Barry Tompkins
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Boxing play by play commentator for @SHOsports. 35 years play by play commentator Pac12, Mountain West, WCC football & basketball.
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Articles by Barry Tompkins
Barry Tompkins: Reasons for optimism at Cal this season
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I have a soft spot for college football. Let me put that another way. I HAD a soft spot for college football. I grew up with Cal and Stanford football. I took the Key System train across the Bay Bridge and walked to Strawberry Canyon to watch the sturdy Golden Bears play when I was a teenager. I once had my car bogged down in the mud of the parking lot at Stanford for three days after watching Stanford play Army in a deluge.
Barry Tompkins: Cut day looms for players on the bubble
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The Turk is coming. Not really. Not anymore. But there was a time in the NFL when the most hated person in the locker room was a non-existent character who roamed the halls on cut-down day selecting a gaggle of non-suspecting wannabes to take a walk with him to the gallows. It was a day when Hall of Fame dreams turned into merely hopes of being employee-of-the-month.
Barry Tompkins: Top fives and bottom fives of Bay Area sports
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’ve been noticing that ever since David Letterman went off the air, lists like his nightly Top 10, seem to have found a home on ESPN (Top 10 Quarterbacks; Top 10 Hockey Goalies, Top 10 2027 Draft picks; Top 10 Top 10 lists, etc). And, while my mind isn’t capable of scrounging up 10 of anything (even fingers and toes), I thought I’d pass along some top five lists I’ve been mentally composing over these last several months.
Barry Tompkins: The cheap, the heartless, and the unforgivable
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Now that I am easing my way out of my day job, and into the nether world of figuring out what I really want to do when I grow up, I look back on 58 years of yammering about sports on television — 40 years of it bouncing from one network to another. And at times — all of them at once.
Barry Tompkins: You gotta like these kids, take two
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Here is the very best thing about the recently passed Major League Baseball trade deadline. It’s over. There’s even better news. You don’t have to bother reading the inanities put forth in this column regarding who the Giants might get in return for a pitcher with a 5+ earned run average. I knew they weren’t going to get Tarik Skubal in that deal. You heard it here first. Now I can report on really important things in this weekly yarn.
Barry Tompkins: Comings and goings, and the sick and wounded
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... What to do. Oh, what to do? I’m just so worried about our San Francisco Giants, Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers that I was barely able to choke down my nightly Martini while watching Jeopardy last evening. I’m happy to report I did manage to do that however, and gave serious consideration to a second. And I answered all three daily doubles and Final Jeopardy.
Barry Tompkins: Old Giants, new Giants, and scoundrels
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Poor Buster Posey. It’s been a pretty rough year for the Bay Area’s all-time favorite catcher. I don’t doubt that on occasion the Giants’ President of Baseball Operations has quietly opened his desk drawer and pulled out the pamphlet on Worm Farming. It’s just not easy in this new position to gaze out on the baseball horizon and find another you.
Barry Tompkins: The trade deadline and the waiting game
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... It is that time of year. We’re talkin’ sports to be sure, but almost every syllable of conversation has to do with off field maneuverings. The baseball trade deadline nears. Buster Posey’s on the hot seat. Most fans agree we should trade Ryan Walker for Aaron Judge — or Judge Judy, whichever comes first. The Warriors are still hoping that by signing LeBron James they can get a senior discount at Motel 6.
Barry Tompkins: The yearnings, earnings, and burning needs of the Giants
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Here’s the good news. The San Francisco Giants’ minor league system has now been rated No. 10 in all of baseball. That’s a big improvement since Buster Posey moved into the big chair. Here’s the bad news. The last time the Giants minor league system was rated as high as No. 10 was in 2021 — just five years ago. The three leading prospects were Marco Luciano, Joey Bart, and Will Bednar.
Barry Tompkins: Get a kick out of the World Cup
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Don’t bother me right now, I’m watching Switzerland and Algeria. What did I just say? I am sitting here on my sofa on another beautiful Thursday night, and I’ve got nothing more to do with my time than watch Switzerland and Algeria play a game that about which 42 Americans know anything about. Who should I root for? The Sahara Desert? Or the Alps? The truth is, I’m loving it.
Barry Tompkins: Giants’ response to Pride controversy reveals dysfunction
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... So I hear there’s a bit of a flap surrounding the hometown Giants these days. To be honest I’ve been away and where I’ve been hanging out, if your name’s not Mbappe, Yamal, or Messi you don’t even get in the agate type in the newspaper. I can, however, offer you chapter and verse on Britain’s dismal defeat at the hands of New Zealand on the cricket pitch.
Barry Tompkins: The case of the million dollar quarterback
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’ve bet on one football game in my life. It was the Rose Bowl game between Washington and Michigan in 1978. I was broadcasting the game for NBC Radio and the Huskies were a two-touchdown underdog to the Big-10 champion Wolverines. I bet on the underdog Huskies and I knew I was going to win. I had spoken with both coaches and been with their teams and Michigan coach Bo Schembechler was so uptight that if I poked him in the ribs he’d have landed in Denver.
Barry Tompkins: Say hello to Kylian Mbappe
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... So who do you like? What do you mean? In what? Well, despite its being buried somewhere beneath the downs of the Giants and the ups of Bryce Eldridge; the offseason drama of the San Francisco 49ers; and the ongoing quest of the Golden State Warriors to get younger while being older, the biggest event in the world has crept into town and began in earnest on Thursday.
Barry Tompkins: Brunson is overcoming my New York bias
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... We who do this sort of thing for gainful employment (or in my case, just employment) are taught from the moment we step out of our own neighborhood to be unbiased. I lay myself bare here in telling you that, were I to have any kind of bias it would be against New York sports teams.
Barry Tompkins: Valkyries offer hope amid Giants’ struggles
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Do you get the sense that even Kruk and Kuip would rather be watching something else on television these days? There simply aren’t two guys in existence who love their job more and do a Hall of Fame worthy version of making 162 games a year sound like they’d been given the golden ticket to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.
Barry Tompkins: Hail (or it is Hell) to the losers
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I had an epiphany this past Wednesday (I had a bowl of granola, too, but the epiphany stood out). The Giants were playing an afternoon game in Phoenix and there was an NBA playoff game that started at 5:30 p.m. By 8 p.m. or so, my day’s diversions would be concluded and I could move on to something really important like watching a recorded version of Jeopardy. Now to that epiphany. By day’s end I had realized three things.
Barry Tompkins: Horse racing and life lessons from Big Al
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Who do you like in the Preakness? I’m guessing that’s a question that is not likely Topic A at every breakfast table in Marin County this week.
Barry Tompkins: The Giants’ struggling offense summed up in one stat
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’m just not a handyman. My solution to anything around me that might not be operating properly or is nicked, scratched or otherwise incapacitated, is an immediate call to someone who doesn’t think a wrench is a place for a Jewish cowboy. And yet, the biggest question I get asked these days is “How do we fix the Giants?” Here’s the cold, hard truth. I have no idea. Even if I had Buster Posey on speed dial, all I could offer is the number of a plumber.
Barry Tompkins: Draft-day experts more often wrong than right
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... So, let me get this right. We talk about nothing but the NFL draft for about six weeks. We pontificate. We compare notes. We predict and we watch. And when Mr. Irrelevant is ultimately picked with the final selection in the seventh round we collectively fold our arms across our chests, crunch up our forehead, and declare in unison, WHAT!?!?
Barry Tompkins: The draft, and life and death in agate type
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By the time you read this yarn, the San Francisco 49ers will have drafted any one of about 37 people that the “experts” said would be their selection in the first round. One person — two max — will be able to stand up and loudly proclaim, “I told you so.” The draft has changed a tad over the last decade or so.
Barry Tompkins: Building a college program tougher than ever
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... My apologies. I realize that I used up about 400 words last week talking about the college basketball transfer portal, so for those of you who were looking for my take on the “New Look” Warriors, or the juggernaut Giants, I’m sorry. Simply fold this sports section and neatly place it on the bottom of Tweetie Pie’s cage. I have about 900 more words to spew on the subject before my Pepcid AC kicks in.
Barry Tompkins: The Dodgers are as good as advertised
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’m changing my preseason prediction. The Los Angeles Dodgers will finish with a record of 160-2 (Unless they lost again after my column deadline Thursday, in which case they’ll finish 159-3). The San Francisco Giants will finish 71 games behind them in the standings. They’ll make the playoffs. I believe that champagne will flow in the clubhouse of every team that beats the Dodgers even once.
Barry Tompkins: Opener aside, Giants are trending up
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... For some reason I woke up Thursday morning thinking about my dad. He was not a particularly humorous man, nor prone to witty repartee, but I remember coming to breakfast after another opening day whooping suffered by the home team, and my dad said to me: “They’re not going to be serving beer at the ballpark anymore.” “Really?” I gullibly asked. “Yeah,” my dad said.
Barry Tompkins: Cinderella and the Big Bad Wolf
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The sports world today mourns the death of Cinderella. The once omnipresent sprite who almost yearly offered a magic slipper to a seemingly overmatched contingent of wannabes come March, has met a tragic end. Her body was found in the pumpkin that once served as her carriage.
Barry Tompkins: The kids on the Warriors, Giants are alright
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... It’s been a long while ago for me, but I’m sure some of you are in the process of watching your sons or daughters play organized sports like basketball, baseball, swimming, or lacrosse. And it’s certainly a forgivable offense if somewhere deep in the bowels of your mind the thought occurs “My kid could be the second coming of Willie Mays, Steph Curry, or Caitlin Clark. My retirement’s all set.
Barry Tompkins: So many draft experts, so little time
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I admit it. I do listen to sports talk radio. I do it for several reasons and in spite of several others. When I’m driving, I like to think of talk radio as audio wallpaper.
Barry Tompkins: When it comes to losing games, tanks but no tanks
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’ve been thinking about this whole tanking issue in the NBA. Is it real? If so, what is the effect? And maybe most Importantly, is it worth it? When I thought that this might be something to discuss with you, my loyal readers, a line from a while back kept flowing through my peanut mind.
Barry Tompkins: The then and now of the Winter Games
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Have you been watching the Winter Olympics? Yeah, me too. But, not very much. My reason is that — by its nature — it is an event best pre-packaged into a prime time entertainment show that is extremely entertaining if you care only about the smiling American faces on the podium. It’s good television — it’s just not a sports event. The ultimate moment is surely coming after the last commercial break and before the cloying interview that ends the show.
Barry Tompkins: Plenty of notes to toss away during spring cleaning
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Pitchers and catchers have reported to baseball spring training camps, and that can only mean one thing. It’s time to clean off my desk. I guess I can toss away all those juicy notes on Brandon Aiyuk, Justin Verlander, and Bad Bunny. That should thin the pile down to where I can almost see what material my desk is actually made of.
Barry Tompkins: Giannis, we hardly knew ye
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Before I brazenly declare what my plans are for the weekend, I thought I might give you a detailed diagnosis of the trade the Warriors pulled off Wednesday night. Do you have your notebooks out, class? I like it. Okay, put your pencils down. I will grant you this. Kristaps Porzingis is not Giannis Antetokounmpo. Yet, they’re very much alike. Both names are extremely difficult to spell and would immediately mean elimination from any spelling bee.
Barry Tompkins: With 49ers done, focus shifts to Warriors, Giants
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Is football season almost over? Phew! Thank goodness. All right, there is that one lone game that remains next week, and it is right here in our midst, but who’s playing again? That’s right — not the home team. So, I thought we might turn our attention to more immediate matters and chat a bit about our other local heroes. Like the hometown hoopsters. Here is a team that was a tall guy’s version of a love-in for years.
Barry Tompkins: The loneliness of an empty locker room
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... This was the week to pack up. It was kind of like going home from college after your freshman year, glad for the break from the long school year, but still looking forward to what next year might bring. Tuesday was the end of the semester for the San Francisco 49ers. It was now time to mend. It was also a time to reflect.
Barry Tompkins: Snake-bitten 49ers keeping storybook season alive
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... “The 49ers don’t have a chance this week.” Oh wait! That’s what I said last week. “They are playing a team that they finish second to in all three aspects of professional football. Offense, defense, and special teams.” Hold on a second while I erase that from my notes. “They’re on the road and playing in a place that is notoriously hostile to visiting teams.
Barry Tompkins: Fired NFL coaches can find their way again as coordinators
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I remember sitting in a bar with the old quarterback George Blanda having a drink or 12 and talking about the evolution of the game of football, and how sophisticated it has become. You can’t just be the fastest guy or the strongest guy on the planet and survive in today’s game. It’s now about technique and positioning. About leverage and vision. About tendencies and evaluation; game planning and scheme; routes, cuts, angles and check downs.
Barry Tompkins: Resolutions for Bay Area sports decision makers
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... This year I am being resolute. I am forgoing anything that so much as resembles a resolution. My resolution over/under is roughly four days. At which time I begin berating myself for a complete lack of discipline that generally lasts until roughly the following New Year’s Eve. That said, I’m heading for the treadmill as soon as I finish writing this yarn. Which should be by Tuesday.
Barry Tompkins: 49ers offering Bay Area fans hope as year ends
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... And you think Santa Claus is tired. As I recall, he was in and out of here without anybody seeing him. And that ain’t easy where we live. Not only don’t we have a fireplace, thus no chimney. And those drain pipes can give anybody a nasty rash. And from what I hear, he had several stops to make. But at least he’s got help. We don’t. I did call Taskrabbit asking for a few elves to help clean up around here — of course they were booked in June.
Barry Tompkins: Bay Area gets to spend Christmas with the good guys
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... How’s your Christmas season going? Are you chock full of ho-ho-ho’s? Are you humming Here Comes Santa Claus on your way to work? Is your Night Silent, or do you have a dog or a small child? Quite frankly Jack Frost has nipped on my nose to the point that I believe it fell off last Thursday. I’m quite sure it’s somewhere in the chestnuts I was roasting on an open fire — just to stay warm.
Barry Tompkins: Baseball’s Winter Meetings are a Mickey Mouse affair
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The baseball Winter Meetings were held this week. Not ironically, but rather fittingly, they took place within shouting distance of Disney World in Orlando. Having covered these Winter Meetings more times than I care to remember, I can assure you they were properly located. Everybody shows up hoping to be Cinderella. For the most part they wind up Goofy. For some, deal-making during this week is more Fantasy Land than Tomorrow Land.
Barry Tompkins: Counting down Kuminga’s tenure with the Warriors
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’m making myself a resolution more than three weeks ahead of the New Years variety. I vow to never again mention the name Jonathan Kuminga after January 15th — the date he becomes dispensable for the Golden State Warriors. Jonathan Kuminga is a good player. Just not here.
Barry Tompkins: Another Thanksgiving with too much food, football
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Don’t pay the ransom. I’ll try and escape. I find myself this Friday prone on a sofa from which I cannot seem to extricate myself, nursing a bubbly glass of Alka Seltzer, and feeling as though I have eaten Cleveland. I come from a long line of devout eaters. And, as our family grew, so did the Thanksgiving bounty. And along with that came the new age of vegans, pescatarians, pollotarians, carnivores and fruitarians.
Barry Tompkins: It’s time for the kinda, sorta Big Game
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Shhhh! It’s Big Game week. Never before has so little been said about an event that once captivated a community. There’s a side of me that gets it. San Francisco is a pro sports town now — like most big cities in America. College football has been compromised so much that SEC payrolls are closer to NFL salaries than they are to their collegiate peers.
Barry Tompkins: A ball in the dirt, the road to hell
My mother was a gambler. A good one. She was a card counter who, were she a bigger bettor, would have been banned from playing in any Las Vegas casino. Over the years I played, conservatively, 1,500 games of gin rummy with my mom. I won three. Not only would she beat me, she would then recite what cards were in my hand that I had horribly misplayed. My friends loved my mom. They would all come over after school to play poker with her. And my mom would promptly beat them out of all their allowance money.
Barry Tompkins: Proclamations from the guru
This week I find myself recalling when the Beatles, at the height of their popularity, decided that they did not know everything about the world they were living in and sought help from a greater being. That greater being was an all-seeing, all-knowing guru with a magnificent beard and several iterations of beads, stones, and faux jewelry draped around his wrinkled neck. His name was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (not related to Berra).
Barry Tompkins: 49ers need to contend with New York crowd
Your San Francisco 49ers will bring their ailing bodies, tattered unis, and first aid trunk to the Big Apple this week to do battle with the New York Giants. They’ll come limping into MetLife Stadium with a team that is so banged up physically it needs a drum and a fife to make its entry. The home crowd will not be kind. The 49er Faithful have proven to be road warriors as much as their beloved football team. They’ve turned SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles into Levi’s Stadium South.
Barry Tompkins: Out with the old, in with the really new
I expect that by the time you read this yarn, you will know everything there might be to know about one Tony Vitello. He of course is the shiny new manager of your San Francisco Giants. I spent most of the day Wednesday trying to figure out if I thought this first major hiring by Buster Posey was a great innovative idea or something that came to him in a dream following a rollicking evening in a hookah bar. Knowing Buster, it’s the former.
Barry Tompkins: A get well soon card to the 49ers
Woe be the San Francisco 49ers. If it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all. I had a friend once who seemed to inevitably have something bad happen to him. He was philosophical about it. “If I bought a turkey farm they’d call off Thanksgiving” was a common lament. “If soup was free, I’d have a fork” he told me another time. I thought of him when the most recent stroke of bad luck struck our local football heroes.
Barry Tompkins: Live from underneath a pile of scrap notes
My wife has given me an ultimatum. Either I get rid of all the scraps of paper with scribblings on them that I have accumulated over the past few weeks. Or she will summarily dispose of the notes, my desk, the coffee cups on it, and me — assuming she can find me under the scraps. I like my desk. But, I like my wife better, so I’m dumping the scraps on you — my loyal readers. Here’s one. It says, “turnips, an eggplant, anchovies, and a vanilla bean.” Oh wait, that’s my shopping list.
Barry Tompkins: Out with the old and in with the … old
I’ve been asking everyone I run into what they make of Bob Melvin’s leaving and Jonathan Kuminga’s staying. The overwhelming response is “Who dat, mon?” I guess I can understand that, seeing as I’m in Belize, where the only Giants are tarantulas, Posey is a flower, and Kuminga, I hear, is a side dish that normally accompanies conch fritters.
Barry Tompkins: Take it from me — Or somebody else
I don’t know why it is, but this week I feel compelled to discuss the burning needs of your San Francisco Giants as we all look ahead to the reclamation project that faces our favorite head of baseball operations, Buster Posey. Sadly, I pale in the pontification department compared to my wizened peers.
Barry Tompkins: The Zen of the San Francisco Giants
I’ve been very concerned lately about our San Francisco Giants. They seem to be in the final throes of a season of extremes. There was joy, which led to optimism early in the year. Great! In June they beat the dreaded Dodgers to take over first place in the National League West. Quick! To the World Series ticket applications. Drats! Seems the World Series ticket apps were traded by Farhan Zaidi to the Yomiuri Giants in exchange for a Shohei Ohtani autograph and a sushi platter to be named later.
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