The Game Of The Decade
December 10, 2022
On December 19, 2021, Harry Russell ("Russ") Potts Jr. died in his home town of Winchester, VA at the age of 82. A former Republican state legislator and an independent candidate for governor of Virginia in 2005, he was eulogized in the Washington Post as a man of "folksy demeanor and old-school moderate politics".
Politics, however, was only an avocation.
A 1964 graduate of the University of Maryland, Potts never attended nor worked for Georgetown University, yet he is part of one of the most consequential games in its history: the "Game of the Decade" between the #3-ranked Hoyas and the #1-ranked Virginia Cavaliers on December 11, 1982.
The game and its final score may be forgotten by some, but its impact upon Georgetown and the national sports landscape remains to this day.
The Georgetown athletic department was a whirlwind of activity in the spring of 1982. The Hoyas' run to the Final Four had captured the imagination of the nation as well as the imagination of television executives. Georgetown was, in marketing parlance, a hot commodity with an interesting story to viewers, particularly as it related to sports and race. As one writer put it, Georgetown was "a mostly black team at a mostly white university in a mostly black city in a mostly white country", a story that could draw viewers and drive ratings. A well-regarded (but not yet Top 25) university had suddenly joined the ranks of the basketball blue bloods and people wanted a piece of the Hoyas. Lots of people.
Standing athwart at the doors of McDonough Gymnasium was athletic director Frank Rienzo and, by extension, head coach John Thompson, both of whom took a resolutely skeptical view of various promoters offering to bring the Hoyas to their town or their arena. Following the 1981-82 season, television executives nationwide saw an opportunity with Georgetown, returning its freshman All-America center, Patrick Ewing, and Virginia, the #3 ranked team from the 1981-82 season and featuring three time All-American Ralph Sampson, a 7-4 center considered the biggest pro prospect since Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).
Fourteen years earlier, with basketball was still a regional sport with no national exposure, sports promoter Eddie Einhorn arranged the first nationally broadcast game in college basketball history: a collection of 120 stations to broadcast a game between #1 UCLA and #2 Houston, dubbed "The Game of The Century". UCLA, with Alcindor at center, had won 47 consecutive games since the opening of the 1966-67 season. In lieu of a game at 10,000 seat Pauley Pavilion or the Cougars' 5,000 seat Delmar Fieldhouse, Einhorn went as big as you could in those days: booking the Astrodome, the "Eighth Wonder Of The World", to host the game. Before a crowd of 52,693, Houston upset UCLA 71-69. Each school received a then-staggering check for $125,000 to play the game.
Despite the acclaim, college sports was still not attractive to national television in the early 1970s. Broadcasts were syndicated among a group that included Einhorn's TVS, the Mizlou network in the south, and the C.D. Chesley Network in the mid-Atlantic region. Conference. Chesley, the Greensboro-based syndicator of ACC television broadcasts from 1957 to 1981, promoted his first national broadcast between #2 Maryland and #3 North Carolina State at Cole Field House on Jan. 14, 1973, hours before he Washington Redskins met the undefeated Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII. Leading the promotional effort that day for the Terrapins was a 33 year old Maryland grad who was the former sports editor at the Winchester Star: Russ Potts.
Chesley promoted a potential audience of 20 million for the broadcast.
"How else can you get this kind of exposure?" Potts told the Washington Post. "I'd crawl up Madison Avenue on my knees to get a game with this much exposure. I just hope we don't lose."
David Thompson had 24 points as the Wolfpack defeated the Terrapins 87-85. Also watching the game that day was a first year men's basketball coach at Georgetown who got to know Russ Potts and his ability to sell college sports.
As associate sports information director at Maryland from 1971 to 1978, Potts tripled the gifts received to the Terrapin Club and grew the Maryland radio network from one station to 55. He drove ticket sales that increased Maryland football attendance from 18,597 per game in the year before he arrived to 39,051 by 1978.
"I negotiated with [Maryland AD Jim Kehoe] a commission basis that paid me twenty-five percent for everything I sold," Potts told the Washington Post. "I made twelve thousand dollars a year [in salary] but I made twenty five percent off programs, scoreboard sales, the radio networks, you name it." Washington Post columnist Ken Denlinger once remarked, "Potts knows more angles than Euclid."
With career aspirations beyond an associate SID, Russ Potts began applying to athletic director jobs. Tipped off by an old friend about an opening at Southern Methodist, Potts applied and won the job in 1978, having never before held a job in coaching or as an athletic director.
SMU in the mid-1970's was a program hidden in plain sight.
"When I took the job, at the press conference I did, the press guys were asking me, "Do you realize what an unbelievable challenge you have here? Potts recalled. "They asked me, "Last year, SMU-Rice drew six thousand people. How are you going to fill the Cotton Bowl?" I said, "Six thousand? So that's 66,000 seats left to fill. I guess we're leading the nation in opportunities."
Over the next three seasons, Potts' relentless marketing campaign, nicknamed "Mustang Mania" was as omnipresent in Dallas as tourists asking for directions to Southfork Ranch. With a barrage of newspaper ads, tens of thousands of bumper stickers, a generous distribution of free tickets and numerous game promotions, SMU opened the 1978 season with a crowd of 41,112 at the Cotton Bowl versus just 18,560 for the opener the season before. Despite a 4-6-1 record, the Mustangs averaged a staggering 51,959 a game, including the first sellout at the Cotton Bowl for an SMU game since 1948. He moved games to the more upscale Texas Stadium the following season, drawing 60,217 against the same Rice team that had drawn an announced crowd of 6,000 upon its last visit to Dallas.
Potts left SMU in 1981 for a short lived executive position with the Chicago White Sox. In the spring of 1982 he returned to Winchester and founded Russ Potts Promotions, Inc. His first client was just a few weeks away.
It did not take long for television executives to focus on Ewing and Sampson as a TV ratings draw. The national interest in the 1982 NCAA tournament, the first year under its new contract with CBS, led many to believe that college basketball was ready to embrace a national television following.
That following was going to be more than through broadcast TV. ESPN, then owned by Getty Oil, was building a base of basketball programming, including the Big East. USA Network, once the national distributor for Madison Square Garden TV, was also broadcasting syndicated games. SportsChannel, a regional network in New York, soon carried regional basketball games. WTBS, an Atlanta-based UHF channel, was broadcasting as a "superstation" over cable systems nationwide. Best known for broadcasting Atlanta Braves games, WTBS was interested in a singular event to elevate its brand in the marketplace.
According to a Nov. 29, 1982 Sports Illustrated article, Russ Potts approached two WTBS executives in New Orleans the day after the NCAA final to consider a bid for a future game between Georgetown and Virginia, proposing an event on cable TV, pay per view and closed-circuit theater distribution along the line of a heavyweight boxing match. Potts' Dallas-based firm, Sports Productions, Inc., would manage and promote the event, since WTBS had never broadcasted college basketball before.
In May 1982, Georgetown athletic director Frank Rienzo signed a home and home series with Virginia. With Georgetown in charge of the television rights, Rienzo put the game up for bid in May. Seven broadcast partners were invited to bid, including CBS, NBC, Madison Square Garden, and a wild card: WTBS.
MSG wanted the event in their building, but Rienzo would have none of it--Georgetown wanted the game at Capital Centre. CBS proposed a prime time game from Landover on Jan. 8, 1983 following the NFL wild card playoff game, making it the first regular season prime time basketball game ever on network TV. NBC, whose college basketball presence had been fading after it lost the NCAA tournament rights, proposed a game late in the season and was later dismissed as a competitive bid.
Fresh from its momentum from the NCAA tournament, CBS was the presumptive favorite. On June 15, it offered a staggering $510,000 to Georgetown and a $125,000 incentive to acquire the rights to move the Georgetown-St. John's game to accommodate its planned date of January 8. CBS advised Rienzo, according to the article, that a January date would be preferable to a younger Georgetown team than an early season matchup.
On June 29, Rienzo held a press conference at the 1789 restaurant and announced WTBS had won the bid for a game on December 11.
"What went wrong for CBS? For one thing, it underestimated its opposition," said Sports Illustrated. "Potts knew Rienzo well from his days at Maryland. Potts is also a hustler who met with Rienzo or [Virginia AD Richard] Schultz half a dozen times before CBS showed up. More important, CBS seemed to misgauge Rienzo. Here was a man...who resents the smallest intrusion into his affairs, who had wrangled with the networks for years over where their promotional banners would be hung at Georgetown games and over how many minutes the tip-off would be delayed to accommodate a telecast."
On the record, CBS' refusal to move the game off its Jan. 8 window was the tipping point to what were reported as comparable offers between CBS and WTBS. Off the record, other issues may have emerged.
As discussed in Leonard Shapiro's 1990 book "Big Man On Campus", Potts quietly organized a dinner between John Thompson and WTBS executives in Dallas during the negotiations. (A source at the meeting told Shapiro the meeting began awkwardly when academic advisor Mary Fenlon demanded to taste Thompson's food in advance so it was not too salty for him.) According to the source, Thompson "was almost blatant in letting it be known that he wanted something for himself out of any deal, over and above what WTBS would be paying the two schools for television rights." A second television industry source told Shapiro that a WTBS sponsor offered Thompson $50,000 to attend a series of basketball clinics to close the deal.
"WTBS never paid the company for the [basketball] clinics." the source told Shapiro. "It was just a little perk thrown in for John." The claim was a point of conflict with Georgetown officials when the book was published in 1990, which Rienzo saying he was unaware of any such meeting and Thompson offering no comment. Potts declined to be interviewed for the book, citing his friendship with Thompson.
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The game was set. Now it was up to the network and the schools to make it happen. WTBS faced an early hurdle: to meet the outlay to secure the game, they would need a lot of new viewers, but basic cable was still foreign to many households: in 1982, just 34 percent of homes nationally had cable service. This was problematic in the Washington DC area, which had no local cable contract in the District of Columbia. With pushback from local fans who wanted to see the game, WTBS brokered an agreement with WTTG-5 to show the game on broadcast TV, and eventually in other major markets as well. As such, it was less the cable exclusive that Turner executives envisioned, with limited up-sell to new cable customers. It didn't stop them from marketing the event as a WTBS exclusive, calling it the "Game Of the Decade." Virginia entered the 1982-83 season as the consensus #1 team in college basketball. Returning four starters from a 30-4 team in 1981-82, the Cavaliers had been ranked in the top five in every Associated Press Poll since December 15, 1980. With a two year record of 59-8, it had lost only two games out of conference, including a 1981 Final Four berth. The Cavaliers had four future NBA players on the court that December night but all eyes were on center Ralph Sampson. The 7-4 senior from Harrisonburg, VA was without peer: a four time All-America and a three time National Player of the Year, Sampson entered the 1982-83 season averaging 16 points and 11 rebounds a game, and was considered the greatest college player in the pivot since Bill Walton. Its only departed starter, senior Jeff Jones, was ably replaced by junior Rick Carlisle, who averaged 14 points a game in two seasons at Maine. |
The same could not be said for Georgetown. The Hoyas lost three starters and five seniors overall from the 1981-82 season. Junior guard Fred Brown went down with a knee injury that summer which kept him out until January, leaving Ewing as the only returning starter. Five of the ten Georgetown players which saw action in the game were in their first three weeks of playing college basketball.
After two seasons staring at 1-2, Thompson relocated his opener to Hawaii, beginning an annual beatdown of outmatched opponents--in this case, BYU-Hawaii and Hawaii-Hilo. Games with Morgan State, Alabama State and St. Francis did little for momentum, and a narrow 70-66 win over Western Kentucky saw the poll voters actually drop Georgetown to #3 despite a 6-0 record, a minor spoilage of any promotion to claim that rare #1 vs. #2 clash. It did not dampen the excitement, however.
Sports Illustrated featured Sampson and Ewing on their cover, employing a double fold-out so as to include two seven footers across its pages.
"SI wanted to get Patrick and Ralph together for the cover photo, but Terry Holland wasn't about to take Ralph to D.C. for it, nor was John Thompson willing to bring Patrick to Charlottesville," said former Virginia sports information director Doug Elgin to the Daily Cavalier in a series of first person accounts of the game, some of which are cited here.
"We talked about meeting in a little town in between, but it would have been too difficult. So, SI decided to shoot them separately and have a fold-out cover. It was a very creative way to do that knowing you couldn't get the two of them together for a photoshoot."
"At SI, that much space was really only reserved for Super Bowls and World Series," said senior writer Curry Kirkpatrick. "This was truly unheard-of for a college basketball game. That tells you how epic this thing was, and how big those two guys were."
Rienzo offered Virginia half of the 19,035 seats in Landover to sell for the game. This was not only generous, but good business. In 14 prior games at Capital Centre since moving from McDonough Gymnasium, Georgetown averaged just 10,262 a game and had not come close to selling out the arena. Rather than risk a game that fall short of a sellout, both schools fully sold its allotment. On the night of the game, Virginia coach Terry Holland remarked that the arena had the feel of a heavyweight fight.
Over 300 press credentials were requested through Georgetown, sending reporters up to the hockey press boxes and everywhere in between. "The most suspicious request," recalled former Georgetown SID Jim Marchiony, "came from a radio station that wanted a seat for a photographer."
On December 11, 1982, the long awaited game had arrived.
"The atmosphere at Capital Centre was electric, as if this game were for the world championship instead of being a nonconference game 11 days into December," wrote Dave Kindred of the Washington Post. "Only in March, so long from now, would Virginia-Georgetown be terminally significant. Yet the game deserved national attention because of a confluence of circumstances that, as with a solar eclipse, occurs only rarely."
Before the game, "I remember my 6-year-old daughter, going, "Why is it so quiet?" remarked Ann Holland, Terry's wife. "And I said, "It's like when the heavyweight champion comes in and everything's quiet and then, all of a sudden, it's going to be so loud that you're not going to believe it."
With a roar from the crowd, the players entered the court and the game was soon underway, a game that was a better second half than the first. Both teams were tentative early and Georgetown was the worse for it, shooting just 28 percent in a first half where it trailed by as many as 12 and trailed 33-23 at the break. Thompson opted to play sophomore Bill Martin, just 6-7, against Sampson to limit foul trouble for Ewing, but with limited success.
Sampson scored six of the first eight Virginia points of the second half to go up 14, 41-27, as Thompson slotted Ewing back in the pivot and the game began to tighten. Freshmen Michael Jackson and David Wingate led a slow but methodical Georgetown comeback that, in the absence of three point shots and a 30 second shot clock, took much of the next ten minutes of the game.
With seven minutes remaining, Virginia held a 55-51 lead when three possessions formed the iconic memory of the game.
The Cavaliers had only one field goal over a five minute stretch when they went back into Sampson, with a pass from Carlisle for an uncontested dunk. Ewing wanted the ball on the next series. Sampson knew it. Everyone in the arena knew it. Gene Smith got the ball into Ewing in the low post and Ewing emphatically dunked it over Sampson, a roar which was never matched in the remaining years of Georgetown basketball at Capital Centre.
(The video is found below at the 3:00 mark.)
"That's what you call getting even," said WTBS analyst Abe Lemons.
Less remembered is what also followed. Sampson wanted the ball down low, too. He took a close shot, missed, got the rebound and went to the hoop. Sampson was blocked by Ewing, got the rebound, was blocked again, and then Ewing was called for a foul.
"Ralph was as demonstrative as I've ever seen him," guard Ricky Stokes told the Daily Cavalier. "He's such the mild-mannered Virginia gentleman who keeps a lot inside. When he started swinging his arms, that showed how bad he wanted it. You rarely saw that from the big fellow."
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More excitement was to come. A 20 foot jumper from David Wingate tied the score at 59-59 with 3:43 left. Foul shots by Virginia were matched with an Anthony Jones jumper, 61-61. More free throws followed: two from Virginia's Othell Wilson pushed the lead to 63-61, but sending Jones to the line for Georgetown proved fatal. Jones, carrying a deflating 1 for 13 from the line to date that season, missed the front end of a one and one. Jones stole the ensuing pass, but turned the ball over thereafter. A missed shot from Virginia's Jim Miller offered renewed hope, but Georgetown's Horace Broadnax was then called for charging, sending Virginia back to the line, 65-61. A Michael Jackson jumper closed the deficit to 65-63 with 0:16 left, but the Cavaliers finished the game at the line, 68-63. Sampson finished the game with 23 points and 16 rebounds, as Virginia ended the game shooting 42 percent from the field and 85 percent from the line. "I don't think I played well," said Sampson, despite 10 of 17 from the field. "But when we had it won, all the emotion came out." Ewing finished with 16 points and eight rebounds before fouling out late. "I felt I played the best game I could," he said in post-game comments. "Ewing left the game with nothing to be ashamed of," wrote the New York Times. "Each dominating center displayed a full measure of his rare ability and strength." "All it did was reconfirm what I believe about Patrick," said Thompson." These two kids are on such a high level that it doesn't mean anything what the difference between them is." Sampson noted that "I hope we can [play] it again in the Final Four", but it was not to be. Georgetown went out in the second round of the 1983 tournament to Memphis State, while the Cavaliers' season ended in the regional final, one point short of North Carolina State, who won the game on a pair of free throws from Lorenzo Charles. A week later, Charles won the NCAA title with a dunk at the buzzer. |
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Nearly two decades later, Potts and TBS reunited for a Georgetown-Virginia rematch at MCI Center in December 2001, under the marketing title of the "John Thompson Classic". A crowd of 18,789 was short of a sellout, but enjoyed another tight game, one which the Hoyas trailed by 14, came back, and again fell short at the foul line. Kevin Braswell missed the front end of a one and one with 1:33 to play, down four, and the Hoyas lost by six.
The teams finally returned to Charlottesville in December 2002, where the Hoyas lost a late lead and fell 79-75 at University Hall. The game, broadcast on CBS, carried no reminder of the bidding war that kept that first epic game off that network 20 years earlier.
The Virginia game was a turning point in the perception of Georgetown basketball. The game, even in defeat, elevated Georgetown upon a tier of the college basketball elite that it maintained, more or less, to this day, but at the loss of positive press coverage it had enjoyed to that date. The backstage maneuvers to sign the game for WTBS were not lost on the working press, some of whom held John Thompson as responsible and held it against him (and the program) for years.
Regardless, the game helped elevate college basketball as a prime time sport, and the public responded accordingly. More than 98 percent of televised basketball games now takes place on cable, satellite, or streaming services.
The passing days need not diminish the majesty of it all.
"It's one of the most iconic games I ever played in," said Sampson. "It was a good, good game. We won. The picture's still up in John Paul Jones Arena, so hopefully it'll have an everlasting memory on the fabric of the University of Virginia. My kids and my kids' kids will be able to see that forever. It's very special to me."