Great insight into how Bill Rafferty prepares for a game.
Produced while he watches a half-dozen tapes of each team he’s assigned to cover, Mr. Raftery’s one-page, double-sided reports are written in capital letters and a tiny, crowded scrawl. But his 60-odd team reports are also meticulously structured and filled with countless diagrams, notes on player tendencies, strategic predictions and statistics that could only be the work of a person whose life is set to the rhythm of balls bouncing on wood.
The reports “are like the random etchings of John Nash from ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ ” said Ian Eagle, the CBS play-by-play announcer who has worked alongside Mr. Raftery for years. But, Mr. Eagle added, “because his personality is so strong and effervescent, his basketball preparation often gets overlooked.”
via Bill Raftery’s Secret Playbook | Creating – WSJ.com.
Instead of spouting cliches that have no real factual grounding, this is the information we’d all like to hear from color guys. Unfortunately, I think Raff dumbs himself down quite a bit to fit into the “Madden persona” adopted by seemingly every color guy since 1990. However, I do have a feeling Matt Millen was less prepared for entire drafts as GM of the Lions.