Because most of America was focused on the two NFL Wild Card games on Sunday, we missed one of the more interesting facts of the day. Bill Raftery who is one of the country’s most treasured college basketball analysts called two games in one day for two different networks.
Bill Raftery called OSU-Indiana for CBS at 1:30, Villanova-Butler for FS1 tonight. Has anyone ever called 2 games for 2 networks in one day?
— Kevin Pauga (@KevinPauga) January 11, 2016
And with where the games were located, they weren’t all that hard to pull off. In the afternoon, Raft was in Bloomington, IN for the Ohio State-Indiana game on CBS. That game began at 1:30 p.m. ET and when that was over, Raftery headed north to Indianapolis for the Villanova-Butler game on FS1 that evening. Tip-off was at 7:35 p.m. ET so it wasn’t hard for man who trademarked his signature call of “ONIONS!” to pull off the rare doubleheader.
Raftery told the Indianapolis Star that being in two iconic Indiana arenas, Assembly Hall in Bloomington, then the Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on the same day was “pretty special.”
We know about Joe Buck’s Bay Area doubleheader in 2012 when he called the New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game at Candlestick Park then headed to AT&T Park to work the St. Louis Cardinals-San Francisco Giants NLCS Game 1, but both were on Fox.
There have been local announcers who have pulled off a college football game during the day and then a college basketball at night, but again, that was for the same radio or TV network.
We’re trying to think of an instance of one person who pulled off what Raft did, two games on the same day for two different networks. If you have some examples, leave them in the comments below.
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