'I understood that was where I was supposed to be.' Read more: George Foreman, boxing legend who fought Muhammad Ali in the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' dies So 18 months later, on his agent's advice, Lampley walked into Swanson's office, signed the papers that separated him from ABC Sports, and never looked back. That's one of several stories Lampley tells in 'It Happened: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television,' an autobiography of an admittedly charmed 50-year career in broadcasting. Advertisement 'My life story reads like a fictional narrative. That's the reason for the title,' Lampley said. 'It's the only way you can respond to something as totally counterintuitive, unexpected and filled with blessings as my career is to say, 'it happened.' 'I can't talk about anything that ever happened to me with anything less than astonishment.' The title of the book, written with journalist Art Chansky, is also a paean to Lampley's most famous call — the narration of George Foreman's stunning knockout of Michael Moorer, which allowed Foreman to become, at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion in history. 'Down goes Moorer on a right hand!. An unbelievably close-in right-hand shot! 'It happened! It happened!' George Foreman, left, punches Michael Moorer during their heavyweight championship fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November 1994. Jim Lampley's call of the fight helped cement his place in boxing history. (Lennox McLendon / Associated Press) In the book, Lampley takes readers inside locker rooms in every league and into the conference rooms of every network. He shares family stories of growing up in the South at the start of the civil rights movement and dishes celebrity gossip about some of the biggest names in sports and broadcasting. Advertisement But if the career he describes was marked by good fortune — he got his first break at 24 when, still in graduate school, he was chosen from a field of 432 candidates to serve as the first network sideline reporter on ABC's college football broadcasts — he was also very good at what he did. Over his dozen years at ABC he called two Indy 500s, broadcast Major League Baseball, traveled the world reporting for 'Wide World of Sports,' interviewed President Ronald Reagan at Daytona, presided over the trophy presentation after Super Bowl XIX and covered the first of 14 Olympics. He interviewed Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig after the U.S. hockey team's Miracle on Ice, worked with Billie Jean King at Wimbledon, saw Richard Petty's final NASCAR victory and was close enough to smell the sweat at every significant title fight between 1988 and 2018. 'Given his long career across several networks, he probably has some juicy stories to tell,' said Daniel Durbin, a professor at the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society. Yet it was a career that proved memorable as much for Lampley's timing as for his talent. Advertisement 'Jim was one of a group of 1970s college students who grew into sportscasters, that included Jim Nantz, Al Michaels, and Bob Costas,' Durbin continued. 'They pursued careers in a sort of golden age of sportscasting when 'Monday Night Football' had shown the tremendous potential of prime-time sports and ESPN and, later, Fox Sports were just on the horizon. 'He was a consistently strong sportscaster. A very good, workmanlike boxing broadcaster; well-prepared, clear and effective in his calls.' And every time his career seemed to reach a fork in the road, he inevitably chose the right path — one that has him returning to do blow by blow, this time on DAZN PPV, for a May 2 world championship card featuring Ryan Garcia, Teófimo López and Devin Haney, in separate bouts, live from Times Square. It will be his first fight call since HBO ended its boxing programming in 2018. Jim Lampley waves to the crowd during his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in June 2015. (Heather Ainsworth / Associated Press) In between his start at ABC and his return to his ring-side seat this week, Lampley was the first program host listeners heard on WFAN, helping it grow into the biggest sports-talk station in the country; anchored coverage of the Olympics and the NFL on NBC; appeared regularly on 'The CBS Morning Show' and had his own syndicated interview program, 'One on One With Jim Lampley.' Advertisement 'I was working all the time,' he said. 'I was making piles of money, one paycheck on top of another.' But he's also remembered in Los Angeles for a life-changing five-year stint as co-anchor of the nightly news on Channel 2. 'When I was forced out of ABC Sports, my next gig, my landing spot, was at KCBS-TV,' Lampley said on an hourlong Zoom call from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he sat before a wall covered with dozens of the media credentials he has gathered over the decades. 'The first thing I said to my agent was 'that's a local station. That's not a network gig'.' It came with a big contract though. And when the station brought in Bree Walker to join him behind the anchor desk, Lampley's personal life, as well as his career, took a turn. Advertisement 'There was a giant promotional campaign and a lot of hoopla,' Lampley remembered in an interview long on detail and short on regret. 'Yes, it probably boosted my image. [But] I found myself in a situation where I felt ill-equipped to compete with her particular studio skills on air. 'I decided that my best defense would be to get her to fall in love with me.' Read more: The rise and fall of Ryan Garcia: Embattled boxer wants to be the relatable anti-hero And she did, marrying Lampley and having a son with him before the couple divorced after nine years. It was 'Anchorman' 14 years before the Will Ferrell movie made Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone household names. Advertisement Months after moving to Los Angeles, Lampley also signed his first contract to call boxing on HBO, the job that would come to define his career. It was a job he was always meant to have since one of his earliest memories was of his widowed mother sitting him down in front of a television set perched on a TV dinner tray and putting on a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. He was 6. Eight years later he was in the Miami Beach Convention Hall to watch his boyhood idol Cassius Clay knock out Sonny Liston, and more than a quarter-century after that, Lampley was ringside in Tokyo for HBO when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, making him the only broadcaster to be present for the two greatest upsets in heavyweight boxing history. So it has been a uniquely lucky life. And, as the title of the book says, it happened. 'This was the way it was supposed to go,' Lampley said with a smile. 'It was preordained.' Advertisement Lampley will be in Los Angeles for a pair of book signings, on May 8 at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove and on May 10 at 2 p.m. at the Wild Card Boxing Club. The event at the Grove will feature a Q and A session moderated by KCBS-TV sports director Jim Hill. Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jim Lampley wasn't supposed to fall in love with boxing. Instead, he became its voice
Jim Lampley has been the voice of boxing for a generation of Americans, which is remarkable because the assignment was only supposed to last one fight. In the winter of 1986, Lampley had a new contract and a new boss who wanted him out. So Dennis Swanson, the head of the ABC's sports division, ordered Lampley to cover Mike Tyson's first fight on network TV in the hopes, Lampley said, he would embarrass himself and slink away. Instead, Lampley nailed the assignment and a year later began what would be an unparalleled three-decade career calling fights for HBO. 'I knew from the moment I called that first fight I was home,' said Lampley, 76, whose work earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. 'I understood that was where I was supposed to be.' So 18 months later, on his agent's advice, Lampley walked into Swanson's office, signed the papers that separated him from ABC Sports, and never looked back. That's one of several stories Lampley tells in 'It Happened: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television,' an autobiography of an admittedly charmed 50-year career in broadcasting. 'My life story reads like a fictional narrative. That's the reason for the title,' Lampley said. 'It's the only way you can respond to something as totally counterintuitive, unexpected and filled with blessings as my career is to say, 'it happened.' 'I can't talk about anything that ever happened to me with anything less than astonishment.' The title of the book, written with journalist Art Chansky, is also a paean to Lampley's most famous call — the narration of George Foreman's stunning knockout of Michael Moorer, which allowed Foreman to become, at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion in history. 'Down goes Moorer on a right hand!. An unbelievably close-in right-hand shot! 'It happened! It happened!' In the book, Lampley takes readers inside locker rooms in every league and into the conference rooms of every network. He shares family stories of growing up in the South at the start of the civil rights movement and dishes celebrity gossip about some of the biggest names in sports and broadcasting. But if the career he describes was marked by good fortune — he got his first break at 24 when, still in graduate school, he was chosen from a field of 432 candidates to serve as the first network sideline reporter on ABC's college football broadcasts — he was also very good at what he did. Over his dozen years at ABC he called two Indy 500s, broadcast Major League Baseball, traveled the world reporting for 'Wide World of Sports,' interviewed President Ronald Reagan at Daytona, presided over the trophy presentation after Super Bowl XIX and covered the first of 14 Olympics. He interviewed Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig after the U.S. hockey team's Miracle on Ice, worked with Billie Jean King at Wimbledon, saw Richard Petty's final NASCAR victory and was close enough to smell the sweat at every significant title fight between 1988 and 2018. 'Given his long career across several networks, he probably has some juicy stories to tell,' said Daniel Durbin, a professor at the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society. Yet it was a career that proved memorable as much for Lampley's timing as for his talent. 'Jim was one of a group of 1970s college students who grew into sportscasters, that included Jim Nantz, Al Michaels, and Bob Costas,' Durbin continued. 'They pursued careers in a sort of golden age of sportscasting when 'Monday Night Football' had shown the tremendous potential of prime-time sports and ESPN and, later, Fox Sports were just on the horizon. 'He was a consistently strong sportscaster. A very good, workmanlike boxing broadcaster; well-prepared, clear and effective in his calls.' And every time his career seemed to reach a fork in the road, he inevitably chose the right path — one that has him returning to do blow by blow, this time on DAZN PPV, for a May 2 world championship card featuring Ryan Garcia, Teófimo López and Devin Haney, in separate bouts, live from Times Square. It will be his first fight call since HBO ended its boxing programming in 2018. In between his start at ABC and his return to his ring-side seat this week, Lampley was the first program host listeners heard on WFAN, helping it grow into the biggest sports-talk station in the country; anchored coverage of the Olympics and the NFL on NBC; appeared regularly on 'The CBS Morning Show' and had his own syndicated interview program, 'One on One With Jim Lampley.' 'I was working all the time,' he said. 'I was making piles of money, one paycheck on top of another.' But he's also remembered in Los Angeles for a life-changing five-year stint as co-anchor of the nightly news on Channel 2. 'When I was forced out of ABC Sports, my next gig, my landing spot, was at KCBS-TV,' Lampley said on an hourlong Zoom call from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he sat before a wall covered with dozens of the media credentials he has gathered over the decades. 'The first thing I said to my agent was 'that's a local station. That's not a network gig'.' It came with a big contract though. And when the station brought in Bree Walker to join him behind the anchor desk, Lampley's personal life, as well as his career, took a turn. 'There was a giant promotional campaign and a lot of hoopla,' Lampley remembered in an interview long on detail and short on regret. 'Yes, it probably boosted my image. [But] I found myself in a situation where I felt ill-equipped to compete with her particular studio skills on air. 'I decided that my best defense would be to get her to fall in love with me.' And she did, marrying Lampley and having a son with him before the couple divorced after nine years. It was 'Anchorman' 14 years before the Will Ferrell movie made Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone household names. Months after moving to Los Angeles, Lampley also signed his first contract to call boxing on HBO, the job that would come to define his career. It was a job he was always meant to have since one of his earliest memories was of his widowed mother sitting him down in front of a television set perched on a TV dinner tray and putting on a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. He was 6. Eight years later he was in the Miami Beach Convention Hall to watch his boyhood idol Cassius Clay knock out Sonny Liston, and more than a quarter-century after that, Lampley was ringside in Tokyo for HBO when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, making him the only broadcaster to be present for the two greatest upsets in heavyweight boxing history. So it has been a uniquely lucky life. And, as the title of the book says, it happened. 'This was the way it was supposed to go,' Lampley said with a smile. 'It was preordained.' Lampley will be in Los Angeles for a pair of book signings, on May 8 at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove and on May 10 at 2 p.m. at the Wild Card Boxing Club. The event at the Grove will feature a Q and A session moderated by KCBS-TV sports director Jim Hill.
USA Today
01-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney bouts mark return of legendary boxing announcer
Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney bouts mark return of legendary boxing announcer Show Caption Hide Caption Jake Paul beats Mike Tyson by unanimous decision, here's where it leaves both fighters Jake Paul rose to the occasion and beat 58-year-old Mike Tyson in their highly publicized fight on Netflix. Sports Pulse Jim Lampley is entering the ring again. His ring - a place the award-winning announcer called home for more than 30 years until HBO Boxing turned off the lights in 2018. The Emmy winner, 76, is scheduled to call a boxing card featuring Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez on Friday in Times Square. It'll be the first time in more than six years viewers will hear the smooth-toned, distinctive voice on the blow-by-blow call. 'I had dispensed with the notion that anybody was ever going to ask me to call fights again,'' Lampley told USA TODAY Sports. 'So it's thrilling. It really is.'' Fred Sternburg, a publicist inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, said he thinks Lampley might become the oldest announcer to handle blow-by-blow duties. 'If it's a fact, it scares me,'' said Lampley, who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015. 'But being scared is often good.'' Q&A: Garcia vs. Romero fight: Garcia returns to boxing after failed drug test MORE: Ryan Garcia says Jake Paul is a 'wild card. I don't know if he's a boxer.' So says the announcer who covered 14 Olympics and called legendary boxing matches such as Buster Douglas' shocking knockout victory over Mike Tyson in 1990 and George Foreman winning the heavyweight title at age 45 with a knockout of then 26-year-old Michael Moorer in 1994. Now it'll be Garcia vs. Rolando 'Rolly'' Romero, Haney vs. Jose Carlos Ramirez and Lopez vs. Arnold Barboza Jr. Lampley has had to prepare while promoting his recently released memoir - 'It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life In Sports Television,'' - and also welcoming a 12th grandchild into his blended family. And now, a new chapter unfolds in New York. 'You don't expect at my age to become the busiest man on the planet,'' Lampley said, 'but I kind of feel as though I am at this particular time.'' How did Jim Lampley boxing return unfold? On Feb. 1, Lampley was at the David Benavidez-David Morrell Jr. fight when members of the media found him. They called his attention to a post on X from Turki Al-Sheikh, the Saudi who's become arguably the most powerful figure in boxing. 'I would like to have and invite Mr. Jim Lampley on the live broadcast of one of our upcoming cards,'' the post read. They were words Lampley had been waiting to hear since HBO shuttered its boxing division. 'It was a change in his life that he maybe still hasn't entirely gotten over,'' said Lampley's wife, Debra, who of HBO's Boxing closing down added, 'It was dark days. They still had his contract, so he couldn't work anyplace else.'' When HBO bought out Lampley's contract in 2020, the offers he thought would come never did. So Lampley, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, taught a class in media for five semesters at his alma mater, North Carolina. Then, in 2023, he joined for whom he has co-hosted a live viewer chat during pay-per-view fights and also interviewed boxers. He was visible again. Then came Al-Sheikh's post. Followed by a meeting with the Saudi power broker. 'I shook his hand, I looked him in the eye,'' Lampley said. 'I have a personal relationship now and a friendship with Turki Al-Sheikh.'' Perhaps a friendship that could lead to more announcing work for Lampley? 'Let's do one and see what Turki thinks about it,'' Lampley said. 'It's all up to him. … I'm not going to jump the gun or take any step ahead beyond where he wants to be. And all I know for certain about where he wants to be is let's do this. So let's do this and not get ahead of ourselves.'' Jim Lampley, John Grisham and a book tour On April 24, best-selling author John Grisham appeared with Lampley at a book signing event in Chapel Hill to help promote Lampley's book. 'If you had told me a year ago, oh, you'll be promoting your own book and John Grisham will be your co-host at a bookstore, I would've thought, this is insane,'' Lampley said. 'What are we talking about here? And we sold a hundred books, which is a pretty good haul.'' Soon Lampley and his wife will be traveling to California to continue promoting the book. But first comes fight night. 'Am I going to be underprepared? I sort of feel like that might possibly be the case,'' Lampley said. 'I felt under-prepared for every one of the hundreds of fights that I called in my career leading up to this point. And I will feel the same way again next Friday night. 'In a way that's good because it leaves you open to the spontaneous discovery of whatever happens in front of you in the fight, and you never know for sure.'' Garcia, the featured fighter on the boxing card Friday night, is among those excited about Lampley's return. "That's one of the biggest things I think boxing was missing,'' Garcia said. "A great voice, great commentator, and he tells the story good while you're fighting. ... I mean, he's the best in the game. So for him to come back is huge. Shout out Turki for that.'' Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero
Daily Mail
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE George Clooney's baseball career, Bob Dylan's greed and sports' darkest day: Inside my dinner with iconic TV star Jim Lampley
George Clooney tried out for his hometown Cincinnati Reds, Mike Tyson 's lingering childhood trauma prompted his return to the ring at 58, and as for Bob Dylan, well, his famed abhorrence of money is really more of a guideline than a strict rule. Such are the random, insightful nuggets I learned while dining with Jim Lampley, the broadcasting legend, raconteur and author of the new memoir, It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television. Now 76, with a full head of graying hair and his unmistakable smile intact, Lampley has been promoting the fascinating work across the US. But rather than a formal interview with the Daily Mail, Lampley's publicist and fellow Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Fred Sternberg arranged an intimate dinner at a busy Manhattan steakhouse that became the stage for a sequence of tales, all equally engaging and eclectic. Lampley once filmed a cameo for the 2001 Ocean's Eleven remake, where he said Clooney confessed to his humiliating Reds tryout. '[Clooney] toppled backwards trying to escape a curveball that dropped in for a strike on the outside part of the plate,' he recalled. A few years later, Lampley started his own production company, bought the rights to Dylan's 2004 book, Chronicles, and took several meetings with the folk singer in hopes of producing an adaption for HBO. 'The only question I can ever remember Bob asking about the project, two or three times, was, "How much money am I going to make?"' George Clooney tried, and failed, to get a contract offer from his hometown Cincinnati Reds, while Bob Dylan was singularly focused on how much money he could earn with Jim Lampley Ultimately the project didn't go anywhere. 'I asked HBO to gently and lovingly kick me in the teeth,' Lampley said. 'Which they did.' And therein lies the charm of his stories, which are humorous and self-deprecating, even as he drops one headline name after another. Of course, Lampley's proximity to some of the most interesting people and events of the last 50 years is no surprise. Few play-by-play announcers can approach his distinguished resume or breadth of experience across the greatest sporting events of the 20th and early 21st centuries. As a teenager in Miami, his mother - and inspiration for his book - Peggy Lampley, drove him to watch an underdog Cassius Clay stun heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964. A decade later, Lampley began his career as a college football sideline reporter when he won a nationwide ABC talent search. Since then, he's covered everything from the World Series to the Super Bowl and Wimbledon to the Indianapolis 500 - not to mention his 30-year reign as HBO's undisputed voice of boxing. And it was in the latter role that Lampley befriended a fading Tyson, who at 58 years old remains one of the most complicated figures in sports after his controversial decision to fight Jake Paul for a reported $20 million. 'For Mike, any legitimate, heartfelt deprivation puts him back in the tenement apartment in Brooklyn waiting for his mother to come home from the corner bar,' Lampley said, pointing to Tyson's traumatic childhood in Brownsville. 'So the notion that somebody cooks up a scheme by which Mike is going to make another eight-figure sum of money, there's no way he's going to say no.' Though, it hasn't been all checkered flags and Champagne rooms for Lampley, who was forced into far less glamorous assignments with ABC's Wide World of Sports. He's also been tasked with covering wrist wrestling championships, lumberjack events and, worst of all, he says, a cheerleading competition in Daytona Beach. There have also been tragedies along the way. Lampley was at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, where eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September killed 11 Israeli Olympians. At the time, millions of Americans were riveted by Jim McKay's 14-hour broadcast on ABC Sports, culminating with his solemn words: 'Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.' The broadcast remains an essential moment in sports history due, in part, to ABC producer Roone Arledge, whose off-screen maneuvering was witnessed, studied and committed to memory by then 26-year-old Lampley. '[Chris] Schenkel was the primetime host,' Lampley said in his inescapable anchor-toned delivery. 'Schenkel had been the primetime host in Mexico City [in 1968]. He was still the primetime host in Munich.' 'When they learn what's going on in the Olympic Village, Arledge calls in a subordinate named Jeff Mason, coordinating Olympics producer,' Lampley continued. 'He says, "Jeff, I have a complicated assignment for you. I need you to go out and undertake a diligent search for Chris… and I need you not to find him. And then I need you to find out where McKay is and put him in the chair."' And with that, the affable Schenkel - ABC's top anchor - was replaced with McKay's dignified gravitas. 'That succession took place at that moment because Roone knew that Chris's personality was utterly and completely wrong for that and that McKay was fundamentally a newsman,' Lampley said. '"Put McKay in the chair." That's Arledge's genius.' Even when he wasn't working, Lampley still had a knack for gaining entry to the biggest sporting events, due in no small part to his celebrity status. As his wife, Debra, said, Lampley is 'the right level of famous' - which is to say he receives some perks without any major drawbacks. Take Oct. 18, 1977, when he witnessed Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson's historic three-homer performance in Game 6 of the World Series. As Lampley explains in 'It Happened!', those tickets were provided by none other than Mr. October himself. But for all of his good fortune, Lampley considers himself most lucky to have learned under Arledge, the canonized creator of Monday Night Football, not to mention McKay and fellow ABC Sports legend Howard Cosell, both of whom regarded the younger announcer as a threat. 'It was unique for me to work in that environment, with all of those people already with their personas, already who they were, and managing to perform well enough to survive that culture and to not be demolished,' Lampley said. 'This is despite the fact that Cosell hated me and McKay hated me.' Lampley immediately picked up on our surprise, not at the famously competitive Cosell disliking a younger announcer, but at the venerable McKay feeling that way as well. 'You would have thought that McKay would be big enough,' Lampley said. 'You know, elevated enough... No way.' He also worked at ABC and NBC with O.J. Simpson, whom he befriended until 1994, when Lampley became convinced the Buffalo Bills legend was guilty of murdering ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Larry Holmes (left) lands a jab against challenger and former champ Muhammad Ali in 1980 But for as much time as Lampley has spent ringside, courtside and in the booth, he's had nearly as much firsthand experience with the biggest names in music, film, business and politics. Lampley was golfing buddies with Hollywood hero Jack Nicholson, befriended Simpson's co-creator James L. Brooks and even spent some time with then New York real estate developer Donald Trump, although he can't say they were ever real acquaintances. And as is so often the case in these elite circles, Lampley's A-list friends would often introduce him to an even higher echelon of socialites, like the time Arledge invited him and Mick Jagger to watch Muhammad Ali's 1980 loss to Larry Holmes on closed-circuit television. 'Closing stage of his career, Ali is fighting the necessary passion play against Larry Holmes,' Lampley said ahead of dessert. 'And Holmes, [Ali's] former sparring partner, is now going to wipe the canvas with him and become the heavyweight champion, and the fight is not mercifully brief.' The viewing took place on the 16th floor at ABC, where guests slowly began imploring referee Richard Green to stop the fight all the way in Las Vegas. Ali's corner would throw in the towel after 10 rounds, but not before Jagger offered a perfect synopsis of what the crowd of 30-somethings were witnessing. 'I feel this little poke at the bottom of my rib cage,' Lampley said. 'I look down and it's Mick. And Mick says, "Do you know what we're watching, Lamps?" 'I said, "No, Mick, what are we watching?" '"It's the end of our youth,"' Lampley said, quoting Jagger. 'That's the greatest line of commentary: "It's the end of our youth." Because so many from the Baby Boomer generation had dated themselves by [Ali].' Yes, Lampley is, himself, a Baby Boomer. But like his recently deceased friend George Foreman, whose 1994 upset of Michael Moorer is referenced by the title of It Happened!, Lampley has remained relevant for decades. Announcers don't have expiration dates, and as long as they know how to tell the right story in the most interesting way possible, there will always be an audience willing to listen. And for that, Lampley remains eternally grateful. As he wrote about his memoir in the book's prologue, 'It's the story of how my life constantly and repeatedly rescued itself from self-destruction and left me with identities and encounters that are in some ways unique for an American sportscaster.'
