A 1979 novelty 45-rpm record that celebrated Larry Bird's historic basketball career at Indiana State University also includes a short piece of Indiana sports broadcast history. When you listen to the song, you'll hear the end of an ISU game that season that almost derailed the magical season. The moment involves a legendary Indiana sports broadcaster and a current Indiana legislator.
Larry Bird and the Indiana State Sycamores
The largest college basketball TV audience in history watched Michigan State beat the previously undefeated Indiana State for the NCAA Championship in March 1979, when Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird met for the first time in what became an epic NBA rivalry. But the only reason ISU was still undefeated up to that point was because of an amazing comeback earlier that season, a game that has mostly been forgotten.
For most of the 1978-1979 season, national sports writers were skeptical about Indiana State basketball because the team played in the mid-major Missouri Valley Conference. The criticism, famously led by NBC broadcaster Billy Packer, was that the Sycamores shouldn't be highly ranked because they didn't play top NCAA teams, even though ISU did beat Purdue in West Lafayette in the early season.
Bob Forbes on WTHI
As the Sycamores kept winning and moving up in the rankings, the debate became whether or not a mid-major team should be allowed to be ranked #1 in the nation if they were undefeated. Sycamore fans who couldn't go to the games in person relied on long-time WTHI sports broadcaster Bob Forbes for the live play-by-play on radio and highlights on WTHI-TV.
Miracle Shot
Indiana State was 18-0 when the team traveled to Las Cruces on February 1, 1979 to play the other top Missouri Valley Conference team, New Mexico State. The undefeated season seemed to be at an end as the Aggies had a 83-81 lead with :03 left in the second half. NMSU was at the foul line for a one-and-one. Larry Bird had already fouled out.
ISU fans were listening intently to Bob Forbes on WTHI, while the New Mexico State broadcasters were ready to declare victory. New Mexico State's Greg Webb missed the first foul shot and ISU quickly passed the ball to Bob Heaton. Heaton didn't even have the time to make it to mid-court before he had to heave a prayer. The shot bounced off the glass, rolled around the rim, and dropped in the basket. Since this was before the 3-point shot era, Heaton's basket counted as two points and tied the game at the end of regulation.
ISU fans listening to the game on WTHI would never forget the excitement in Bob Forbes' voice as he called the final play of regulation that kept the team alive.
New Mexico State was in such a state of shock, they couldn't take advantage of the Bird-less Sycamores in overtime, so ISU stayed undefeated, winning 91-89. The Sycamores kept the winning streak alive until the NCAA Championship game.
New State Bird Song
Here's where the novelty song comes in. During that epic season, Terre Haute's Tom Montgomery wrote a tribute song for Larry Bird that he titled "Indiana Has a New State Bird." He played it for friends and around town and started to get attention. He planned to record the song and get it pressed on vinyl to try and take advantage of the historic season. But he learned the NCAA would frown on any attempt to cash in on Bird's fame, and it could hurt the player's status as an amateur and not a professional.
So Montgomery waited until the end of the season to release "New State Bird." To capture the excitement of the season, the song begins with a snippet of a Bob Forbes WTHI broadcast of a Larry Bird basket during the season. At the end of the song, he once again inserts part of a WTHI ISU broadcast. But instead of another Bird highlight, the song fades into the epic Bob Heaton half-court shot against New Mexico State.
Here's Tom Montgomery's song. Bob Forbes' call of the Bob Heaton miracle shot comes at 2:45 into the audio clip.
Postscript
Bob Heaton hit another big shot for Indiana State that season. Heaton scored the winning basket against Arkansas that pushed the Sycamores into the Final Four. The Clay County native may be better known these days for his years in the Indiana State Legislature, as the State Representative for District 46.
Even though Tom Montgomery waited until the end of the season to sell his tribute song, he was thwarted again when Bird turned pro and his agent stepped in to stop the sale of "New State Bird."
Legendary NBC correspondent Bob Dotson captured Montgomery performing the song as part of a story about the excitement in Terre Haute during the 1979 season.
Bob Forbes
Bob Forbes covered sports in the Wabash Valley for WTHI for forty years. He was not only the "Voice of the Sycamores" but was also the main sportscaster for WTHI-TV.
Here is a clip from 1963 when Forbes interviewed St. Louis Cardinals legend Stan Musial after his final game.
During Larry Bird's college years, Forbes was one of the few reporters he trusted and they stayed in touch during Bird's time with the Celtics. Forbes retired from WTHI in 1988. He has been inducted into the Indiana State University Athletics Hall of Fame, Indiana Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and also the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.
April 2024
Written by Mike Conway