Lundquist has done well by letting the action do most of the talking

(begin ital)

Verne Lundquist: "Very little wind. What small amount there is, is at his back. Mandell will hold it; now they've officially made it 57 yards."

Analyst Gary Danielson: "Remember, a blocked kick can go the other way, too. He's got to be careful and get it up."

(The kick rises.)

Lundquist: "On the way!"

(A four-second pause as the football floats.)

"No. Returned by Chris Davis."

(Two-and-a-half seconds.)

"Davis goes left."

(One second.)

"Davis gets a block."

(The crowd noise starts to swell.)

"Davis has another block!"

(The noise rises more.)

"Chris Davis!"

(A two-second pause.)

"No flags!"

(Another two-second pause.)

"Touchdown! Auburn! An answered prayer!"

(An 81-second pause while director Steve Milton makes 21 camera cuts of reactions from players, coaches and fanatics leading up to the first video replay.)

Then Lundquist, deadpan: "Might be worth another look."

Verne Lundquist goes to Mississippi but takes along Alabama. He will use his vivid brain to call the 2014 Egg Bowl while that same vivid brain keeps the 2013 Iron Bowl in ready storage. He will call a Mississippi State-Ole Miss game for CBS this rivalry Saturday knowing the last rivalry Saturday he called might be the best college football game to date.

It gets still better. The same listenable-all-day-long voice called Jack Nicklaus's seeing-eye 12-foot birdie putt on No. 17 at the 1986 Masters ("Yes sir!"), and Tiger Woods's pause-at-the-lip chip at No. 15 at the 2005 Masters ("In your life, have you ever seen anything like that!"), and one of the biggest nights in the 66-year history of American commercial network television: Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the 1994 Olympics in Norway.

It gets still better still. In addition to last Nov. 30 in Auburn, Verne Lundquist and his larynx sat by for this other matter from Philadelphia 21 years, 8 months and 2 days prior . . .

(Grant Hill's long pass flies toward Christian Laettner.)

Lundquist: "There's the pass to Laettner."

(Laettner moves to his right then back to his left and turns around as almost two seconds pass.)

"Puts it up."

(Another second-plus.)

"Yes!"

(It's a "yes" in a fine, measured scream. You might spell it, "Yehhhhs!" Cut to a litany of wordless scenes.)

(end ital)

In his five decades since high school in Austin and a career sprouting in Dallas, Lundquist has called both Duke 104, Kentucky 103 in overtime, and Auburn 34, Alabama 28 in rowdy regulation. He has called both the consensus best-ever college basketball game and the gathering-consensus best-ever college football game. He called the four lead changes in the last 19.6 seconds of one, and the two staggering Auburn touchdowns in the last 40 seconds of the other. He called the game so relentlessly well that former president George H.W. Bush mentioned it the next day, and the game so graphic that even a fourth-quarter, 99-yard touchdown pass (by Alabama), Lundquist marvels, "has become an afterthought!"

He's the widely adored 74-year-old with the rarefied CV item: expert caller of inconceivable moments. Two best games ever? "That's when you know the glass is more than half-full," Lundquist said on a mid-November Friday in a CBS trailer next to Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Every so often since 1992, both Jim Nantz and Billy Packer have seen Lundquist and groaned. They stationed themselves that weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, where they called a good and unremembered overtime regional final between Ohio State and Fab Five Michigan. Lundquist-Elmore got Philadelphia, a people-remember-where-they-were game, and later Lundquist got Auburn, another "reference point," as he calls it.

"The greatest thing about a sporting event is when something spectacular breaks out, and you can't predict it," he said. "It's why we love live television and live sporting events, and I just happened to be the fortunate one who was in Philadelphia on March 28, 1992, and who was at the Iron Bowl at Auburn last year. And now, we're talking about 22 years, 21 years, and so to have the opportunity to be involved in two completely different sports, but two sports which I happen to love, and to be the conduit through which my company said, 'We want you on this event . . .'"

The reasons they wanted him include that he's not a trampler. Note the spare words above. Tell him you like the minimalism, and he'll say, "Thank you. So do I." He says, "We're here to punctuate." He impersonates a role model, "the most minimalistic guy ever," the late Ray Scott: "Starr. Dowler. Touchdown."

He still marvels that Vin Scully turned his back and let the roar speak Hank Aaron's 715th home run. He rates as peerless Scully's call of Kirk Gibson's World Series home run, with the gone ball, the long wait and the few words — "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened" — which Lundquist considers "close to poetry." He has put a stopwatch to the 1980 Olympic Soviet-U.S. ice hockey, and he has relished the good silence Al Michaels allowed after the words "miracles" and "Yes!"

He'll rave in detail about the prowess of Milton and producer Craig Silver. He cherishes that he and Danielson stayed silent for 81 seconds through 22 different shots of all Auburn processing the far-fetched. Said Lesley Visser, who worked the Duke-Kentucky sidelines: "Verne kept perfect composure, the right amount of enthusiasm, surprise, confidence and knowledge. It's such a fine line to express the moment and not ruin it. I did about 10 NCAA tournaments with Verne and he never got in the way, only added to the majesty. Also, he's a blast, a great all-time storyteller. A great teammate."

He does have barrels of stories, only beginning with the fact that he announced Grant Hill's birth on a Dallas TV station in 1972 — Hill's father, Calvin of the Cowboys, had dialed with the news — then, alongside Len Elmore, called Grant Hill's mighty pass in Philadelphia in 1992.

"I think we all get into the moment," he said. "No, that's a cliche. I'm not in the moment. I was doing a basketball telecast, for crying out loud. But I think you are concentrating so hard on what's happening in front of you that there was no thought in my mind or Lenny's mind, 'My Lord, we're watching the greatest game that's ever been played.' I mean, you're thinking, 'Who's got the ball, and can he score?' or, 'Who's guarding him?' "

Only just afterward, when Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe approached Len Elmore, did it begin to register. Ryan had covered the Maryland-N.C. State 1974 ACC Tournament final, the 103-100 overtime force in which Elmore had played. Ryan asked if this topped that, and Elmore pondered and said, "I think this was better." Lundquist: "It was then that I thought, Wow, I'm sitting next to Lenny Elmore, who just said Duke-Kentucky might be the best game ever because he had played in the one that previously was perceived in that manner."

Then, this: "I didn't watch it for 11 years. And the reason I didn't watch it is that I thought Lenny Elmore and Lesley Visser and I had done a reasonable job in a very special sporting event. And I didn't want the reality of the broadcast to intrude on my perception and my memory of it. So I just, I thought, Well, you know, we really got that one right, I think. But I didn't want to watch it and go, 'Oh my god.' . . . I've been at it long enough that I know when it's done well and believe me, I know when it's not done well. So I didn't watch that and in truth, I thought, I want the memory up here of what that night was like."

Come 2003, at an NCAA regional in Minneapolis, broadcast partner Bill Raftery called Lundquist's room one morning. Duke-Kentucky was on the air, again. "And I thought, Well, okay, 11 years is enough, so I tuned over to ESPN Classic and I watched it in my hotel room . . . So I picked it up at probably the 10-minute mark of the first half, and watched it all the way through, and at the end of it I just kind of nodded and thought, We did okay."

Ten-and-a-half more years from that, Lundquist reached a hotel room in Auburn. Texts and emails had joined the earth, and they poured in from friends, from journalists such as Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News. Where did Alabama-Auburn rank?

"And I said, 'It's number two,' " he said. "'Really? Number two? What's number one?' And my default position has always been Jack in '86. Because I still think that's one of the most splendid sports events I've ever been lucky enough to witness, start to finish. And the fact that a 46-year-old man made a 12-foot putt with a double break when he was counted out . . ." So that night, Duke-Kentucky and the Iron Bowl tied for second.

"So the next morning, I get up at the hotel in Auburn, and my wife and I are getting ready to drive back to Atlanta, and I went to the New York Post, and Mike Vaccaro had written a column and he listed the eight reasons why the Iron Bowl provided the greatest finish in the history of sports. And I thought, Maybe I had better reassess my position. And so I did. People obviously have talked about it for a year now and I think, start-to-finish, you could make a very good case it's the greatest college game ever."

But the truth is his list is just too hard, too crowded. And while he has not re-watched the Iron Bowl that made it even more complicated, he said, "I've seen the finish. I've seen what we did. And again, the call was appropriate to the occasion, I think. I didn't oversell it."

"Davis goes left . . . Davis gets a block . . . Davis has another block!"