Touching Tribute to an Irish Fan

You’re probably going to have your fill of football during this holiday weekend, so you may want to be more selective than you were at the Thanksgiving Day dinner table.

But one thing you don’t want to miss is today’s Colorado-Nebraska halftime show. There’ll be a 3 1/2-minute feature promoting Saturday’s USC-Notre Dame telecast that is worthy of a full-length movie.

It’s about Scott Delgadillo, a San Diego native who for some reason became a Notre Dame football fan when he was 4. He made his mother buy him a Notre Dame cap when he was 5. During his Pop Warner days, he dreamed about playing for the Irish someday.

In January 2000, when he was 13, he came down with a cold he couldn’t shake. The diagnosis was leukemia. A month later, representatives from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a national organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses, came to visit Scott.

His wish was to attend a Notre Dame game.

The wish was granted. The game selected was one against Purdue in September 2000. Scott was invited to the pep rally in the campus arena the night before and was also asked if he’d like to speak.

There were 12,000 people jammed into the arena. The entire team was there. Then-coach Bob Davie was there.

So were cheerleaders, the leprechaun, and Dan Ruettiger, the real-life Rudy.

The place quieted when Scott, his head bald from chemotherapy, stepped to the microphone.

He talked about fighting and inspiration and never giving up. There was barely a dry eye in the house by the time he was finished.

Notre Dame went out the next day and beat Purdue and its star quarterback Drew Brees, 23-21, on a last-second field goal.

Scott was awarded the game ball.

Scott made a lot of friends while he was in South Bend, Ind., and two in particular.

One was Joey Getherall, then a senior wide receiver. The other was Shane Walton, a senior cornerback on this year’s team. Walton is also from the San Diego area, having attended the Bishop’s School in La Jolla.

Getherall caught two touchdown passes in regulation and also the clinching touchdown pass in overtime of a 34-31 victory over Air Force in 2000. He sent a photo of the winning touchdown to Scott with an accompanying letter saying he was playing for him on Saturday.

On Christmas Day of 2000, Scott’s cancer returned and he spent 30 days at Children’s Hospital in San Diego.

After returning home following the Fiesta Bowl, Walton became a regular visitor. Scott, or Scotty as Walton and other called him, had a new best friend.

On Jan. 29, 2001, Scotty Delgadillo died at age 14.

Buried with him were Getherall’s No. 18 jersey -- 18 was the number Scott wore in Pop Warner -- and Walton’s No. 42 jersey.

There is a web site, www.inmemoryofscott.com, that tells the story, complete with photos.

Maybe some day they’ll be a movie titled simply “Scotty.”

When ABC called the Notre Dame sports information office looking for a feature to promote the USC-Notre Dame game, the person on the other end of the phone, Lisa Nelson Mushett, didn’t have to think very long.

The Scott Delgadillo story was a natural.

Producer Laurie White and a crew went to Notre Dame last week, then on to San Diego for interviews with the Delgadillo family.

The person who organized Scott’s visit to South Bend in 2000 is Jennifer Laiber, an administrative assistant in the Notre Dame public relations and information department. Laiber has become so close with the Delgadillo family -- Henry, Carmen and 18-year-old Eric -- that she is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with them.

Carmen Delgadillo said the family will watch the feature on television today, then travel to Los Angeles for Saturday’s game.

And you know who they’ll be cheering for.

Some Golf Too

If you need a break from football, there’s always golf.

ABC has the $1-million Conagra Foods Skins Game on Saturday and Sunday, featuring a field of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, the two top-ranked players in the world, and Mark O’Meara and Fred Couples.

ABC’s Mike Tirico, who will work the event at Landmark Golf Club in Indio with Curtis Strange and on-course reporter Andy North, said: “Anytime you have the top two players in the world, it is a good event. If you factor in two other world-class players, plus all four wearing microphones, it makes for an exciting weekend.”

Said Strange: “Tiger and Phil play so aggressively, you could have the most exciting Skins Game in recent memory.”

LPGA Wrap-Up

It was a good year for the LPGA, which concluded its season last weekend with the ADT Championship, formerly called the LPGA Tour Championship.

Libba Galloway, LPGA senior vice president, said the number of viewers on broadcast networks increased 24%, averaging 1.314 households per telecast, and cable showed a 22% increase with an average of 341,000 households.

Short Waves

ABC is televising the USC-Notre Dame game to 70% of the country. The remaining 30% get Florida-Florida State. ... Keith Jackson and Dan Fouts will announce USC-Notre Dame. ... The Game Show Network’s “Whammy!” will be part of the halftime show at the Coliseum, and fans attending the game will be given Game Show Network tokens good for prizes. ... NBC offers the Bayou Classic between Grambling State and Southern at 11 a.m. Saturday. This is another halftime show you won’t want to miss. The battle of the bands is always a highlight.

CBS has a college football special today, “Dell Presents College Football’s 10 Greatest Players,” at 10:30 a.m. Tim Brando will serve as host of the one-hour show. ... Fox Sports Net could have done a better job of showing the final play of last Saturday’s overtime game between Washington and Washington State. Was it a forward pass or a backward lateral? ... The Nov. 21 game between Miami and Pittsburgh drew a 4.2 national rating and 3.369 million viewers, making it the most-watch Thursday night game on ESPN since 1995.

As if UCLA fans haven’t already been punished enough, they can watch the Bruin basketball team play Duke in the Wooden Tradition at Indianapolis at 10 a.m. Saturday on CBS. ... Laker fans in San Diego have a legitimate complaint about the NBA League Pass. Laker games are blacked out in San Diego because it is considered part of the L.A. market. “Why in the wide world of sports is San Diego subject to blackouts when we don’t get KCAL,” wrote reader Tom Jensen. “It makes absolutely no sense.” ... ESPN has picked up “Beg, Borrow and Deal” for a second season. ... ESPN is planning to produce a four-part mini-series on the Munich Olympics massacre, to be shown before the 2004 Summer Games. It seems that topic already has been well covered.

Radio Daze

Sports talk radio stations KXTA (1150) and San Diego’s XTRA (690) will merge into one “super station” on Dec. 16. It’s known that Jim Rome and Lee Hamilton will be part of the lineup. Surveys have been conducted to determine who else gets picked up.

It’s hard to imagine that “Kiley and Booms” would win out over the “Loose Cannons.” In fact, it’s hard to imagine “Kiley and Booms” winning out over anyone.

In Closing

Someone identifying himself as Ed Kezirian, the towel-twirling UCLA assistant football coach, called into the Trojan postgame show on KMPC (1540) last Saturday and accused USC of running up the score. It was figured out later it was an impostor.