Johnny Holliday

"I want to show you something. " Johnny Holliday is standing in the front hallway of his home in Kensington. His graying hair is parted, as always, perfectly to the left, not a single strand out of place. He grins, flashing his immaculately white upper teeth, and gestures toward the wall. "I am as proud of this stuff as I am anything in the world," he says. His voice, a syrupy blend of Johnny Carson and Bob Barker, goes quiet. Johnny Holliday - John to his friends, Dad to his three adult daughters - has spent a lifetime describing the world as it unfolds in front of him. But in this moment, he is struggling with what he wants to say. It's hard to communicate, emotionally, what's in front of him. It's a painting.

When the Maryland men's basketball team won its national championship 10 years ago, it was uniquely different than a lot of those won during that era. The Terps , who finished 32-4 in 2001-02, had no superstars on the roster, and three of the starters - center Lonny Baxter, guard Juan Dixon and forward Byron Mouton - were seniors, a rarity then and even more so now. It was a collection of role players led by the gritty, veteran trio...

To a lot of people, he is the voice of the University of Maryland. Coaches have come and gone, players have gone on to the pros or gone on with their lives, and he remains.He is Johnny Holliday -- for a dozen years a regional fixture as a sports announcer, disc jockey and voice of collegiate and professional sports. He's now working a number of jobs: as broadcast announcer on WMAL-AM radio in Washington for the University of Maryland football and basketball games, as well as providing pregame shows for Home Team Sports and doing sports news on the ABC Information Network.

From the illuminated silhouette showing a familiar figure pumping his fist that adorned the outside of the arena, to the season's first sellout crowd inside, Comcast Center had a different feel to it Wednesday night. It had a different feel to Gary Williams, too - different from any of the game nights he had spent there during the last nine years of a 22-year career at Maryland. Even with an old and familiar rival, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and his eighth-ranked Blue Devils, it was not the same for the 66-year-old coach.

"I want to show you something." Johnny Holliday is standing in the front hallway of his home in Kensington. His graying hair is parted, as always, perfectly to the left, not a single strand out of place. He grins, flashing his immaculately white upper teeth, and gestures toward the wall. "I am as proud of this stuff as I am anything in the world," he says. His voice, a syrupy blend of Johnny Carson and Bob Barker, goes quiet. Johnny Holliday - John to his friends, Dad to his three adult daughters - has spent a lifetime describing the world as it unfolds in front of him. But in this moment, he is struggling with what he wants to say. It's hard to communicate, emotionally, what's in front of him. It's a painting.

University of Maryland athletic director Andy Geiger announced yesterday that the university has reached an agreement with WRC (980 AM) in Silver Spring granting the radio station local broadcast rights for football and men's basketball games.WRC replaces WMAL (630 AM), which could not reach an agreement with Jefferson Pilot Communications, to whom the Terps sold their rights three years ago.A spokesman for the Naval Academy confirmed yesterday that WMAL will broadcast Navy football games next season.

WBAL Radio has been selected as the flagship station for University of Maryland football and basketball, the university and radio station announced yesterday.WBAL (1090 AM) has signed a three-year deal with Jefferson-Pilot productions, which owns Maryland's radio rights, to be the originating station for Terrapins games. WBAL recently had been the Baltimore affiliate on the Maryland radio network when Washington's WMAL was the flagship.Last week, university athletic director Andy Geiger announced that the school had reached an agreement with Washington-area station WRC to become the flagship.

The Orioles are about to lose another announcer.Mel Proctor, who has handled play-by-play for Orioles television broadcasts the past 12 years, is on the verge of signing a three-year deal with the San Diego Padres, according to league sources. Former Orioles president Larry Lucchino is president of the Padres and is familiar with Proctor's work.A three-time winner of the Maryland Sportscaster of the Year Award, Proctor also does play-by-play for the Washington Bullets. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The first time I heard Johnny Holliday broadcast a University of Maryland basketball game was the winter of 1982. I was driving through some Eastern Shore backwater at night, and it was freezing cold, and the only light inside my little Toyota was the glow of the radio dial. I was bored and turned on the radio and suddenly this voice came out of the ether, vibrant and smooth, like it'd been soaking in baby oil: Adrian Branch from the top of the key ... jumper is no good ... he's fouled!

1. Ravens-Steelers rivarly Ravens lose in the playoffs to the Steelers in January, igniting months and months of talk about whether Joe Flacco will ever be an elite quarterback and if Cam Cameron is the right offensive coordinator for him. Ravens get a measure of revenge by sweeping the Steelers in the 2011 season, including a 35-7 drubbing of Pittsburgh in the season opener that sets the tone for another run at a Super Bowl. 2. Williams departs Long-time Maryland men's basketball coach Gary Williams resigns in a surprise move, leaving the Terps scrambling to find his replacement.

1. Ravens-Steelers rivarly Ravens lose in the playoffs to the Steelers in January, igniting months and months of talk about whether Joe Flacco will ever be an elite quarterback and if Cam Cameron is the right offensive coordinator for him. Ravens get a measure of revenge by sweeping the Steelers in the 2011 season, including a 35-7 drubbing of Pittsburgh in the season opener that sets the tone for another run at a Super Bowl. 2. Williams departs Long-time Maryland men's basketball coach Gary Williams resigns in a surprise move, leaving the Terps scrambling to find his replacement.

For his inaugural Maryland Madness, new men's basketball coach Mark Turgeon assembled a blend of old and new Friday night. He acquired the "old" by inviting former Terps such as Greivis Vasquez, Steve Francis, Steve Blake and Byron Mouton to the event, which had the feel of a late-night preseason pep rally at Comcast Center. The latter two were members of the 2002 team that will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its national championship in 2012. And the new? Well, that would be Turgeon himself.

Basketball Bias, Holliday, Chenier to be inducted into Hall The late Maryland star Len Bias and longtime Terrapins radio voice Johnny Holliday will be inducted into the Washington Metropolitan Basketball Hall of Fame on Nov. 9, it was announced on Tuesday. Former Baltimore-Washington Bullets star Phil Chenier , former Bullets player and GM Bob Ferry and Montrose Christian coach Stu Vetter will also be among those inducted. The ceremony starts at 6p.m.

The crowd of students at Comcast Center chanted his name and he threw one last fist pump that would have taken out Manny Pacquiao, and so began the retirement ceremony Friday for Gary Williams. Twenty-two years as the iconic coach of Maryland. A school-record 441 wins, including a national championship in 2002. A total of 668 wins in 33 years as a head coach, the fifth-most wins among active Division I coaches. Some of this was surely going through his mind as he bounced into the arena with that odd, rolling gait that always reminded me of an amped-up fighter entering the ring.

If you wanted to see genuine emotion, not the phony stuff that so often comes from sports these days, you needed to see Greivis Vasquez's face light up when they honored him here Sunday. The Maryland Terrapins did this one up right, folks. Right before their sloppy 87-80 win over North Carolina State, they hung a banner with his No. 21 from the rafters at Comcast Center, making him only the 16th player in Maryland history accorded that tribute. They put together a wonderful highlight reel of the former Terps great's career that played on the scoreboard, narrated in the stentorian voice of veteran announcer Johnny Holliday.

On the walls of his office hang poster-sized magazine covers and other reminders of Final Fours and four decades of basketball victories. But Gary Williams — as driven and intense as ever — still sometimes wears the haunted look of a man who coaches a sport in which an NCAA tournament game can be lost on a buzzer beater because an opposing player ducked. At 65, the Maryland coach — who is being inducted Thursday night into the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards' "Hall of Legends" — has a memory full of the sort of detailed basketball information that all but coaches and fantasy leaguers might consider arcane.

For his inaugural Maryland Madness, new men's basketball coach Mark Turgeon assembled a blend of old and new Friday night. He acquired the "old" by inviting former Terps such as Greivis Vasquez, Steve Francis, Steve Blake and Byron Mouton to the event, which had the feel of a late-night preseason pep rally at Comcast Center. The latter two were members of the 2002 team that will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its national championship in 2012. And the new? Well, that would be Turgeon himself.

Basketball Bias, Holliday, Chenier to be inducted into Hall The late Maryland star Len Bias and longtime Terrapins radio voice Johnny Holliday will be inducted into the Washington Metropolitan Basketball Hall of Fame on Nov. 9, it was announced on Tuesday. Former Baltimore-Washington Bullets star Phil Chenier , former Bullets player and GM Bob Ferry and Montrose Christian coach Stu Vetter will also be among those inducted. The ceremony starts at 6p.m.

Help me out here: Was there some kind of big snowstorm around these parts recently? Record accumulations? Impassable roads? End-of-the-world coverage on TV? Yeah, thought I heard something about that. But no one was really focused on that Sunday afternoon at Comcast Center, where the Maryland Terrapins routed North Carolina, 92-71, for their 16th win and sixth Atlantic Coast Conference victory in the kind of wild, party atmosphere you don't normally see around here. If this was "Snowmaggedon" or "Snowpocalypse" or whatever they were calling it, the Terps thrived in it. There were so many slick passes and showboat dunks, you thought it were an outtake from an NBA All-Star Game.

"I want to show you something." Johnny Holliday is standing in the front hallway of his home in Kensington. His graying hair is parted, as always, perfectly to the left, not a single strand out of place. He grins, flashing his immaculately white upper teeth, and gestures toward the wall. "I am as proud of this stuff as I am anything in the world," he says. His voice, a syrupy blend of Johnny Carson and Bob Barker, goes quiet. Johnny Holliday - John to his friends, Dad to his three adult daughters - has spent a lifetime describing the world as it unfolds in front of him. But in this moment, he is struggling with what he wants to say. It's hard to communicate, emotionally, what's in front of him. It's a painting.