Fine effort, from Trump hello to fond Lundquist farewell

Army West Point, Navy and CBS delivered an outstanding afternoon of college football Saturday.

The two teams battled back and forth with Army pulling out a 21-17 win to end a 14-year losing streak against the Naval Academy.

Meanwhile, the stands at M&T Bank Stadium were filled with so much spirit from the midshipmen and cadets that it felt like the TV screen was going explode throughout most of the game. It was a joy just to behold such energy and enthusiasm in this otherwise sour time in American life.

And CBS Sports went all-out to deliver as much of that spectacle and add a bit of its own emotion as anyone has a right to expect of any TV sports operation.

I know the third-quarter interview in the booth with President-elect Donald Trump was a little loopy at points, with analyst Gary Danielson trying to be funny in suggesting that Trump appoint play-byplay announcer Verne Lundquist ambassador to Sweden. But, really, what do you expect of an interview with a politician at a football game, especially when you have someone like Trump who takes the microphone in his hand and totally controls the conversation?

This was easy pickings for this media master. He has owned better interviewers than Danielson and Lundquist. And these two sportscasters had to deal with him while announcing and analyzing the game that was being played on the field.

On the plus side, CBS started strong with its pregame show, 30 minutes before kickoff. Viewers were offered a prescient feature on Army quarterback Ahmad Bradshaw, exploring his roots and what he overcame to wind up at the helm of the Black Knights’ attack. If he wasn’t the player of the game, he certainly was the man responsible for the play of the game with his touchdown that put Army up by four points after Navy had come back from being down 14-0 at halftime.

But the real power of the pregame show was a report that looked back at the 2001 game after the attack on the World Trade Center. It focused on graduates who had played in the game, graduated and went on to serve and die in combat.

It was impossible not to be moved by the words of a surviving wife and father — and to see how much this rivalry means to their lives and memories of those who served and died. What a wise and winning piece of pregame sports journalism.

There was also extra emotion in the booth, because it was the last game for Lundquist after 17 years of calling college football. I was glad to see that he got to exit with a game drenched in emotion.

It was a typical Lundquist call — steady, easygoing, occasionally whimsical and never-ever self-serving or hot-dog. I thought his parting words to viewers after the game were also in keeping with his straightforward, unadorned style of broadcasting.

Danielson hit a nice tone in his goodbyes to Lundquist as well. And he was mostly on the money in his analysis. All day, he was saying in these option offenses, it’s mostly about the quarterbacks. “You can’t hide the quarterback,” he said. Bradshaw closed the deal for Army and carried the day. But much of the drama was the down (in the first half ) and up (in the second half ) performance of Zach Abey, Navy’s sophomore quarterback from Archbishop Spalding.

Even though Danielson’s overall analysis was impressive, he did make a sloppy mistake in trying to offer viewers what he thought was inside information.

With 9:19 left in the third quarter, he told viewers that his former teammate Stan White, now part of the Ravens broadcast team and an area high school coach, texted him to say that Abey was the best quarterback he had seen in 19 years of coaching at “Gilmore” in Baltimore. Based on that, White was predicting a big second half for Abey, Danielson told viewers.

White, as local high school sports fans know, coached at Gilman, not Gilmore. Maybe Danielson was thinking of Lorelai and Rory and the “Gilmore Girls” revival on Netflix.

Whatever, it was a careless mistake, and needlessly detracted from an otherwise strong day by Danielson. And give the former quarterback some extra points for riding shotgun on Lundquist’s emotionladen final college football telecast, with generosity and class.