March Madness gives Worlock a dream job

Former Henderson State sports information director Dave Worlock, shown with Jim Nantz of CBS Sports, has been the NCAA’s director of media coordination and statistics since 2013 and joined the men’s basketball tournament staff in 2006.
(Submitted photo)
Former Henderson State sports information director Dave Worlock, shown with Jim Nantz of CBS Sports, has been the NCAA’s director of media coordination and statistics since 2013 and joined the men’s basketball tournament staff in 2006. (Submitted photo)

David and Andrea Worlock will celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary Thursday because that date didn't conflict with the 1994 Final Four.

The Worlocks had planned to have a summer wedding because of David's hectic work schedule for most of the year as sports information director at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.

That changed when David's father, retired Army master sergeant Ren Worlock, found out in the fall of 1993 that he was going to be stationed in South Korea at the time of the wedding.

"We were trying to pick a new wedding date in the spring, looking at the schedules for Henderson's teams, and Andrea said, 'There aren't any home games on April 2. Why don't we get married on that date?' " Worlock said. "I immediately said, 'No, we're not getting married on April 2.' She said, 'Why not?' And I said, 'Because that's the day of the Final Four.' "

Not only did Worlock know the date of the Final Four months in advance, he understood the University of Arkansas basketball team had a good chance of playing in the national semifinals in Seattle on April 2.

"I said, 'The Razorbacks are going to be good, and if they're playing in the Final Four and we get married on April 2, none of my friends will come to the wedding,' " Worlock said of Arkansas' team that won the 1994 national championship. "Andrea said, 'They won't come?' I said, 'They better not. I wouldn't go to their wedding on the same day as the Final Four.'

"Andrea was like, 'I'm glad our life can revolve around a basketball tournament.' Little did we know then that our life largely would revolve around the NCAA Tournament."

Worlock, who will turn 50 on April 16, has been the NCAA's director of media coordination and statistics since 2013 with his biggest job responsibility being media coordinator for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

This year would have been Worlock's 15th NCAA Tournament since he joined the men's basketball staff in 2006.

But there is no March Madness this year.

The NCAA Tournament was canceled March 12 because of health concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic. It's the first cancellation in the event's 81-year history.

"It's incredibly disappointing from a professional standpoint," Worlock said. "A lot of my colleagues and I have worked on this championship quite a bit. It's obviously the NCAA's most prominent one.

"We have 89 other championships, but this is the one that gets the most attention and it's a magical event. It's three weeks that capture the attention of sports fans everywhere, but even non-sports fans.

"Lots of people fill out brackets who don't really follow athletics at all, but they just want to be part of something this big, whether it's at the office or at home. To not have that is a void right now.

"Keeping things in perspective, there are certainly people around the world going through a very serious crisis and people are sick and unfortunately people are passing away.

"But I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't say that I miss [the NCAA Tournament] and my family misses it, and friends and colleagues alike all miss what March Madness is.

"I think the good news is, this will pass, and next year we'll appreciate it even more, I bet."

Worlock said the decision to cancel the NCAA Tournament escalated quickly.

"We were all confident that everything was going along just fine," he said of the week leading to the cancellation. "I would categorize Monday and most of Tuesday as pretty normal."

The NCAA staff got word Tuesday night that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine would be announcing on Wednesday -- March 11 -- that spectators would not be allowed to attend indoor sporting events in the state, including NCAA Tournament games scheduled the next week at Dayton and Cleveland.

"Our staff huddled in a room late Tuesday night, trying to come up with alternative plans," Worlock said. "'But those plans were falling apart before lunch on Wednesday."

The NCAA announced Wednesday that spectators wouldn't be allowed to attend any tournament games.

"We came to the realization that playing a 68-team tournament at 14 sites over the course of three weeks was not looking like a realistic scenario," Worlock said. "We even tossed around playing a 16-team field at one site with limited media and no fans, and doing that in Atlanta with games over five days."

But by early Thursday, it became apparent there would be no NCAA Tournament in any format.

"The first word that comes to mind is 'shock,' " Worlock said. "You just start thinking how quickly everything evolved.

"A few days earlier, [the coronavirus] was something serious, but wasn't going to impact everything. Then in a matter of 72 hours March Madness was canceled, Major League baseball was postponed, the NBA's season was suspended, the NHL's season was suspended.

"You knew we were dealing with something of far greater importance than sports. You were still stunned by the fact that there would be no March Madness."

Worlock has become a key figure behind the scenes for the NCAA Tournament selection committee. For the past several years, he has sat in on the committee's meetings to provide background information for the members.

"There are very few NCAA staff in the room with the basketball committee, and Dave is one of those few," said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA's senior vice president in charge of men's basketball. "He's a really important resource for the committee on the selection, seeding and bracketing process. He provides data and analytics on an hour-to-hour basis -- even moment-to-moment -- during that week leading into the NCAA Tournament."

Gavitt laughed when asked if he could recall Worlock not knowing the answer to a selection committee member's question.

"Probably only temporarily," Gavitt said. "If Dave does get stumped, he knows where to find the answer and he finds it quickly.

"He's got a steel-trap mind and holds a lot of information in there. He frequently impresses committee members with his quick recall of games, dates, results, what players were injured and unavailable. His recall of things is invaluable."

Worlock was born in Herkimer, N.Y., about 60 miles east of Syracuse in upstate New York, but he spent most of his youth in Augsburg, Germany, where his father was stationed.

During a brief stay in the United States in 1975, Worlock recalled the excitement about Syracuse advancing to the Final Four. Then a 4-year-old, he was hooked on March Madness.

While living in Germany, Worlock used to set his alarm to 3 a.m. so he could wake up to the watch the NCAA Tournament championship game televised on the Armed Forces Network.

"I've loved March Madness since the time I was a kid," he said. "I was the one handing out the brackets -- which would get me fired nowadays. But I don't think I can get in trouble for doing it as a teenager."

Tony Ranchino, a videographer for KATV Channel 7 in Little Rock, and Worlock became friends at Henderson State in 1995 when they realized both had letters to the editor published in Sports Illustrated.

"Dave worships March Madness, and I mean that 100%," Ranchino said. "Let me tell you, the NCAA Tournament is better because Dave Worlock is in that room on Selection Sunday.

"His first year in the room, it was like, 'Dave, we're going to let you in here, but we don't want you to say a word.' Now years later, not only do they want him to talk, but they're going to lean on him for a lot of different information.

"Dave makes sure no stone goes unturned when it comes to teams the committee is considering. He's just brilliant when it comes to that kind of stuff, and they trust him."

Worlock decided to attend Henderson State because the father of a girl he was dating in Germany became head of the ROTC at Ouachita Baptist University, which also is in Arkadelphia.

While Worlock never had been to Arkansas, he had heard of Henderson State because Roy Green -- a star wide receiver in the NFL for the St. Louis Cardinals -- played for the Reddies.

"Going to Henderson turned out to be best thing that could have happened to me," said Worlock, who enrolled in the fall of 1988. "But I remember when I got to Arkansas in the summer after flying from Munich to Little Rock and I stepped outside the airport that I'd never experienced humidity like that.

"I went, 'What is this brick wall that just hit me in the face?' "

Worlock wrote for HSU's school paper, The Oracle, and had a part-time job washing dishes at Western Sizzlin.

When Worlock was a sophomore one of his articles caught the eye of Steve Eddington, Henderson State's sports information director at the time. Eddington offered him a position in the sports information office as a student worker.

"I wanted a career in sports, and I figured, 'This job is going to help me a lot more than washing dishes,' " Worlock said. "I think my whole life I wanted to be a sports information director without knowing what a sports information director was.

"Steve asked me, 'Do you like statistics?' And I'm like, 'I live for statistics.' He told me I'd be going to football games and basketball games and baseball games and writing features for the game program.

"I was thinking, 'And you're going to pay me to do that? Yeah, I'm in.' "

Eddington said Worlock worked far more hours than the 12 per week called for in his work study program.

"Dave was like a full-time staff member," Eddington said. "I saw very quickly he had a real passion for sports and statistics. When Dave was into something, he was into it -- all out."

Worlock said Eddington and his wife, Vanna, became a second set of parents to him.

"Steve and Vanna made things much easier than they would have for me otherwise," Worlock said. "I had so much personal and professional guidance from them."

Eddington, a former sportswriter for the Arkansas Democrat who is now vice president for public relations at Arkansas Farm Bureau, left Henderson State in 2001 to work at Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Also a Henderson State graduate, Eddington helped Worlock replace him as the sports information director.

Worlock came back to Henderson State after being the sports editor for the Wynne Progress newspaper for 14 months. He met his wife in Wynne.

Worlock was Henderson State's sports information director from 1993-2001, then the NCAA hired him to be an assistant director of statistics. His first event to work for the NCAA was the 2002 Indoor Track and Field Championships in Fayetteville.

After becoming media coordinator for the College World Series in 2004 and 2005, Worlock was promoted to coordinator for the basketball tournament.

"If you could have drawn up a job that fit Dave Worlock's personality and interest, it would be the job he has right now," Eddington said. "He couldn't have found a better match for his skills and energy than the job he's got."

Earlier this year, it was announced Worlock is being inducted into the 2020 class for the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame.

"Dave's intense about his work, but he's got a wonderful sense of humor," Eddington said. "He gets along with people. I think that has something to do with moving as often as he did when he was growing up. He was able to find people who had similar interests and connect pretty quickly."

In 2012, Worlock attended 12 NCAA Tournament first- and second-round games in four days, traveling between Louisville, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn.

"It's like Christmas for Dave," Gavitt said of March Madness. "He grew up loving the tournament. Now being able to be part of the tournament in a really intimate and important way, he values it more than anything short of his family in life."

Worlock and Andrea, an assistant director of accounting for the NCAA, and their sons Nicholas (10) and Adam (8) live in Avon, Ind., a suburb of Indianapolis.

The boys attend elementary school at Hickory -- yes, the same name as the fictional tiny Indiana high school in the movie Hoosiers that wins the state basketball championship against all odds.

Worlock said Avon is a great place to live and raise a family and Indianapolis -- where the NCAA office is located -- is a great place to work, but that Arkansas remains special to him.

"I tell people I wasn't born in Arkansas and I wasn't raised in Arkansas and I don't live in Arkansas, but that's home for me -- and specifically Arkadelphia," Worlock said. "I just loved it there and it'll always be the place that I cherish the most because of the friends I made there and I'm still fortunate to have there."

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Dave Worlock

Sports on 04/04/2020

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