After my wife and I had Valentine’s Day dinner Tuesday night at the Original Montgomery Inn, while admiring all the signed photos of sports celebrities hanging on the wall on our way out, I paused when I saw a picture of the CBS-TV feed from the NCAA Tournament game from which both UC coach Bob Huggins and radio commentator Chuck Machock were ejected.
I smiled as I looked at the photo, where a circle had been drawn to indicate where Machock had been sitting (next to play-by-play man Dan Hoard) before he was booted. And I smiled even more when I looked more closely at the photo and saw myself sitting at my station on press row, a few rows behind Chuck, looking as if I were trying to figure out what the hell had just happened and how I was going to write about it.
The date was March 20, 2003, at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City. The Bearcats, who had struggled through a difficult season, were facing Gonzaga in a first-round game, which they lost, 74-69. Huggins was ejected after he received his second technical for protesting a travelling call against UC’s Jason Maxiell. Then Machock was tossed for yelling at official Mike Kitts and was escorted from the building.
After I wrote the game story, a separate story about Machock’s ejection, and a notebook, I returned to the media hotel. Then I walked to the hotel where the Bearcats were staying to see if I could get Machock to talk to me on the record. When I got there, someone told me that Machock had gone out to dinner with Huggins. I decided to wait.
When I saw them walking toward the hotel’s front door. I walked out to meet them, but when I asked Chuck for a comment, he walked right past me. I was surprised because I had always gotten along well with Chuck and even considered him a friend. But it was obvious that he wanted nothing to do with me or any other reporter. The usually easy-going, joke-cracking Machock seemed embarrassed about what had happened and might have been worried that his radio gig would be taken from him. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
As the years passed, the incident, which seemed so terrible the day it happened, became a running joke between Chuck and Dan. Before every game, Dan would announce how many consecutive games Chuck had worked without getting thrown out. Very funny stuff. Eventually, Chuck and I returned to our previous relationship. When he passed away in January 2020, I attended the memorial at Fifth Third Arena that Huggins and many of his former players attended to salute one of the great characters in UC basketball history.
Now here I was at Montgomery Inn, staring at that picture from long ago, hanging on the walls of a restaurant that also has a photo of George W. Bush smiling as he carries a a bag of ribs on his way out the door. I’ve always known that I wasn’t important enough to get my picture on that wall. But then, on Tuesday, there it was. My picture, right there among all the celebrities tucked in the corner of the famous photo from the 2003 NCAA Tournament. Chuck Machock, George W. Bush, and I forever linked. Oh, and Dan Hoard, too.
I would have offered to autograph the photo, but I figured whoever I asked wouldn’t know who I was. So I snapped a picture of it on my home and moved on.
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