I've covered Super Bowls, Final Fours, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, NBA Finals, pennant drives, the four Majors, the Monaco Grand Prix, NHL playoffs, and the Summer Games. I've played hoops with and against Michael Jordan, lost a Nassau bet at Pebble Beach to the owner of America's worst golf swing, Charles Barkley, had Reggie Jackson and Ryne Sandberg threaten to pummel me, had Bobby Bowden fall asleep on my shoulder while riding in the back of a Florida Highway Patrol car. I've sat at the knee of John Wooden and Gene Mauch, sat on the couch as Bill Walton immersed himself in Deadhead tunes, sat in disbelief as Tiger Woods hit balata so far I'd need two Lasik surgeries to track the ball.

I've seen some stuff.

But nothing -- not Larry Bird Night at the old Boston Garden, not Christian Laettner's shot to beat Kentucky, not watching the Final Four-bound Utah Utes dancing fully clothed in a shower -- beats a November afternoon I spent with Al McGuire in 1991.

McGuire died last Friday in the wee hours, which figures, since he was always big on last calls. The funeral Mass is tonight at Gesu Church in Milwaukee and the place will be packed like a Marquette-DePaul game. Father Robert A. Wild, president of Marquette University, will give the homily and McGuire's old friend, U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, also will say a few words. There will be tears, but only because McGuire isn't around to tell the crowd to knock it off.

McGuire was too busy during life to waste much time thinking about death. When the legendary Adolph Rupp of Kentucky died, McGuire didn't bother with the memorial service. "I bought him a bottle of bourbon that he liked," he said. When Utah coach Rick Majerus, a former Marquette player and assistant, faced septuplet coronary bypass surgery in 1990, McGuire never called. Why bother? If Majerus spun in, he spun in. A sobbing phone call wouldn't change fate.

"I don't go to funerals because I bought you a drink while you were alive," he said that day in '91. "Anyway, the crowd at a funeral is governed by the weather."

My ballpoint pen couldn't move fast enough across the notebook pages. McGuire never stopped talking. It was stream of unconsciousness stuff, something about "the most expensive thing is cheap labor," or, "it's only important to win in war and surgery," or, "behind every bum on every street corner in America is a woman." He was the first basketball coach I'd ever met who used all 26 letters in the alphabet, not just the Xs and Os. "I wasn't different," he said. "I was ahead of my time. I still am."

We drove around town in some late-model Buick, stopping once at a Waukesha mom-and-pop antique and doll shop. He tossed the car keys on the driver's side floor mat.

"You going to leave those there?" I said.

"Someone steals this car and they get the black plague," he said.

There on one of the store walls was a framed NBC-issued 8x10 glossy of McGuire in his network blazer. But you should have seen him that day as he puttered around the shop looking for toy soldiers: his hair was a mess and he was still recovering from a recent hernia operation.

"I only comb my hair if there are four people in the room, and if there are four people, I'm getting paid," he said.

McGuire walked away from Marquette 24 years ago with a 295-80 record, an NCAA championship and an NIT championship (when it still meant something). Roundball -- that's what he called it -- was a moment, "a nice moment, but just a moment." That's probably why he gave away all 200 watches he got for winning assorted games, including his 1977 NCAA Championship timepiece. He spent the rest of his life tooling around on his Harley, providing network TV with the best color analysis and postgame dances of all time, and traveling to Williston, N.D., for no other reason than to say he was there. McGuire would ask for directions to a city's bus depot, and then find the closest bar. "Good jukeboxes and sad, nostalgic country songs," he said.

McGuire died last Friday in the wee hours at age 72. And even though he never let basketball define him as a person, he understood the imprint it made. "The best thing to happen to me is that it allowed me to be called, 'Coach,' " he said in the Buick. "That's something non-negotiable."

Two things stick with me as I remember McGuire: that he was wrong about funerals and weather, and that those two Oklahoma State players are getting a hell of a coach.

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at gene.wojciechowski@espnmag.com.