Arguments about different regional foods have long been a thing, and they often show up in sports circles. Sometimes, that’s even on a game broadcast. On the Fox broadcast of Illinois’ neutral-site men’s basketball game against Duke at Madison Square Garden in New York Saturday night, announcers Gus Johnson and Jim Jackson had quite the pizza discussion:
Gus Johnson and Jim Jackson debate pizza. 🏀🍕🎙️pic.twitter.com/oRl8VqOypK
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 23, 2025
That starts with B-roll of pizzas coming out of an oven, and Johnson says “This is what you do when you come to New York, folks. You’ve got to get a fresh pie. New York pizza, they think it’s the best pizza in the world. I’m from Detroit, I think we have the best pizza. Anyway, Jimmy, it’s time for our favorite segment where we get a chance to ask the All-American a question. Like Warner Wolf would say, ‘Let’s jump to the videotape!'”
That leads to a “Hey Jimmy” segment with a pre-taped video of Illinois coach Brad Underwood asking Jackson “Hey Jimmy, Chicago, Detroit, or New York pizza?” Jackson says “Oh, New York,” Johnson says “Oh, come on,” and Jackson says “There ain’t no question. The square pizzas in Detroit are cool, but sometimes too thick.”
Johnson then gets handed a pizza box with one slice and presents it to Jackson, who says “I’m on a diet,” causing both to crack up. Johnson then says “If it was Detroit pizza, you’d eat it! Right here!” Jackson responds “If it was Detroit pizza, it would be like 12,000 squares.” They then have a bit of an exchange with Johnson saying “If you’re not going to eat that, hold that for me,” and Jackson saying “People don’t know how greedy you are. Seriously, bro, like everything, not chose, remember that, not chose.”
An amusing part of this is that despite this question coming from the Illinois coach, there was almost no discussion of Chicago-style pizza here, with Johnson and Jackson instead advocating for Detroit and New York-style. (And that’s about how this game went for the unranked Illini, who experienced the most lopsided loss in program history, falling 110-67 to the No. 3 Blue Devils.)
But it was also funny to see the back-and-forth between Johnson and Jackson, who have worked together for more than a decade across BTN and Fox’s networks and clearly have some fun poking each other. And in a basketball game this lopsided (it was 85-51 Duke early in the second half when this discussion came up), the pizza debate was a good fit, similar to some great moments we’ve seen in baseball and football blowouts.
The pizza discussion here made a bit of sense as a way to emphasize this game being in New York, too. But the interplay between the announcers made it much funnier than it might have been otherwise.
