by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
According to CBS college basketball analyst Bob Wenzel, the Florida Gators will repeat as NCAA men’s basketball champions, becoming the first team to do so since the 1991 and ‘92 Duke teams. The Gators start play Friday in New Orleans against Jackson State.
“They are the best team,” said Wenzel at Monday’s Downtown Rotary Club meeting. “They have been there and they have the most experience. It will help a lot. I was pleasantly surprised those guys (the Gators players who could have left school for the NBA draft) stayed. It set a good precedent.”
Wenzel has been doing games for CBS for the past five seasons. In addition to regular season games, Wenzel spent last week in Los Angeles offering his analysis of the PAC-10 tournament with Dick Enberg. This week, he’s off to Buffalo for the first two rounds of the 65-team tournament that culminates with the Final Four and national title games in Atlanta March 31-April 2.
In past years, Wenzel’s tournament involvement went through the finals. He served as sideline reporter through the regional finals and was part of the broadcast team that covered the finals for CBS’s world feed that broadcast the game to about 150 countries.
“CBS isn’t using sideline reporters anymore,” said Wenzel, who is the associate head of the school for advancement for The Bolles School. “It’s hard to get the person in because the broadcast is so busy with the game and promotional items.”
In Buffalo, Wenzel is getting a region with Pittsburgh, Duke, Maryland and Butler — a team that gets in the tournament, but usually as a 12 seed of lower. This year, Butler is a No. 5 seed and won’t sneak up on anyone, said Wenzel, adding that many of the smaller schools that could have been “Cinderellas” in the past got high seeds this year.
“What’s unusual is the mid-major conference teams that got high seeds, teams like Butler and So. Illinois,” said Wenzel, who joined the staff at Bolles seven months ago after several years as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch. “Every year, there’s a 12-5 upset, but this year the 12 seeds are 5 seeds.”
Wenzel is best-known locally for his six seasons at JU where he coached the Dolphins to the NCAA tournament one year and the NIT another year. His top two players were Otis Smith and Dee Brown, both of whom went on to have solid NBA careers.
Wenzel doesn’t coach basketball at Bolles, but he does help raise funds and during basketball season he helps promote the school.
“We have more contact now with the Bolles alumni than I previously thought possible,” said Dr. John Trainer, the headmaster at Bolles.
Dr. Fran Kinne is a Rotary member and attended Monday’s meeting. She hired Wenzel and Trainer when she was president at JU, making her partially responsible for their current partnership at Bolles.
“Without Fran Kinne appointing us, neither of us might be in Jacksonville together,” said Trainer.
Other notes from the meeting:
• Wenzel said he was in New York last week to meet with the NCAA’s selection committee which was led this year by Princeton’s Gary Walters. Wenzel said the meetings can be kind of tedious. He said Walters called hosting the meetings kind of like “being the 46th boyfriend of Paris Hilton. I know what to do, but I’m not sure I can make it interesting.”
• On going to Buffalo this week after being in Los Angeles and staying at the Beverly Wilshire hotel last week, Wenzel said, “It’s OK. It shows there’s balance in the world.” He also works for ESPN during the regular season and noted the big networks pay about six times as much as the cable networks. “They also send you clothes,” said Wenzel, adding he has about seven CBS sports coats.
• CBS play-by-play man Jim Nance completed a broadcast first when he did the Super Bowl last month in Miami. According to Wenzel, Nance became the first to do the NCAA finals, Masters and the Super Bowl in the same year. He also called Nance “a wonderful human being” who doesn’t always use the CBS jet to go from venue to venue.
• The Rotary raffle is underway and tickets are $10 or three for $20. There are good items available, too: Jaguars season tickets in the Club section and signed balls from UF football coach Urban Meyer and basketball coach Billy Donovan.
• During Christmas, about three dozen Downtown Rotarians rang bells for the Salvation Army and helped raised almost $12,000.