Blanchette: Bud Nameck class act to the end, not so with IMG College

For a ride that has so many things broken – truly broken – Washington State’s athletic department sure spends a lot of time fiddling with the radio.

Now the Cougars and their IMG College partners are at it again, and there’s another casualty.

Bud Nameck – voice of Cougar basketball for 22 seasons, more recently play-by-play man and traffic cop in an odd and challenging football booth and, most of all, the ultimate good soldier – is out.

Replacing him at the microphone is … some guy.

OK, that’s not particularly fair to Matt Chazanow, who will slide in between Jason Gesser and Bob Robertson this fall. Welcome to him and good luck, and apologies here for not being a good sport, all ways.

But that’s what he is, at least at the moment – some guy.

Some guy indistinguishable from the thousands of other radio voices out there on the make, some guy with no institutional knowledge, some guy from three time zones away, some guy with no local or regional identity, some guy with no discernible investment in the school or its audience at this point beyond a paycheck. Some guy who – and I’m hoping to be proved wrong – will likely have his ears attuned to the next big opportunity after this one.

There’s no reason Matt Chazanow won’t be a good soldier, too. But it’s worth asking “What’s the point?” given what just happened to the last one.

Man, radio is a heartbreak at Wazzu.

Three years ago, former Cougar football coach Jim Walden was excused from his analyst duties after a run of 11 seasons, mostly for analyzing too strenuously with his unfiltered point of view. Houses prefer house men. Audiences, too.

That was when the Cougs and IMG – the marketing monolith WSU and Gonzaga, among 70-odd schools, contract with to produce their radio broadcasts – decided to reinvent the booth.

Bob Robertson, voice of the Cougars since Marconi, was downsized to a quasi-emeritus role, available for occasional observations, recaps and commerce that do not buff his legacy. Nameck was brought up from the sideline to handle the call. Former WSU wideout Shawn McWashington replaced Walden, and Jessamyn McIntyre was assigned to track goings-on from field level, as well as the thankless task of trying to coax civility from coach Mike Leach at halftime.

It was a bit of a cluster. Still is, if less so.

After two years, McWashington was zitzed in favor of a more beloved, Coug – quarterbacking great Jason Gesser. Now the guy who had to keep all those voices straight has been pink-slipped, apparently for not being what Bob Rob used to be back when he was a solo artist.

Not that we know for sure. Corporations don’t explain.

“We’re not going to get into specifics on the decision,” said Andrew Giangola, an IMG vice president. “We thought Matt would be a terrific addition to take a good broadcast and bring it up a notch.”

And WSU athletic director Bill Moos saw no point in bucking a business partner.

“It was our recommendation,” Giangola said. “The school puts their trust in us, and agreed to the move.”

A 2006 Syracuse grad, Chazanow has experience calling national broadcasts in the ACC and Big East, but for the past seven years, he’s been an IMG network manager. One of the networks he oversaw? Washington State.

So IMG takes care of its own. Good to see someone in this transaction does.

We’ll all make our judgments on the new guy soon enough. He’ll have fans and detractors, as did his predecessor – hey, even venerable Bob Rob spawns saucy impersonators, though they mostly do it with love.

Bud Nameck’s biggest shortcoming is that he had to follow an institution. It certainly wasn’t his unsparing preparation, nor was it a shortage of honest enthusiasm in trying to keep his audience interested in some truly dreadful teams. And whatever’s been wrong with Wazzu’s football broadcast, it wasn’t Nameck or Gesser, whose completion percentage as an in-game analyst improved times 1,000 by season’s end last year.

As an ambassador with a 30-year association, Bud Nameck gave the Cougars better than he got – especially on Wednesday, when he didn’t just take the high road but broke out the pitons and ice axe to go higher.

“In this profession, it happens to everybody,” he reasoned. “I’m the anomaly because in 35 years, it’s never happened to me until now. And it cushions the blow a little knowing people are disappointed in the decision.”

That’s an important perspective. There have been some tough but necessary changes in Wazzu athletics of late and some good people sacrificed to combat creeping indifference, with the hope of saving the whole endeavor.

But this wasn’t necessary. It won’t save anything. It’s just another instance of a corporate bedfellow leading the school around by the nose, and it sullies Moos’ regular posturing about buying in to some Coug ideal.

Because no one bought in more than Bud Nameck.