'Whoa Nellie'
Keith Jackson to turn in college football microphone
Posted: Thursday August 27, 1998 02:21 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Few announcers are identified as closely with their sport as Keith Jackson is with college football.
The longtime ABC announcer, whose booming voice and catch phrases like "Whoa Nellie" have been often imitated but never matched, begins his final college football season Monday night at the Kickoff Classic. Jackson, who turns 70 in October, will retire after the Fiesta Bowl.
"When you are flipping around the dial on a Saturday afternoon and hear his voice, you sit up and listen because this game must be important," said Bob Griese, Jackson's partner for the last 11 years at ABC. "If Keith Jackson is doing this college football game, this should be the one I watch."
Jackson joined ABC in 1962 and has covered the big events -- the NBA, the NFL, baseball and the Olympics -- and the obscure ones -- like wrist wrestling on 'Wide World of Sports. But it is the 32 years of calling college games from small towns like Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and State College, Pennsylvania, that is Jackson's true love.
Jackson, a walking history book on college football, remembers the great coaches, like Bear Bryant, the great players, like Johnny Rodgers, and the great games, like the 1979 Sugar Bowl. But he also remembers the little things, like the band director at Penn State or the press box attendant in Iowa City.
"I like the ambiance that goes with college football. It is a wonderful festival," Jackson said. "I go to the stadium three hours before the game and watch the bands practice and the stands fill with four generations of fans.
"I know a lot of people scoff at it and people always accuse me of selling it and promoting it, but it is a very warm friendly kind of fuzzy feeling you get in most places."
His unabashed promotion of the sport and his pet phrases like "a hit as hard as blackjack pine" probably would not fly with a new announcer. But they are vintage Jackson and are what define and shape his telecasts.
"When I did news, you wouldn't know where I'm from," said Jackson, a native of rural Georgia. "But when I started doing Southern games, I decided it was a colorful language. I know the words, the homilies, the reactions and how to make up the phrases. It sort of just grew."
Despite his love for the game, Jackson believes the time is right to leave ABC, with a change in management at the company and his 70th birthday less than two months away. He looks forward to ending the grind of the weekly travel and visiting places he has never gotten to see in September, October and November.
His career will end with the first Bowl Championship Series championship game -- a system Jackson believes is flawed and should have four teams. Between now and then he just wants to do what he has done for 32 years, call the games without any extra attention.
"The basic function is still to cover football games," he said. "The American public couldn't care about where I am going."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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