Post by rainman on Feb 28, 2008 7:03:29 GMT -5
COLUMN: Cope, Fleming unforgettable ‘Odd Couple’
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— And then there were none.
First Jack Fleming.
“Hold onto your hats, here come the Steelers out of the huddle. It’s down to one play, fourth down and 10 yards to go ... Terry Bradshaw at the controls. Twenty-two seconds remaining. And this crowd is standing ... Bradshaw is back and looking again ... Bradshaw running out of the pocket, looking for somebody to throw to ... Fires it downfield. And there’s a collision ... And ... (unintelligible). It’s caught out of the air! ... The ball is picked up by Franco Harris. Harris is going for a touchdown for Pittsburgh ... Harris is going. ... Five seconds left on the clock. Franco Harris pulled in the football. I don’t even know where it came from. Fuqua was in a collision. There are people in the end zone. Where did it come from?”
Then Myron Cope.
“Yoi!”
America’s true “Odd Couple” are both gone now.
Maybe that’s why it seemed Wednesday’s snow fell so silently across the hills of West Virginia.
It was only fitting for there never again will be a pair like Fleming and Cope.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
It was the night West Virginia played Pittsburgh in men’s basketball at the Petersen Events Center earlier this month that I received my last report on Cope. As anyone who followed him on the Pittsburgh Steeler broadcasts from 1970 on, teamed first with Fleming, then with Bill Hillgrove, knows, Cope’s health had been failing him for some time.
You expect that at 79.
A friend from Pittsburgh said he’d driven by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center just that day and had seen Cope standing outside.
“He was just standing there. Had one of those portable oxygen tanks with him,” the friend reported.
Oh, yeah. He reported one other thing.
“He was smoking a cigarette.”
Ill, taking oxygen, and he was puffing on a cigarette.
That was Myron Cope.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Cope’s debut as color commentator on Steelers’ broadcasters came on Sept. 20, 1970, the same day one Terry Bradshaw debuted at quarterback. Some thought the Steelers were insane to go with the rookie quarterback. More thought it was insane to pair Cope, an elegant writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and then Sports Illustrated and Saturday Evening Post but a scratchy voiced, stuttering broadcast amateur, with the velvety smooth Fleming.
Fleming had doubled as the Voice of the West Virginia Mountaineers in his hometown of Morgantown and on Steeler broadcasts, and mixing the two seemed as distasteful as mixing vinegar and sugar.
While it took a while for the two to find a way to work out their on-air relationship, Fleming trying to work his way through his play-by-play as Cope continually talked over him or through him.
Take the day Frenchy Fuqua was off on a long touchdown run. As Fleming was delighting listens with a marvelous description of the action, Cope was screaming, “Frenchman, what are ya doin’ lookin’ back?!”
“He’d snap at me a lot back then, and we always had this by play between us,” Cope recalled just a day before Fleming’s memorial service. “But it was always great fun, and we were very close friends. But it wasn’t limited to the booth. Sometimes on charters I’d be trying to sleep and here he was eating these four-course meals and keeping me awake. I’d tell him to keep quiet, and he’d point out the window at the wing and say. ‘Why don’t you take your nap out there.’”
A large man, Fleming dwarfed the diminutive Cope, who may have reached 5-feet, 4-inches in elevator shoes. Blessed with a rich, descriptive voice, Fleming could make a football or basketball game come to life.
Cope, on the other hand, was all schtick, with catch phrases like “Yoi” or “Garganzola or “Okle-dokle.” The Cleveland Browns became the “Cleve Brownies,” the hated Cincinnati Bengals could only be the “Bungles” in Cope-speak and Coach Chuck Noll was “Emperor Chaz.”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
As different as they were taken individually, they created a team that would find its own niche in NFL history. Cope’s contribution was The Terrible Towel, a novelty that united Steeler Nation during the team’s run to four Super Bowl championships.
It was a marketer’s delight, an item that was sold to Steeler fans not only through the Pittsburgh-West Virginia market, but through the nation, turning them into towel-waving maniacs who had probably the greatest home field advantage in football because of it.
Of course, it wasn’t universally loved.
“He (Fleming) hated it,” said Cope, who would have one at his elbow at each game and wave it at the proper moment. “Of course, I think he was only kidding about hating it.”
Not on the day the Steelers and Houston Oilers found themselves going face-to-face in the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh, a game played in bitter cold. Cope once wrote about what transpired on that day.
“As the Steelers and the Oilers lined up for the opening kickoff, a yellow towel suddenly descended from the deck above the WTAE broadcasting booth, and as if by magic, jerked to a halt in midair 15 feet in front of the booth.
“My binoculars revealed that painstaking Steelers fans had strung fishing line from the top deck clear down to the end zone to our left, their plan having been to release the towel at kickoff and let it slide by means of a pulley to the end zone. But the fishing line, so fine it had been invisible to the naked eye, had become coated with ice in the freezing rain that whipped the stadium, and that arrested the towel before our very eyes.
“‘What is that damned towel doing out there?’ cried my broadcast partner, Jack Fleming, a large deep-voiced man and a football purist who from the outset had been hostile to my Terrible Towel. Fleming now found that the one before him removed half the gridiron from his vision as he was about to begin his play-by-play.
“‘Somebody get that towel out of here,’ he bellowed.
“Minutes later, the roof above Fleming sprang a leak, and in an instant he was soaked. ‘Give me one of those damned things,’ he yelled, reaching into an assortment of Terrible Towels at my elbow. While he mopped his spotter boards, I wondered. ‘Is the towel punishing an unbeliever?’ I sat less than 3 feet from Fleming’s left, yet no water fell on me. Meanwhile, our producer produced an umbrella, Fleming, livid, clutched it in a white-knuckled fist throughout the first quarter, craning to follow ballcarriers and receivers as they disappeared behind the yellow towel suspended before us, and roaring during every timeout for workmen to cut down the infernal rag.”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Fleming’s greatest claim to fame, of course, came with the aforementioned call of the play that came to be known as “The Immaculate Reception,” perhaps the most famous play and call in history.
And, as fate would have it, Cope did not once step on Fleming’s call, for he had exited the radio booth to go to the field to round up guests for his post-game locker room show.
“He ran straight to me in the corner, and I’m yelling, ‘C’mon Franco, c’mon on!”’ said Cope, who, acting on a fan’s advice, tagged the play “The Immaculate Reception” during a TV commentary that night.
Is it any wonder that with a “Yoi!” being heard anywhere that Fleming ended his call of “The Immaculate Reception” by simply saying, “Holy Moley?!”
“It was,” Cope would say at Fleming’s funeral, “a perfect call.”
If the call was Fleming’s, the name was Cope’s, for at the suggestion of a fan, he called the play “The Immaculate Reception” on his television show that night, and it was picked up immediately across America.
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— And then there were none.
First Jack Fleming.
“Hold onto your hats, here come the Steelers out of the huddle. It’s down to one play, fourth down and 10 yards to go ... Terry Bradshaw at the controls. Twenty-two seconds remaining. And this crowd is standing ... Bradshaw is back and looking again ... Bradshaw running out of the pocket, looking for somebody to throw to ... Fires it downfield. And there’s a collision ... And ... (unintelligible). It’s caught out of the air! ... The ball is picked up by Franco Harris. Harris is going for a touchdown for Pittsburgh ... Harris is going. ... Five seconds left on the clock. Franco Harris pulled in the football. I don’t even know where it came from. Fuqua was in a collision. There are people in the end zone. Where did it come from?”
Then Myron Cope.
“Yoi!”
America’s true “Odd Couple” are both gone now.
Maybe that’s why it seemed Wednesday’s snow fell so silently across the hills of West Virginia.
It was only fitting for there never again will be a pair like Fleming and Cope.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
It was the night West Virginia played Pittsburgh in men’s basketball at the Petersen Events Center earlier this month that I received my last report on Cope. As anyone who followed him on the Pittsburgh Steeler broadcasts from 1970 on, teamed first with Fleming, then with Bill Hillgrove, knows, Cope’s health had been failing him for some time.
You expect that at 79.
A friend from Pittsburgh said he’d driven by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center just that day and had seen Cope standing outside.
“He was just standing there. Had one of those portable oxygen tanks with him,” the friend reported.
Oh, yeah. He reported one other thing.
“He was smoking a cigarette.”
Ill, taking oxygen, and he was puffing on a cigarette.
That was Myron Cope.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Cope’s debut as color commentator on Steelers’ broadcasters came on Sept. 20, 1970, the same day one Terry Bradshaw debuted at quarterback. Some thought the Steelers were insane to go with the rookie quarterback. More thought it was insane to pair Cope, an elegant writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and then Sports Illustrated and Saturday Evening Post but a scratchy voiced, stuttering broadcast amateur, with the velvety smooth Fleming.
Fleming had doubled as the Voice of the West Virginia Mountaineers in his hometown of Morgantown and on Steeler broadcasts, and mixing the two seemed as distasteful as mixing vinegar and sugar.
While it took a while for the two to find a way to work out their on-air relationship, Fleming trying to work his way through his play-by-play as Cope continually talked over him or through him.
Take the day Frenchy Fuqua was off on a long touchdown run. As Fleming was delighting listens with a marvelous description of the action, Cope was screaming, “Frenchman, what are ya doin’ lookin’ back?!”
“He’d snap at me a lot back then, and we always had this by play between us,” Cope recalled just a day before Fleming’s memorial service. “But it was always great fun, and we were very close friends. But it wasn’t limited to the booth. Sometimes on charters I’d be trying to sleep and here he was eating these four-course meals and keeping me awake. I’d tell him to keep quiet, and he’d point out the window at the wing and say. ‘Why don’t you take your nap out there.’”
A large man, Fleming dwarfed the diminutive Cope, who may have reached 5-feet, 4-inches in elevator shoes. Blessed with a rich, descriptive voice, Fleming could make a football or basketball game come to life.
Cope, on the other hand, was all schtick, with catch phrases like “Yoi” or “Garganzola or “Okle-dokle.” The Cleveland Browns became the “Cleve Brownies,” the hated Cincinnati Bengals could only be the “Bungles” in Cope-speak and Coach Chuck Noll was “Emperor Chaz.”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
As different as they were taken individually, they created a team that would find its own niche in NFL history. Cope’s contribution was The Terrible Towel, a novelty that united Steeler Nation during the team’s run to four Super Bowl championships.
It was a marketer’s delight, an item that was sold to Steeler fans not only through the Pittsburgh-West Virginia market, but through the nation, turning them into towel-waving maniacs who had probably the greatest home field advantage in football because of it.
Of course, it wasn’t universally loved.
“He (Fleming) hated it,” said Cope, who would have one at his elbow at each game and wave it at the proper moment. “Of course, I think he was only kidding about hating it.”
Not on the day the Steelers and Houston Oilers found themselves going face-to-face in the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh, a game played in bitter cold. Cope once wrote about what transpired on that day.
“As the Steelers and the Oilers lined up for the opening kickoff, a yellow towel suddenly descended from the deck above the WTAE broadcasting booth, and as if by magic, jerked to a halt in midair 15 feet in front of the booth.
“My binoculars revealed that painstaking Steelers fans had strung fishing line from the top deck clear down to the end zone to our left, their plan having been to release the towel at kickoff and let it slide by means of a pulley to the end zone. But the fishing line, so fine it had been invisible to the naked eye, had become coated with ice in the freezing rain that whipped the stadium, and that arrested the towel before our very eyes.
“‘What is that damned towel doing out there?’ cried my broadcast partner, Jack Fleming, a large deep-voiced man and a football purist who from the outset had been hostile to my Terrible Towel. Fleming now found that the one before him removed half the gridiron from his vision as he was about to begin his play-by-play.
“‘Somebody get that towel out of here,’ he bellowed.
“Minutes later, the roof above Fleming sprang a leak, and in an instant he was soaked. ‘Give me one of those damned things,’ he yelled, reaching into an assortment of Terrible Towels at my elbow. While he mopped his spotter boards, I wondered. ‘Is the towel punishing an unbeliever?’ I sat less than 3 feet from Fleming’s left, yet no water fell on me. Meanwhile, our producer produced an umbrella, Fleming, livid, clutched it in a white-knuckled fist throughout the first quarter, craning to follow ballcarriers and receivers as they disappeared behind the yellow towel suspended before us, and roaring during every timeout for workmen to cut down the infernal rag.”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Fleming’s greatest claim to fame, of course, came with the aforementioned call of the play that came to be known as “The Immaculate Reception,” perhaps the most famous play and call in history.
And, as fate would have it, Cope did not once step on Fleming’s call, for he had exited the radio booth to go to the field to round up guests for his post-game locker room show.
“He ran straight to me in the corner, and I’m yelling, ‘C’mon Franco, c’mon on!”’ said Cope, who, acting on a fan’s advice, tagged the play “The Immaculate Reception” during a TV commentary that night.
Is it any wonder that with a “Yoi!” being heard anywhere that Fleming ended his call of “The Immaculate Reception” by simply saying, “Holy Moley?!”
“It was,” Cope would say at Fleming’s funeral, “a perfect call.”
If the call was Fleming’s, the name was Cope’s, for at the suggestion of a fan, he called the play “The Immaculate Reception” on his television show that night, and it was picked up immediately across America.
