For more than three decades, it seemed like Ted Valentine was everywhere during the college basketball season. Now, suddenly, he’s nowhere. Or at least, he’s not on TV, which is a strange existence for the man who was so ubiquitous he earned the sobriquet “TV Teddy.” It wasn’t always a compliment.
Nowadays, Valentine, 67, is only seen by friends and neighbors in his home town of Charleston, S.C., where he is enjoying his new life in retirement. Given how much time he spent in the limelight (and enjoying it, for the most part), it was surprising that when he decided to retire, he did so quietly.
Valentine made his decision last summer, thus ending his legendary 43-year run as a Division I official. During that time he worked 10 Final Fours and four NCAA championship games. He still maintained a heavy workload in recent years — last season he reffed 76 games — but his NCAA Tournament assignments dwindled. He did not work the tournament in 2022 and ’23, and he worked just one game each of the last two years.
Valentine could have worked a full slate again this season, but he decided it was better to get out too early than too late. “I just had enough,” Valentine told Hoops HQ. “I thought, they want to move to the younger generation. Just move on. I mean, forty-three years. Who else has done it that long? I’ve done every game imaginable. I’ve been everywhere. I’ve worked every big game. So I’m like, hey, I’m full.”
Valentine communicated his decision last summer to Bryan Kersey, a veteran official who is now the supervisor of officials in the ACC, where Valentine drew his primary assignments the last few years. “He’s probably top five of all time that I refereed with,” Kersey said. “He commanded respect and never faltered or swayed. He could talk to anybody and people listened to him. He was great with young referees. He worked every big game in the country. He catches (criticism) because of who he is, but when he was in between the lines, he was amazing.”
Valentine had a health scare in November, when he noticed some swelling in the back of his knee that grew increasingly painful. He went to an emergency room and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embollism. He has been taking blood thinners ever since, and he reports he is in tiptop shape. At one point Valentine weighed 255 pounds, but he changed his lifestyle, dropped to around 195 and has remained at that number.
Valentine is staying busy in retirement. He works as a recreation specialist at the North Charleston Parks and Recreation Department, a job he has held for about 15 years. He spends six days a week there setting up exercise classes for senior citizens and pickleball games for veterans, among other duties. He and his wife Bia have one daughter, Joneesha, who lives in The Bronx, N.Y., with her 15-year-old daughter.
Valentine has scarcely watched any college basketball this season. “I don’t want to see what’s out there. I don’t want to become judgemental,” he said. “I miss the fans. I miss the coaches. A lot of coaches have reached out to me. ‘Where are you? We miss you.’ I’m proud that I never had a game that I’ve messed up a game at the end. Most people, when they get older they have some slippage. People only remember what they do last. I can still run. I’ve never heard one person say, you need to retire.”
Plenty of fans said that over the years, of course. They also said a lot worse. Valentine knows better than anyone how that comes with the territory. He first discovered refereeing while attending Glenville (West Va.) State College, where he majored in physical education and played for the baseball team. He was working in the gym as a janitor and saw some other students making money as basketball referees. He thought that looked more fun than pushing a mop, so he gave it a try.
After college, Valentine went back to teach at his old high school. He helped out as an assistant coach for the girls basketball team. When the head coach had to miss a game, Valentine took over … and was ejected for arguing with the officials. The principal relieved him of his duties. He never coached again.
So he turned back to officiating, eventually opting to attend a camp run by then-NBA referee Dallas Shirley. Shirley later offered Valentine some work working college games in the Southern Conference. A career was born.
Valentine’s big break came in 1986 when he moved up to the Big Ten. He was one of the few minority refs doing games at that level. Two years later, Valentine quit teaching and devoted himself to reffing full-time. In 1991, at the ripe age of 31, he worked his first Final Four, putting him on the court for Duke’s historic semifinal upset of undefeated UNLV.
Over time, Valentine became the most famous college basktball official in the game. His flamboyant style was at odds with the cardinal rule of officiating, which is that the best refs are the ones who go unnoticed. He also developed a well-earned reputation for being temperamental and unpredictable. Yet, he kept drawing big assignments for the simple reason that he was excellent at calling plays. He was especially respected for his ability to remain unswayed by the home crowd. When Valentine showed up to work a game, the happiest person in the building was the visiting head coach.
Valentine also earned the respect of his peers for his refusal to back away from confrontation, even if it meant crossing swords with the biggest names in the sport. That boiled over on February 24, 1998, when he worked Indiana’s home game against Illinois. Valentine called three technicals on Bob Knight, the last of which came after Knight walked onto the court to attend to an injured player, which was allowed under the rules. Valentine maintained that he teed Knight up because of what he said when he came out. Knight went ballistic and continued to argue his case until finally agreeing to leave. As he did, he walked right by Valentine and brushed him shoulder to shoulder.
After the game, Knight publicly called Valentine “the greatest travesty I’ve ever seen in basketball in 33 years as a college head coach.” Knight was fined $10,000 for his comments, and Valentine was censured by the league for what it determined was a “clearly erroneous” technical.
Valentine had other controversial moments as well. In 2014, he stepped aggressively towards then-Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin and argued with him as their faces were inches apart. Four years later, Valentine turned his back on North Carolina guard Joel Berry as the player was protesting a call. That prompted a critical tweet from ESPN broadcaster Jay Bilas. The reaction led Valentine to say he was considering retirement. He didn’t follow through, but he was removed from officiating two Big Ten games, and he did not work the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
Valentine drew more unpleasant headlines in 2021 when he was sent home from the Indianapolis bubble for violating the NCAA’s Covid-19 protocols by having dinner at a local restaurant with other refs, one of whom later tested positive.
Fans loved to direct their ire at Valentine, but for what it’s worth, analytics maven Ken Pomeroy reported that Valentine tended to call fewer fouls than any other official. As the years went on, Valentine became more confident in his stature and more reserved in his comportment. He smiled as he parried with coaches and cracked wise with fans during time outs. And he was still considered one of the finest play callers in the sport.
“I became like good old George Foreman trying to sell some grills,” he said. “Early in your career, you’re trying to see, where do I fit in? I had a good rapport with coaches as I got older. I just got along with everybody. I never called any technical fouls on them. They never got bothered with me. I found a way to not be adversarial with them, to be the grandpa with them. I changed because I didn’t have nothing to prove.”
One of Valentine’s lasting regrets is that he never made amends with Knight before the coach passed away in 2023. There were several occasions that Valentine worked games that Knight was calling for ESPN. “I wanted to go up and talk to him and shake his hand, but you never knew how he was going to act,” Valentine said. After Knight left broadcasting, Valentine got his address in Bloomington and thought about writing a letter or even knocking on his door. He never mustered up the nerve. “I wish I would have wrote that letter,” Valentine said. “That’s deep in my craw.”
As for retirement, Valentine plans to start a podcast (called “The TV Ted Podcast,” of course), do some speaking, and he hopes to write a book about his extraordinary life. “I still go places where people recognize me. It wasn’t what I was looking for,” he said. He has never second-guessed his decision to step away, nor does he have any intention of changing his mind. “I’m not coming back. I’ve got other things I want to do,” he said. “Refereeing is not going to find me. That was in my past.”
Valentine is strutting into the future with the same swagger he stepped onto basketball courts the last 43 years. “No regrets about anything,” he said. “I’ve had a great career. I’ve met some people I normally would never have met. I put everything I had into refereeing. Everything. I did everything I wanted to do. You talk about Frank Sinatra did it his way. I can say, you know what? I did it my way, too. It wasn’t always the popular way, but I did it.”
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