The Adventures of Jay and Digger: College Basketball’s Odd Couple

I have been watching Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas provide commentary on college basketball for as long as I can remember. And the differences between the two have always been pretty obvious:

• Jay Bilas comes across as intelligent, thoughtful, and cogent; Digger Phelps comes across as (searching for a way to say this nicely…) not those things.
• Jay Bilas comes across as arrogant, with every word he speaks appearing to be the result of careful deliberation between his ego and pride; Digger Phelps is cool and laid back, the kind of guy you’d want to actually watch a game with, and he appears to just say whatever words come into his head — apparently before they have coalesced into coherent thoughts or sentences.
• Jay Bilas is like the guy in college who was a T.A. for two two different classes per semester; Digger Phelps is like the guy in college who went to two classes all semester.

And honestly, I could go on and on.

But perhaps nothing more accurately displays their differences than the ESPN College Gameday basketball commercial in which Digger Phelps dances like his brain is on fire, while Jay Bilas plays the role of a constipated, perturbed school marm. The still image above is taken from that ESPN commercial. Here is the video:

And for the record, I specifically do not want to add Hubert Davis into the discussion here. Invoking his name will make me think of him laughing, and then I won’t be able to go to sleep, haunted by — damnit, I just thought of it. My night is over.

(Seriously, just saying, does anyone else find Hubert Davis’ laugh a tad annoying? I like Hubert, and I think he has great points (sometimes), and I realize I am not breaking any news here and that this has probably been covered ad nauseum by other blogs — and I readily admit that I myself have an annoying laugh, however with the caveat that I am not on TV — but they should really try to reign Hubert in, especially the times when it seems like he is fake laughing at something that isn’t even supposed to be funny. It’s almost annoying to the point of being unwatchable.)

But I digress…

The reason I even searched for and found the above video and decided to write this post is that tonight, while scrolling through the front page of BallHype, I came across the video embedded a few paragraphs below. This delicious nugget of pure Digger ridiculousness proved to be a gateway to me finding even more reasons why Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas truly are the official Odd Couple of college basketball; and quite possibly the official Odd Couple of all of sports.

Regardless, one thing is true: Digger Phelps is, among many things, odd.

The video below, taken yesterday (February 28th) in Berkeley, California before the UCLA-Cal game, is a great example of this oddness. The picture to the right, in which Digger Phelps appears to be menacingly approaching a terrified Cal cheerleader, is a still from the Cal video.

As you will see, Digger’s “approach” is anything but menacing. Spasmic, hilarious, and disturbing? Yes. But menacing? Not so much.

Watch the video of Digger Phelps putting the dance in “Big Dance” at Cal:

I don’t really know what to say. I thought for sure that this must have just been a one time thing, a nod to the dancing in the ESPN College Gameday commercial. Yet, over in the related videos I saw that there was plenty of more of Digger dancing at college basketball arenas. The following two videos are from February 14th of this year at Wisconsin, according to the descriptions on YouTube:

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Sadly, that is not the last one. Here is another, from January 24th, 2009 in Digger’s old stomping grounds of South Bend:

Okay, fine. So Digger has decided to bring the dancing from the Gameday commercial to the arena, I think to myself.

Wrong.

Here is another video, from March of last year, in which Digger actually gets a little bump-and-grind on with a Kansas cheerleader that I have to asume is the hottest girl in the entire state. (This is both a compliment to her and, yes, a complete disparagement of the entire state of Kansas — to which I have never been. So take it for what it’s worth.)

I do not know if this is the entire library of videos available on the Internet that show Digger Phelps engaging in some inappropriate friendly rhythmic movement with attractive, young co-eds. But I am learning that there is an entire subsection of YouTube devoted to the entertaining antics of Digger Phelps.

Regardless of what you think of Digger’s propensity for carefree and unabashed fun (or, as one YouTube video title terms it, Digger being an “attention whore”), one thing is certain: you would never, ever see Jay Bilas doing anything even remotely similar.

Watch this video. These guys can’t even get Jay Bilas to say something funny. Now, it is perfectly possible that Jay Bilas is simply not capable of saying anything funny. In fact, it is quite possible that he has never said anything funny, and certainly cannot do so on command. But still Jay, at least have a little fun or show some semblance of a sense of humor:

At the end of the day, the obvious differences between Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas would probably best manifest themselves if both of them read this post. Digger Phelps would probably laugh, say something that made no sense to anyone, and then start gyrating to no discernible beat. Jay Bilas, on the other hand, would decry the state of education in America that a Big Ten school like Indiana could produce a nincompoop like me who would would spend two hours on a Sunday night creating such rubbish as this post.

Either way, whatever your feelings about Jay Bilas or Digger Phelps individually, you will be seeing a lot of them this month, as the March portion of “March Madness” began today. The madness portion will slowly be building to the incredible crescendo that is the NCAA Tournament, and we will have Jay Bilas and Digger Phelps, college basketball’s odd couple, leading us every step of the way.

And you know what? The differences between the two are actually probably what make them both palatable. Without Digger, the overly serious and joyless Bilas might be more than a tad off-putting. And without Bilas, Digger’s complete ridiculousness might be highlighted to the point of being unwatchable (like Hubert Davis’ laugh). Add them together, with a touch of Bob Knight’s basketball brilliance and a solid host like Rece Davis, and the ESPN College Gameday basketball crew is actually one of the more entertaining and balanced studio crews on any network.

(And you thought this post was just negative and gratuitously mean. I fooled you!)

Of course, the minute Vitale gets added to the mix, all hell breaks loose…

(FYI…careful where you watch this. It’s hilarious, but the language might not be suitable for all audiences or workplace computers. You’ve been warned.)

Tags: Announcers, bob knight, College Basketball, dick vitale, digger phelps, jay bilas

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