Kornacki: Going to the Letterman Show with Desmond Howard
5/20/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
Desmond Howard
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- David Letterman will conclude more than three decades as a late-night talk show host tonight (Wednesday, May 20) with his final "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS.
He has done nearly 6,000 shows, and I was fortunate enough to attend the tapings of three of them, including two back when the show was on NBC. One of those shows, Dec. 13, 1991, was particularly memorable because I took Desmond Howard there the night before he won the Heisman Trophy.
So, I wanted to share that memory with readers via a chapter from "Go Blue! Michigan's Greatest Football Stories," my book published by Triumph Books in 2013.
The chapter is entitled: "Desmond Howard: David Letterman and the Heisman Trophy weekend"
When Desmond Howard received the formal invitation from the Downtown Athletic Club of New York as a finalist for the 1991 Heisman Trophy, I had one simple question for him: "Who do you like better, Leno or Letterman?"
Desmond immediately answered, "Letterman, for sure. I watch the guy almost every night -- cracks me up."
I then asked Desmond if he wanted to see "Late Night With David Letterman" the night before the Dec. 14 Heisman presentation.
"Absolutely, man," he said. "Can you get tickets?"
I told Desmond that I could, and he was excited about it.
The year before, while covering the NCAA Basketball Tournament, I wanted to write about Letterman's infatuation with his alma mater, Ball State, which had advanced to the Sweet 16. The unheralded Cardinals had beaten Oregon State and Louisville to become Cinderellas, and Letterman took joy in celebrating them in his nightly monologues.
So, I got in touch with his office at NBC and asked for an interview. One of Letterman's assistants told me: "Dave doesn't want to do a phone interview, but likes your story idea. He asked that you fax me three questions, and I'll fax back his answers to you."
That worked for me.
Letterman replied with some funny lines (no surprise there) for a piece before Ball State played UNLV and lost by just two points. One of his assistant's called after I faxed the article to Letterman and said he liked the story. "Call me anytime you are in town, and we'll get you some tickets," she added.
So I got tickets for the two of us, and Wolverine sports information director Bruce Madej for the Dec. 13 show. And after all the Friday interviews and obligations, we put on our coats and walked outside to hail a cab. One of the Heisman reps spotted Desmond and asked if we needed a limousine ride anywhere. This is how you get treated when you are with the Heisman Trophy favorite.
We headed toward mid-town in luxury and arrived outside NBC Studios early for the show. So we wandered around and took in the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, a towering Norway pine more than 70 feet tall and decorated with an elaborate chain of lights. There were even sidewalk vendors roasting chestnuts on an open fire. Manhattan at Christmas is something to behold and cherish.
Once inside the studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, we went to the reception desk and waited. Detroit Free Press photographer Julian Gonzalez, who was chronicling Desmond's coronation weekend with me, met us there. We were soon escorted to Studio 6B, the same studio where "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" is now taped and where "The Tonight Show" with both Johnny Carson and Jack Paar was taped.
Letterman's producer, Robert Morton, told us that he wanted us to sit front row and center for the show and be introduced after his monologue. Actually, he was only concerned about Desmond being there but was going to give us the royal treatment, too. This was great. I was a huge fan of the show and Letterman, and would fantasize about writing a best-seller and getting invited as a guest to discuss my prose with the current king of late night.
"Well," Desmond said, "I am flattered by this. Don't take this the wrong way, but I would rather just sit in the green room and watch the show from there with the guests."
WHAT?
I asked Desmond if he had, well, lost his mind.
"I just don't want to jinx winning the award by doing this," he told me in all sincerity.
I explained to him that he gets plenty of shots at network television, but this brief "brush with greatness" was my only shot. Besides, it was widely agreed that Desmond was going to be a landslide winner. It also is impossible to jinx winning an award that has already had the vote completed and tallied.
"C'mon, Dez, have a heart," I said.
"Nope," he answered, "just can't jinx it."
And then Desmond dropped his head back and laughed that infectious, high-pitched laugh of his. And I knew there was no talking him out of this.
The green room it was.
Virtually every entertainment star of the last 60 years had sat in there, waiting for Jack, Johnny, Dave or Jimmy to call them into the chair next to their desk. Okay, so we got Jack Hanna and his zoo animals, the Spanic Boys musicians and comedian Pat Cooper. But they were pretty cool guys, and we got to pet an aardvark or some such exotic animal.
We had hoped to spend a few minutes with Letterman after the show, but he had something going on. Still, Morton said he was sorry about that and was glad to have us at the show.
Desmond and I watched the whole show on a big monitor screen, and Letterman was on his game. I can't recall a single joke from the monologue or a barb he hurled at Hanna, who was wearing that crazy safari hat. But I can remember how loudly we laughed. Oh, we just howled.
The show is taped just before the dinner hour in order to have the proper amount of time to set it up on satellite for the time slot at 12:35 a.m. So that night I curled up in my bed at the Downtown Athletic Club and watched the show again. And since there is no ceiling to the green room, which is adjacent to the stage and set, I could hear Desmond cackling and me laughing way too loud.
And I laughed some more.
