Jerry West’s VCU assist

The author was the first radio voice of VCU men’s basketball and was the color commentator for VCU women’s basketball for Ram TV and Ram Radio from 2010 to 2022.

I first met Jerry West when I was in middle school. It was the late 1950s. Back then, Richmond hosted the Southern Conference men’s basketball championship. The West Virginia Mountaineers, with West leading the way, were always the best team.

The games were played at the since-destroyed Richmond Arena off Hermitage Road (where Sports Backers Stadium, the home of VCU soccer and track and field, exists today). One year, my friend Paul and I went over there on a lark. What led us to do this I’m not 100% sure, other than we were Jerry West fans. Paul and I weren’t very good — we didn’t make the school team — but we played, like everybody else.

Luckily, the doors were open. We walked in and saw that West Virginia was practicing. Jerry was at one end by himself, and the team was at the other end.

Jerry, all of 20, was already a star. He would finish his college career having led West Virginia to an 81-12 record in his final three seasons. The Mountaineers lost the 1959 national championship game by one point. I listened to that game on the radio — in those days the NCAA title game TV broadcast was only available where local stations paid a syndicator for access. (Can you imagine the NCAA championship not on TV?) A year later, Jerry and Team USA won the gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.

Paul and I walked out onto the floor. We said, “Hey, you need a ball boy?”

For the next hour or so we watched Jerry shoot, and we fetched rebounds for him. We learned that Fred Schaus, the coach, did not want Jerry practicing with the team. Jerry was a long, lean, skinny guy and Schaus didn’t want to take any chances that Jerry’s teammates would accidentally hurt him during an aggressive practice. When the team would come down toward our end of the floor, Jerry would go the other way.

And so, for two years, Paul and I were ball boys for Jerry West when he and West Virginia came to Richmond for the conference tournament. And Jerry would get someone from the West Virginia staff to get us tickets to the games.

Decades later, after I hung up my ball boy sneakers and started a commercial real estate company, I was in a meeting with Lewis Mills. Louie was the athletics director at VCU from 1976 to 1986. Before that, he was the head coach at the University of Richmond. And before that, he played basketball for Virginia Tech. He and Jerry were old friends and played against each other in college.

I told Louie I was going to Los Angeles for a real estate meeting and that I would love to go to a Lakers game and see Jerry. He had gone from star to superstar to legend with the Lakers in the 1960s and ’70s, appearing in nine NBA Finals. Now, he was a scout for the team, on his way to becoming general manager and team president.

I told Louie my Jerry story. He laughed and said he’d try and set something up for me.

John Jay Schwartz and Rodney the Ram. Schwartz was the first radio voice of VCU men’s basketball. (Courtesy of John Jay Schwartz)

I went to L.A. for my meeting, and then I went to the Forum, where the Lakers played. I walked up to the will-call booth where you signed for your tickets. The woman behind the desk said, “Oh, yeah, we’re waiting for you.”

Louie had told the Lakers that I was the radio voice of VCU basketball (by then, I’d been broadcasting games for about five or six years). I didn’t realize he’d done this. The woman from the Lakers walked me down a hallway, past guards and privileged access points and doorways.

Suddenly, I was in Jerry West’s office.

He came over to meet me, gave me a big hello and we talked about Louie and broadcasting. And then I started talking about the Richmond Arena.

Jerry laughed and his eyes lit up. He couldn’t believe it. He said, “You’re the guy who used to ball boy for me.”

We chatted a little longer, went to a small pregame event and got something to eat. Then he said, “Come on, I’m going to take you to your seat.”

I wondered why he was doing this. We went through a web of hallways inside the Forum. Then Jerry walked me down to the floor and along press row. He sat me down and said, “I want you to meet somebody. Louie told me you’re the voice of VCU. I’d like to introduce you to the voice of the Lakers.”

The next thing I knew, Chick Hearn was turning around. Chick began broadcasting Laker games in the ’60s. In 2003, he became the first broadcaster inducted into the basketball hall of fame. The Lakers play at a new arena now, Staples Center. There’s a statue of Chick outside the entrance.

I thought, “I just died and gone to heaven.”

Chick couldn’t have been any nicer. We chatted about broadcasting, and he invited me to sit next to him while he called the game. I don’t recall there being a color commentator because I was sitting right next to Chick. He had all his equipment, and he had a TV on the table with the game on.

I was curious about that. I asked Chick about it during a timeout. He said, “It’s called simulcast.”

For those of you too young to know about simulcasting, it’s a simultaneous transmission of the same program on radio and television. The Lakers were recording Chick’s radio broadcast and playing it back — with video — on TV.

I was amazed at the process. And before long I thought to myself, “We could do this at VCU. We have a mass communications department. We can get a producer. We can get a camera person.”

I couldn’t wait to get back to Richmond. I went right to Louie’s office from the airport. I told him about simulcasting. We hired someone to do the video work. Now all we needed was a broadcast channel.

I had just completed a real estate lease agreement for Continental Cable’s Richmond-area headquarters, which at the time was the largest cable company in the region. Buzz Goodall was the company president. I called him and pitched the idea. And Buzz told me that he had a channel that he was required to use to provide free public broadcasting. “Why don’t we replay the games there?” he asked. And so we did, beginning with the 1979-80 season. Those were some of VCU’s first simulcast basketball games.

Jerry West died in June 2024 at age 86. I’ve thought about him a few times these past months. Today, you can watch VCU games on ESPN, CBS Sports Network and MASN. You can stream them on Peacock and pull up old broadcasts on YouTube.

But all these options have a common ancestry, and part of that history includes the business trip I took to Los Angeles all those years ago, an introduction from Lewis Mills, a few hours sitting next to Chick Hearn — and a big assist from the late, great Jerry West.