Coffee with Crawford | Bozich's Senate tribute, Valvano and the NBA Cup, Davenport's book

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- These "coffee" pieces have been few and far between lately, mostly because of the schedule. The football-basketball overlap has produced more than enough news to keep me busy without a daily column on top of everything else.

Still, there's a need every now and then, and this feels like one of those mornings.

This time of year, we're piecing together all sorts of year-end content for the "holiday break." That's the mysterious time when much of the newsroom eases back, while sports, naturally, gets busier, with bowl games, basketball and more. It's part of the job.

We take stock. We revisit the stories of the year, the people of the year. Today, I want to briefly catch up with three familiar voices, who happen to be old friends.

Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford

Rick Bozich honored with Senate tribute

Earlier this week, I got a note from Stephanie Penn, communications director for Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, sharing a copy of the Congressional Record from June 25, 2025. In it, the senator had entered a tribute to Rick Bozich — one neither of us had seen before.

"As sports lovers, we all have our local columnists who are the go-to source for the ins and outs of our favorite sports teams," McConnell said. "In my hometown of Louisville, Ky., Rick Bozich is one of my favorite go-to guys. For 50 years, the Hall of Fame journalist reported on local and national sports in Kentucky and Indiana, 47 of those years covering sports in Louisville. But on July 1, 2025, Rick will be retiring following a long and accomplished career in sports media. And for us sports fans, it is like losing our favorite player. He will be missed."

I can tell you — he certainly is missed. Particularly by me.

I never imagined this much of my time would be consumed by Indiana football. But Rick had a natural gravity with Hoosier fans, and in a season like this one, that's a hard thing to replicate. He's in the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame for a reason, and he would've been an incredible resource in this historic moment for the program.

Modern journalism consultants love to talk about "audience connection." And they're right. It's everything. I can work as hard as I want writing a tribute to Fernando Mendoza and his Heisman, but without that organic link to IU fans, it's not going to land the way it would if Rick had written it. Or several other friends I have who've been in the Hoosier trenches for years.

You can write the stories. But you can't replicate the relationship. That kind of connection only comes with decades, and Rick has it like few others.

His retirement got off to a bit of a rough start — what football coaches these days would call a lower-leg injury — but he's recovered and back on the footpaths of local parks with Ruby.

You can read McConnell's full tribute to Rick by clicking here.

Bob Valvano and the NBA Cup

I felt like Bob Valvano's abrupt retirement from his daily ESPN Radio show in Louisville lacked the kind of sendoff it deserved. I don't know all the internal dynamics but I do know how much his presence has meant to this city and how grateful I am to still see him courtside at Louisville games.

He remains one of the most insightful basketball voices anywhere — in any medium. He brings the polish of a veteran broadcaster and the perspective of a coach. I learn more listening to him and Paul Rogers than I do from any TV broadcast, and Bob's postgame conversations with Pat Kelsey regularly cut to the heart of what just happened.

We crossed paths before Tuesday's game in Knoxville, and Bob brought up the NBA Cup. Commissioner Adam Silver recently floated the idea of hosting the Cup final in iconic college arenas. Bob had already posted on Facebook that Louisville was a natural choice.

He's right.

In Knoxville, he reiterated it to me: "It's one game," he said. "We can do this, right?"

It's a perfect idea: simple, symbolic and long overdue. In a city that lives and breathes basketball, surely we can host one game that means something.

We may never land an NBA franchise. But if the league's handing out one game, well, tell me who deserves it more.

I'll hang up and listen.

Scott Davenport, the writer

I haven't talked to many people about this yet but I recently heard Scott Davenport talk about his upcoming book on Gary Fogle's Kentucky Sports Memories podcast, so I guess it's OK to say a little more.

Since retiring as head coach at Bellarmine University, Scott has been working on a memoir with the working title, Luckiest Coach Ever. He asked me to write it with him, though given my recent schedule, he's done pretty much all of the writing lately. And he has done it well.

What I can say from the chapters I've seen is this: It's going to be something special. You want to talk about a rich, triumphant, tragic, quintessentially Louisville life? Scott has lived it.

He's always been a gifted storyteller. But what elevates this book is his emotional clarity. His ability to find the humanity in each moment — whether joyous or gut-wrenching — makes this more than a sports book. It's a life book. A people book. With, you know, a few championships and Hall of Fame coaches thrown in.

Throughout the book, he writes letters to those who helped him along the way. One is addressed to his dad, who passed away on Halloween when Scott was just nine years old. That summer, his father had built him a backyard basketball court, a gift that would alter his life.

"So I wrote him a letter," Davenport told Fogle. "I never got to say anything to my dad. I was nine years old."

That moment — a 70-year-old coach writing to his father who died when he was nine — is the kind of thing that elevates a memoir to something more lasting.

I'm looking forward to helping him share this story in a way people haven't heard before. It's a tremendous honor to be a part of it.

Here's to a few more "coffee" breaks when the calendar allows — and a few good stories that don't need a deadline to be worth telling.

Though for now, the Hoosiers are doing more than their part to make sure I don't ease up anytime soon. It's a historic run and one of the great college sports stories of my lifetime. Who wouldn't want to be along for that ride?

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