I’m proud to bring you, I believe, the first Q&A with Digger in blogosphere history. Digger, who is the definition of orotund in person, was terrific. In fact, 90 percent of the stuff we talked about, unfortunately, isn’t repeatable. Here’s what is, and some of it is longwinded, but worth it. Enjoy.

[Just as the interview is about to begin, Vitale chimes in]

Dick Vitale: Ask him why he never scheduled me when I was at Detroit! Ask him that!

Digger Phelps: [Responds to this question that's probably been asked in front of a neutral party 50 times] Coach, you would’ve ruined my RPI and strength of schedule to get an at-large berth.

What’s the method to your madness with all these note cards here in front of you and everything being highlighted? It seems impossible to follow.

DPs: None. I just put down notes and color them so I know where the bullets are. So in case something comes up and somebody says something about James Anderson [I know where to look.]

You’ve got Pitt winning it all. Why?

DP: I just like the way they play. They started playing some zone at the end of the half, and if he [coach Jamie Dixon] does play a 2-3 zone, I think they’re a complete team.

Let’s talk about you and Dick on the air. Does the chemistry come so naturally, or is deep-seeded with 25, 30 years of history?

DP: When he was a high school coach I was an assistant at Penn for Dick Carter from ‘66 to ‘67. I knew him then. Then he went to Rutgers as an assistant, and I think they got to the Final Four when he was there. Then on to when he coached at the University of Detroit and then to the Pistons. But his daughters went to Notre Dame to play tennis, so that’s his  Notre Dame connection [to me]. But when Jimmy V died in ‘93, I was working with CBS. The history with me and the Valvano family: Nicky Valvano, who now runs the V Foundation, he and I were roommates at Rider and fraternity brothers. Jimmy was in high school. … But Jimmy’s mother, Angela, and the father, Rocky, they were like a second family to me because they’d always bring down Italian food on weekends to Rider, which Nicky and I would go crazy about. But when [Jimmy V] died, it was then, for me, [time] to come here. I think with Dick and I, our relationship is one that we play off each other, knowing each other and just making it work when we bring that togetherness for the fans. And the things we say, we’re not off target, the way we sell it, the way we talk about what’s right and what’s wrong.

[I then ask Digger about the fraternity we both were initiated into, Tau Kappa Epsilon, to which he gives me a handshake (begin your snickering now) and says things that, you know, CANNOT EVER BE REPEATED.]

DP: Haha! Don’t say nothin’ to Rece. [To Rece Davis, who was not paying attention to us at all and still seemed to not be listening to Digger] We’re fraternity brothers! I just gave the code out and you didn’t listen to the magic word, Rece.

Talk about covering The Tournament itself. Does this weekend wear you out?

DP: This weekend is the biggest of all. The games give you the energy. The close games and the excitement of the games, that’s what gives you the energy. Yesterday I put in an 18-hour day. It started with “Mike and Mike in the Morning” and finished at 2 this morning. [Laughs] But you know what this weekend is: You’re watching 16 games yesterday, 16 today, eight tomorrow and eight Sunday. … Obviously, this coming week, from Thursday night [through Sunday] is easy. And the Final Four is easy [to cover and follow]. But you have to know how these teams got here. That’s why I’ve got these cards; I do the same things with Championship Week. I watch the six major conferences, and probably the A10 and Conference USA, so there’s eight conferences there. It’s more like being a coach in the Pentagon covering all the war funds. That’s why I call this the war room. [Smiling] And I’m like the Sergeant-at-Arms, but also the five-star general.

Will college basketball ever get back to an era where it will have dominant big men?

DP: I think if they moved the line to the international line, then that would cure it. Then you’d have the three balances that I see: less 3’s, more penetration, more feeding the post. That’s all the game needs. But to move it [the 3-point line] the way they did, a foot, doesn’t make a difference.

Do DeJuan Blair and Sam Young match up — size up — to Patrick Ewing in his heyday?

DP: I think they’re different types. When you say Blair and Young, I think Blair is amazing with the way he scores inside. When you look at Ewing, I always used to say he was another type of force in the paint. Looking at the centers we’ve had the past few years, no matter if it’s Kevin Love at UCLA or if you take a look at what’s going on with Thabeet or Griffin, the teams that have that type of player exploit it and use it for balance. I’ve always said, you can have guards to get to the Sweet 16, but once you get there, you better have points in the paint. And the only difference is, even today, if I were coaching again, I would still attack inside to get the opponents’ front-line players in foul trouble. That means we control the boards, which means we start running and now we start shooting 3’s. A lot of teams come out and want to start shooting 3’s to start the game, and I say, No, you’ve got it backward.

I’m going to ask you the same question I asked Dick: When did the itch to want to coach go away for good?I would assume, like so many other things, it’s hard to let go.

DP: It wasn’t for me. I coached 20 years at Notre Dame; coached one year at Fordham. Notre Dame was my dream job. Growing up in the Hudson Valley as kids and, you know, between the ages of 10 and 12 in the fall, you’re playing tackle football and you’re Army or Notre Dame. So that’s always been in my head. But then I was an undertaker’s son and thought I’d be an undertaker. Then, in ‘63, when I got into Rider, I started coaching in a summer league to help the high school coach out because he wasn’t allowed to coach, and I got hooked on coaching. I went back to Rider as a volunteer assistant, and that year we were going to play mighty NYU at their campus, where they hadn’t lost in 20 years, since 1944. … What is was —

[Stops mid-sentence as an ESPN photographer is taking promotional photos]

If you’re going to take a shot, I’ve gotta get a green hi-liter. And we went up to NYU and beat them. I mean, NYU was a driving force back in the old days. As the Garden went, college basketball went with NYU. Not St. John’s, not Manhattan, not Fordham, not Seton Hall. … We win that game, I said, “I can do this.” … I write [former Notre Dame football coach] Ara Parseghian a letter telling him I love the essence of Notre Dame; what he’s doing at Notre Dame, I want to do, someday, in basketball at Notre Dame.  Six years later, at the age of 29, I get the job. So, in my 20 years, my goal was to get Notre Dame to become number one. … But after 20 years there, I knew it was enough, and I had a chance to work for George Bush, the father, in the White House, as a democrat. I met him in the early ’70s through Ara Parseghian at a charity golf tournament in Dayton, Ohio. That’s how I got to know Bush and a few other people. So when Bush was president, he puts me in charge of this thing called, ‘Operation: Weed and Seed.’ That was in the drug office in the White House. ‘Weed’ meant we’d take as many federal, state and local agents into a neighborhood and take out the bad element. … We became a team with the neighborhood watch groups that keep that bad element out. We started keeping schools open, like in Trenton, ’til nine at night; show kids other options. We created jobs, like in New Orleans, going into public housing, finding the three best women who could make gumbo, cajun food; got some guy — I coached him — who ran a catering business, so they could lunches for all the conventions going on in New Orleans, helping to get them jobs. … But I still do a lot of other things. I helped build a home in New Orleans; took $90,000 of my money for a house worth $150,000. I got the company building it to give me $30,000, and the family had to take a $30,000 mortgage over 20 years. I had Tulane University [help them with balancing all expenses]. … I’ve got a second house ready to go now. I also put  Meyers, it’s like a Wal-Mart in South Bend, and they match me, and we get $10,000 worth of backpacks. We come in, bring crayons, notebooks, supplies for the backpacks, and give them out to about 5,000 kids. I’ve also started a neighborhood mentoring program. We’ve got about 350 people to listen and care in grammar school, grades one through four. Every 26 seconds, a kid drops out of high school in the United States. That’s a million kids a year. Eighty percent of those drop outs? They’re in a federal, state and local prison. So, as much as there is going on in the White House and what’s going on with the economy, it starts with education. And we’ve got a disaster. We rank 35th in math, 29th in science with the rest of the world. So, these are my passions outside of what I do here [at ESPN] for January, February and March, and a lot of people don’t know or understand that. I really don’t talk a lot about it — I just do it. 

Outside of ending UCLA’s 88-game winning streak or reaching the Final Four, what was your proudest moment as a coach?

DP: Proudest moment I’ve had with Notre Dame was, in being there 20 years, 56 guys played for me and all 56 guys got their degrees. Fact. That’s what it’s all about. And I would teach if as if you were an employee. I would say, ‘The average life of an NBA player is three-and-a-half years, so what are you going to do if it doesn’t work out? That’s where your degree comes in. And I said, ‘You’re not just going to be an employee for some company, you’re going to become the employer.’ And the only game ball I gave out to a player in 20 years was a guy named Mike Mitchell. He was from Cappuccino High School, near San Francisco airport. Plays as a freshman back in 1979, tears his knee up on the left side as a sophomore, misses a year; tears the same year up as a junior, misses a year. As a senior, I make him a captain along with John Paxson, who was a junior. We knocked off seven No. 1 teams, and we were playing USF [San Francisco]. They didn’t have [Bill] Cartwright. Mitch played in that game, I think he had 17 points, and we won that game. And because of what he did for four years, I gave him the game ball. I teach guys they have got to do four things outside the classroom: You’ve gotta learn to be creative; you’ve gotta learn to be a risk taker; you’ve gotta have the right street smarts; and the fourth thing is you have to learn how to be a surivor. … Today, Mike Mitchell is the president of Nestle’s food and beverage. That’s the proudest moment. That’s what it’s all about with me: life after basketball.

Did Sharpie call you to offically endorse you?

DP: You can’t use your product on the air, so I can’t use it. If they paid me to represent them, I can’t use the hi-liter on the air.

I can’t not ask you about the dancing. [Phelps laughs] You go dancing and you know that’s going to be on the Internet. I’m sure you don’t care, but can you explain the moment?

DP: Two years ago, we’re out at Kansas. There’s a Bon Jovi song. I forget the name of it. “Prayer”?

“Livin’ on a Prayer.”

DP: The band starts playing it. And this is between our break between 10 a.m. and 11. We’ve got an hour before we go live. So, OK, they’re playing and I’m doing a little dance. And there’s this cheerleader, and I say, ‘Come over here and dance with me.’ Her name was Kelly — I found that out at the Final Four later. So we stopped after the song was over. [ESPN producer Lee] Fitting gets in my ear and says, ‘Do it again. “SportsCenter” wants it.’ So there’s this guy shooting this thing with a camera. And I’ve never touched a computer. I refuse.

Ever? Digger, you’ve never touched a computer?

DP: Never. I don’t need that stress. Let your generation handle it. So now it’s on the Internet. We’re in the studio on Big Monday and it’s up to like 29,000 hits. I’m going, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It finally ends up at 136,000 hits. All right. So, three weeks ago, we’re out at Cal. And all of the sudden, in the morning show, see I get with a specific student, and I get one student to be The Leader. And I get the band director and we rehearse every song. So we’re doing our halftime show courtside on one end — me, Rece and Hubert, because Jay [Bilas] doing the game with [Bob] Knight and Dan Shulman. Dick wasn’t going out West that weekend because he didn’t want to fly that far. So then, I tell the band director to play Five for Hubert. I say, ‘Hubert, I’m going to play Song Five for you.’ So they clear the seats out and I just started dancing. Two cheerleaders come out, the students start going crazy and next thing you know it’s on the big screen in the arena. It’s all over the place. I finish, take a bow. P.A. announcer: ‘Ladies and gentleman, Digger Phelps.’ Next thing you know, we get here Monday, and it’s up over 60,000 hits. It’s amazing. What’s amazing about it is, we show up at West Virginia, our last “Gameday.” And they really loved us there. Football ["College Gameday" version] has never been there. It was a big moment for Morgantown. There were signs all over the place. A security guy [laughs], in the morning, comes up to me and says, ‘Don’t dance in Morgantown.’ So I’ve got my bag on my shoulder and there’s a good, groovy song and I start dancing. They go ballistic, and all the cheerleaders are around me dancing to the fight song. Well that didn’t take off the way the other one did, but I’m saying to myself, You know, just like the hi-liter with the tie, every “Gameday” I’m going to have to do a dance. It’s amazing how little marketing gimmicks become a trademark.

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