Bill Hancock’s Olympic adventure
Bill Hancock is my friend, but let’s be honest. Bill Hancock is everyone’s friend. Most people remember the name. Now the director of the BCS, Hancock once was the director of the NCAA Tournament. He grew up in Hobart, part of a newspaper family — his brother, Joe, has turned over the Hobart newspaper to his son, Todd — then went to OU and worked in sports information. From there, he joined the Big Eight office before moving to the NCAA. Bill’s son, Will, was the OSU basketball publicist killed in the 2001 plane crash.
Bill volunteers for every Olympics as a media liason and writes a virtually-daily dispatch about his personal adventures. Bill is an adventurer. He sees things others don’t see, almost always in a positive light, which might not be unique but most certainly is rare. I thought you would enjoy hearing about Bill’s Vancouver trip.
“Hello, everyone. Wow, what a privilege to be at Olympics No. 9. This will be an incredible games. Something strange and something else wonderful will happen. Stand by. Please excuse the typos and bad writing. Will hurry with these little missives to let the family know what’s happening. And so spelling and grammar will be ignored for convenience. Don’t turn me in to any wandering English teachers. Nor to any wondering ones. As they say, let it be.
“There must be 27 televisions in the big ole media work room. During the game last night, one of them was showing the Super Bowl; the rest had curling, skiing and hockey. This must be Canada. Watched the game in the USOC press office with three other guys.
“Breakfast: nutra-grain strawberry. Bought the red mittens for Nicki today. $11.25 with tax. Sunny for a while today. Wow. Folks arriving here remind me of Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen getting off the train in Pine Tree, Vermont. Remember? I got rid of my parka fast and asked Nicki to bring three golf shirts when she comes. I won’t play golf, of course, but need the short sleeves.
“The Vancouver airport is awesome, with great Canada art, a totem poll and the Rockies. It almost would be worthwhile to fly here, walk through the airport and fly back home.
“Lunch: Peanut butter crackers. I drove to the airport this morning to pick up the ski-jump athletes and bring them to the Main Press Center for their press conference. Tall, slender kids with enough luggage to fill two SUVs. Unfortunately I brought only one. So they put the rest of their stuff on a truck. I made only two wrong turns—one of which led me to a dead end beneath the International Broadcast Center and so I had to execute a tricky four-back-and-forth bat turns while not using any profanity. Try that some time. The athletes were great and didn’t laugh at me. After the news conference, as I drove them to the athletes village, they talked 90 miles per hour. ‘The drive to Whistler is rad,’ ‘I made up some new words in that press conference, didn’t I?’ ‘Can we stop at Mickey D’s for lunch?’ They won’t medal as ski jumpers. But I give them gold as fun young people.
“Dinner: Apple, Nutri-grain, peanut butter crackers. Volunteer du jour: Margaret. 50-ish. Beautiful. Laminating credentials at airport. ‘I went to the Calgary games as a spectator and promised myself I would get involved next time. Here I am.’ Weather: High 48; low 43.
“Vancouver Fact that surely must be true because somebody told me: Vancouver was no doubt on the route when those natives came across the land bridge from Asia to North America 15,000 or 20,000 years ago—shortly after Bode Miller began skiing for the USA. What a privilege to be here!”
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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