Bernie Corbett

Chris DiBella: Welcome back to Let’s Get Personal. I’m your host, Chris DiBella, and today’s guest is very special to me. He’s been the voice of my alma mater, Boston University’s hockey, for over 40 years, the one and only, Bernie Corbett. I am beyond excited to be joined by a legend, somebody very well-known to my alma mater. He is the voice of BU hockey, Bernie Corbett, who is a long-time BU family member. We have his parents that have gone and his grandfather. He has been the voice of BU hockey for 40 years.

Bernie Corbett: Yeah, it’s my 41st season doing the play-by-play.

Chris: 41st season, incredible. A legend on campus. Thank you so much for joining us.

Bernie: Thank you, Chris. It’s great to be here. And let me just say initially, it’s great to have a partnership with you and DiBella Law, which we’ve formed this year, and for you to be presenting our Inside BU Hockey podcast. We’re really grateful for that, and long may we run together with the Terriers.

Chris: Absolutely. I mean, I’m super excited to crack into this because there’s not too many people I can talk about it with other than maybe some college buddies. You are just such a wealth of history and knowledge of the sport that you and I both love. I’m really so excited just to hear how your story got started voicing BU hockey.

Bernie: Yeah, I was going to say, I always use the… I draw on my ’70s sitcoms all the time. You know, Ted Baxter and Mary Tyler Moore: it all started in a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, $62.50 a week and a crazy dream. It’s pretty close to my story, close enough for a measurement if we were in the NFL. But to say something is in your DNA, I mean, I think that might be overused, but for me, there was just no escaping it ultimately. You mentioned my parents and my grandfather, another late attorney. My grandfather, my mother’s dad, George Constantino, was the first of the family. He was class of 1928 at BU. Then followed my mother to BU and then my father. My father was a little bit later. He had a few issues before he got to BU, when he kind of figured it out. But my father had a strong hockey background. Matter of fact, we’re not too far from the late and lamented Boston Arena/Matthews Arena. My dad was co-captain of the Stoneham team in 1949. He was a goalie. I am the son of a goalie; it’ll probably explain a lot for most of you people. I always issue that disclaimer, but my dad was very much immersed and passionate about hockey. He went to prep school—he went to Wilbraham Academy out in Springfield—and he was fortunate enough that he got a scholarship. The good news and the bad news: he got a scholarship to go to Brown. I always said that I think he stopped more pucks than he opened books for the year he was the freshman goalie. Freshmen weren’t eligible for varsity then, and he was the freshman goalie and on his way to being the varsity goalie the next year. I really didn’t know why he joined the Navy during the Korean War for three and a half years until recently. My house is like an archaeological dig; I applied for federal funds during the Reagan administration to clean the place up. You know how the federal government works, the labyrinth of the federal government—I’m still waiting. But I’m always finding things in my house, and not that long ago found my father’s report card for the 1950-51 academic year at Brown. He had about a .6, Chris. That might have explained why he joined the Navy and eschewed defending the goal for Brown University.

Chris: He had a good year!

Bernie: Exactly. So he was a little bit of a late bloomer, and when he got out of the Navy, he ended up at BU a little bit later on. My mother had already been through BU, as a matter of fact. She was right out of Medford High School, while my father was Stoneham High School. In the early ’60s, we moved to Stoneham from Medford. I always say we escaped from Medford. It’s a common story: we crawled up the Fellsway in the middle of the night, slipped under the electrical fence, and we just kept running until we got to Stoneham. A lot of people did it back in those days. But at that time, BU’s Jack Kelly had taken over in 1962. He was a great player at BU and established a great legacy at Colby College at that time, competing in Division I. When he came back to BU, the program was on the rise. My parents settled back in Stoneham, I was three years old at the time, and they had very close friends, the Terrasis: Joe and Joan. Joe, God rest his soul, was a BU Hall of Famer, a right halfback out of Waltham High. My mother’s one of her best friends was Joan; they went all the way back to high school together. So the four of them started going to the games on a regular basis.

That became a couples’ night out. They’d go to dinner and they’d come right up the street here at the Arena because that was the home of BU hockey. That was a big part of their lives. In 1967, I was finally allowed to go to the games. I was seven years old at the time. Of course, that became a running line between Coach Parker and me. When I got to BU, I was his manager. As the varsity manager, you had a chance to work really closely with the coaches and chart the games. Jack and I began to bond over not just hockey, but we both love the movies, passionate about movies, and sports. Jack’s a huge Red Sox fan. As a tradition, I take Jack to Opening Day every year. We still go to Opening Day; it’s amazing. Then I bring Jack out for the big games, from playoff games to regular season once in a while. But I remember saying to Jack at the time, as we got to know each other, “You know, coach, I went to my first BU game when I was seven, and you were the captain.” Now Chris, it was a lot funnier when I was 21 and Jack was 36. It’s kind of lost a little bit of the humor over the years, if you know what I mean. I’m not a math guy, but I think you know what I’m talking about. But when I did get to school, I became the manager, and that gave me a great opportunity and exposure to the program. So now I was in; I was part of the family. And I’ve never left the family. I got a nice break: I began doing the radio as a color analyst for a couple of years when I got out of school. My partner was Rick O’Caine, and Rick was looking for a break in two businesses, either aviation, which is a tough business, or broadcasting. To my luck, he got a break in aviation; he became a full pilot for US Air. I became the voice of BU hockey in the fall of 1985 at the tender age of 25. I haven’t looked back since. I haven’t been on spring break yet, either, nor have I been skiing. Probably dangerous; I haven’t broken anything.

Chris: There are a couple of things you touched on which I love. One is when you and I first met, you said, “Welcome to the family.” You said it again, and I think in the context of Jack welcoming you in, that’s such a great way to welcome somebody. It’s really great to be part of the community. I’m ecstatic to be back involved in the community. But when you talk about 1985, you get in, you start, did you have a background in communications and broadcasting? What really drove you to that?

Bernie: Yeah, I think the best way to describe it… I think about this all the time.

Chris: You obviously have a great voice for it.

Bernie: Oh, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I got a great face for radio, as they say. I always say my mother used to say… my mother never said that, I’m making that one up. But people say, “Hey, you’ve got a great face for radio.” I look like any cab driver in East Boston with this face. But no, I say I’m kind of like Jimi Hendrix, he couldn’t read music. I’m self-taught. I grew up absolutely immersed in sports, and I love the whole concept of broadcasting. I grew up at a time in Boston that was a sweet spot or a golden age. The people I listened to across the board… Bob Wilson was the voice of the Bruins. Talk about a set of pipes. “And out in the corner,” or “over to Orr,” or “to Esposito.” Bob Wilson was the man, a Hall of Fame broadcaster. He had Fred Cusick on TV doing the Bruins, and he was ageless; he did it forever. I remember going up to Fred Cusick once in the mid-’80s and I said, “Fred, you did the high school hockey games on local radio when my father was the goalie in 1949.” He looked at me and he said, “That was a long time ago.” I said, “Yeah, I think it was, Fred.” Anyway, you had Fred and Bob. You had the Red Sox with Ned Martin and Ken Coleman, whom I worked with doing BU football. They were icons. These were the guys you fell asleep listening to with the transistor radio under the pillow. So you had those guys doing the Red Sox, and of course, Johnny Most doing the Celtics. If you know Johnny Most, you know there was only one Johnny Most. These were the guys. I was so passionate and I loved sports. My passion for the Red Sox and, believe it or not, these guys are going to probably boo me, for the New York Football Giants. That’s because I’m old; that’s my disclaimer. The Giants were New England’s team before the Patriots were even a dream.

My father was a passionate Giants fan because he was old—he would have turned 94 last week, as a matter of fact, if he was still with us. But I sat down and watched the Giants with my father. I loved them, and I got season tickets to the Giants and the Red Sox. I used to go to the Giants games and sit with Dennis Drinkwater. But my real three passions were the Giants, the Red Sox, and BU hockey. Regarding broadcasting, I used to joke around when I was at the games with my father. I’d be 13 or 14 years old, and between periods, I’d interview my father. I’d have a mythical gift certificate for him at the end. One of my sponsors now with Harvard football is Eastern Clothing of Watertown. I’d say to my father… and my father would be sitting there rolling his eyes, saying, “Someone shut this kid up! He’s been talking since he was five months old, for Christ’s sakes. Give me a break, will you?” But I’m really self-taught, because when I went to BU, I was in Liberal Arts—the CLA at the time, now CAS.

Chris: Same here.

Bernie: Political science major, English minor.

Chris: So we have identical backgrounds for our majors.

Bernie: It was the exposure and the opportunity with the program that gave me the chance to actually get into broadcasting. I remember the first game I did, I was charting the games at the end of my last year at BU. We played up at UNH and got eliminated in the playoffs. Rick was flying somewhere, so Doug Brown—who did BU and I worked with him on BU football for years—was called in to do the play-by-play. They were like, “Who can do the color? Geez, maybe Bernie can do the color.” So I actually was charting the game, multitasking, and providing the color. It was like, “Geez, pretty good.” That gave me the opportunity to actually get on the air for the first time broadcasting a game. When I got out of school, John Simpson was the athletic director. John was a great guy, a former BU football player in the Harry Agganis era. John actually gave me the rights for the broadcasts when I was 22 or 23 years old. I got involved with the sales and the marketing piece of it. I worked as a color analyst with BU football, which I did for a long time, and then eventually, after a couple of years, I moved to play-by-play. So yeah, I’m very much self-taught, but so passionate about it all. I just got the opportunity and ran with it and made sure I didn’t screw it up, I guess.

Chris: Well, anyone that’s sat and talked to you for five minutes knows that the passion you have for BU, and for BU hockey in particular, is oozing out of you. I think that is harder to teach—that passion that you have. But hockey is such a fast-paced sport. You also do Harvard football. I’d love to hear the differences, but I would think as a layperson that hockey would be a much more difficult sport to call because it is so fast-paced.

Bernie: Oh, without question. They are two completely different animals, no doubt about that. I enjoy both of them. My one regret at this point in my life is I haven’t done anywhere near as much baseball. I haven’t had much exposure to baseball. It’s a little tougher, too, unless you’re going to pursue a minor league team. It’s not like there’s a lot of college baseball to broadcast. But the one opportunity I had doing baseball was with a guy at Creative Sports Network out of Arkansas. I got to do the NCAA baseball tournament for about five years. I did the regionals and the super regionals, and I got to travel around the country. Boy, did I have fun doing that. Baseball is a lot of fun. But as far as football… football is perfectly set up. You call the play, you have your analyst; he’s in, you’re out. It’s set in stone. I’ve got the benefit, usually, of a full crew. Mike Giardi and I do the football at Harvard. We say, “Boy, when we have a full crew, we’re a lot better.” We have a spotter, a statistician, and two or three supporting people with us, and we’re not just flying alone. But it really is set up like that, and you have your chart in front of you. Hockey, the speed, the pace… being able to, as I always say—just like the officials, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t—your goal is to really get the feel of the game that particular night. You want the pace of the game, the feel of the game, and to be able to be descriptive. Because there are always people on the audio side for me—I still do the ESPN+ for the home games—because I know there are people who are not watching. I think with a lot of the simulcasting over the years, people who have been trained in radio still keep their radio techniques and traits as they broadcast. I know I do.

It really is descriptive; you have to be able to paint the picture. In hockey, it’s like real estate: location, location, location. You have to be able to paint the picture on the ice—where things are positioned, where things are going. The other thing is memorization. You can’t fake it in hockey. You have to have the numbers down. I’ll start early in the week. For example, we have Providence this weekend. I’ll take the Providence line chart from the weekend before and I’ll put that on my yellow legal pads. People are like, “What the hell are those notes? Nobody can read them.” I could be writing prescriptions. I write kind of small. But I’ll take that Providence line chart, write them in, and then I’ll go through the bios and make my notes. I’ll start at the beginning of the week to familiarize myself with the names and the numbers because you can’t fake it. Hockey is happening way too fast to fake it. It really is two completely different skill sets for football versus hockey. But you try to capture the pulse and the pace in hockey. In football, it’s an orchestrated stage: you have a break, you come in, you come out. I’ve been blessed; I’ve had really three people who have worked with me regularly. I had Ed Carpenter, who was tremendous. He was the sports information director at BU. Ed and I worked together from 1985 until 1992—about seven years. Then Tom Ryan, who just passed away. Tom and I had something really special. I always said we lasted three times longer than the Beatles; we were together for 24 years. Tom was my best friend in the world. He was captain of the BU team with David Quinn in 1988. Tom would always issue the disclaimer: “I’m not a broadcaster; I’m an insurance agent.” He was with James A. Ryan Insurance in Newton. Tommy and I were great friends from the time he came to BU in 1984. He pitched in on a few games, and then we formalized it in 1992. I formed Giant Sports Associates and began to market BU hockey as my main function, and later Harvard football. Asking Tommy to come on board was the best move I ever made. God, we had fun. One of the proudest things was Tommy’s two sons. His son TJ was hell-bent on playing hockey at BU, and he walked on and played for David Quinn. His career ended abruptly because of concussion issues, which was very sad, but man, he made it. When he made it, it was almost like he was my son because the two of them, TJ and Brendan, grew up with it. Once they were old enough, they came on the road trips with us.

Chris: It’s a special breed of person and family that has lived in that hockey community their whole life. My boys have been going to the Beanpot and BU games since they could walk. Now I have two kids at BU; one’s playing on the club hockey team. To even just see him donning the same jersey that the varsity team plays in is amazing. But it’s clearly deep in your family history. Tell me a little bit about what is one of the most memorable moments… because you’ve called a lot of games over many decades. You entered BU as they were winning a national championship, right?

Bernie: Oh yeah, I could tell you a little story about that.

Chris: And then I started in ’95, right? Two very exciting times, great teams, a million amazing players. Are there a few moments that stick out that you remember?

Bernie: Yeah. First, you struck a nerve. I have to tell you one because you mentioned entering during a national championship. I came to BU in the fall of 1978, right after the national championship in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence has been very good to us—I hope it is tonight and this weekend, too. But we won national championships at the Providence Civic Center in ’78 and ’95. So I go in as a national champion. Now, for the first year, I was the lowly JV manager. I was on the bench for a year with the varsity and then moved up. I was on a self-styled five-year program. I think it was modeled after John Belushi in Animal House—”Mr. Blutarsky, you have no grade point average.” My dad was a loving and nurturing and caring man. So I came in in ’78. In ’79, they finished first but got upset in the semifinals by Dartmouth in the old ECAC tournament. Jack Parker had come in in ’74, and they won the ECACs four straight years. In ’78, they didn’t win the ECACs, but they won the NCAA tournament. So the year after, they finish first and get knocked out. Now, the first year I’m actually with the varsity, they’re under .500 and they miss the playoffs. The second year, we’re just under .500 and we miss the playoffs. The third year, we’re over .500, but we miss the playoffs—though we did win the Beanpot. I remember a heartfelt and tender moment with my family. My father was sitting there with his Johnny Walker Black, and his comment was, “Hey Bernie, let’s see… you came to BU as national champions. We’ve now missed the playoffs three years in a row, kid. You screwed up a dynasty.” I don’t know if there’s an eight-second delay here, but you know what word he actually used. That was the nurturing, supportive man that he was. And he was right; I kind of felt like I jinxed the whole operation. But as far as moments go, the 1985-86 season was really special. We had a pretty good team: John Cullen, who was the all-time leading scorer; Scott Young, a US Hockey Hall of Famer; and Clark Donatelli, an Olympic captain. Jay Octeau—God rest his soul—was a great player. David Quinn was the first-round pick of the Minnesota North Stars; he and Tommy Ryan were defense partners. We just had a lot of good players. BC had a lot of good players, too: Craig Janney, Scott Harlow, Kevin Stevens. That year played out, and a common theme in the BU-BC rivalry happened. Last year, we lost all the regular-season games to BC. Then we played BC in the Beanpot final—4 to 1, thank you very much. As Coach Parker would say, we gave the Eagles a “little kiss” in that very memorable Beanpot final. That was the one where Scott Shaughnessy came across the ice and hit Bob Sweeney, who has since become a good friend of mine. We always ask why we’re friends; we should still hate each other. But Shaughnessy and the team orchestrated the opening face-off. John Cullen purposely lost the face-off because he knew if he did, they would play the puck back to Sweeney on the wall. Scott Shaughnessy, who was 6’4″ and 220 pounds, came across the ice like a heat-seeking missile and just laid out Bob Sweeney. That sent a message right from the beginning of the game. To this day, people still talk about that hit and how it set the tone. But it got even better because it was the second year of Hockey East. Lou Lamoriello was the coach and athletic director at Providence at the time. The first two years of Hockey East were at the Civic Center. In year two, BC was the favorite. There was no question it was BC’s year; they were going to avenge the Beanpot final. We were good, but they were out for revenge. That one went even better: at the Providence Civic Center, the final score was BU 9, BC 4. Thank you very much! I’ve got so many of my best friends from that first-year team.

Chris: The rivalry between BU and BC has always been phenomenal. Talk to me a little bit about the Beanpot, because it is so unique to the Northeast. We lost BU football when I was in school in ’97. I distinctly remember the Beanpot after that, and all the other fans would chant “BU football!” We would chant “Unabomber” or things about gambling scandals. It is one of the few events in Boston that is packed with college kids and has that real college environment. Why is it so special?

Bernie: I think it is so uniquely Boston. I wrote the history of the Beanpot for the 50th anniversary in 2002. I’d love to update it for the 75th. It brings everyone together. The building they just closed up the street—the Arena—was home to all four schools. BC played their home games there until 1956; Harvard played there until 1958; we played there until 1971; and Northeastern played every home game there from 1930 until recently. It started in 1952 almost by accident. They looked at the calendar around Christmas and realized everyone played their home games there. The first year was played December 26th and 27th. Eventually, in 1957, it was established on the first two Mondays in February. It brings Boston together. You have Northeastern with a blue-collar reputation. BU has always had a strong tri-state area influence and international appeal. BU has taken pride in hockey for time eternal—going back to guys on the 1936 Olympic team. BC is the Catholic school with a strong influence on everything that is Boston. They won their national championship in 1949. Harvard goes back to the very beginning of hockey. There’s enough of a local element that these guys have played together and are familiar with each other. The exposure has been dramatic—highlights are all over ESPN. Coach Parker once said he was recruiting a kid in North Vancouver who said, “I watched the Beanpot the other night.” It’s taken on a life of its own.

Chris: I love the local kid element. I think every kid who grows up in this area wants to play in the Beanpot for BU or BC. It’s a great tournament.

Bernie: It is. And the moments… you expect the unexpected.

Chris: Any program would be lucky to have someone as invested and knowledgeable as you. Knowing you’re there calling the games for over four decades is special. What legacy or mark do you want to have left on this program?

Bernie: Wow, that’s a heavy question. First of all, I have no concept of retirement. People my age are retiring, but retire from what? Nobody has been as fortunate as I’ve been to live this out. I have great role models like Bob Uecker, who was still doing games at almost 90. God willing, I’m still running and taking care of myself. When you talk about a legacy, “passion” is the word I come back to. There’s a song by Graham Parker called “Passion is No Ordinary Word,” and I live by that. I hope I can bring that passion to this generation and the next. Last year, they acknowledged my 40th season. They called me into a team meeting. Jay Pandolfo, who is now the head coach, was a player when I started. It’s full circle—part of the family. They gave me a jersey with “Corbett 40” on it. I had to check with the player who wears number 40, Mike Yegorov, to make sure it was okay! Then they let me talk to the team before a game against Northeastern. I tried to give them a Jack Parker-style speech. I told them, “It’s the time of your life. Make the most of what you have right here and right now.” We lost 5 to 1, but the passion was there. I want people to know I was fully invested. I’ll probably die in the middle of a BC game or something. My doctor has season tickets in section 103, so he’s on call if needed! But really, I just want to bring that passion. If I ever wake up and I’m not excited to go to a game, then that’s the end.

Chris: Well, I was inspired by Don Fischer, the voice of Indiana basketball. He’s 78 and still calling games with so much excitement. On behalf of everyone at BU, I’m so proud to have you calling the games for us.

Bernie: Thank you, Chris. Long may we run.

Chris: Thanks for joining Let’s Get Personal. Don’t forget to like and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.