His boyhood home was the tiny town of Carrollton, Ga., and that is where Keith Jackson assimilated those traits that still mark his work as a network announcer. On Saturday afternoons in the fall, he listened to the evangelical Bill Monday (”Lawdy, Lawdy, they`re going to the Promised Land”) describe the games of the University of Georgia, and throughout the next week he called his own games while toiling in his family`s fields (”Your kid`s crazy. He`s running around the cornfield talking to himself,” neighbors would report). He also learned then of the South`s great writers and storytelling tradition, and each night he would climb the stairs to his bedroom, light a kerosene lamp and scribble out a western showdown or a sports drama (”I still believe today that you have to be able to write before you can talk,” he says).
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He was just 8 to 10 years old when these seeds were planted, yet even now Jackson easily hearkens back to his southern roots. ”They cause you to look at circumstances a little differently, to put things in almost childlike terms to be sure you`re understood right,” he says. ”I remember that my granddaddy told me once, `We may talk funny, but we don`t think funny.` ”
Jackson takes a sip from his drink, then begins recalling the game Iowa and Tennessee played at last August`s Kickoff Classic. It was replete with big plays and long runs and the lead constantly changing hands, and somewhere deep into the fourth quarter, Jackson took note of all this and declared, ”Now it`s time to get behind the barn and settle this thing.”
Bob Griese, working his first game with him, heard this quintessential Jacksonism and looked quizzically at his new partner. ”Get behind the barn?” Griese wondered on the air.
”It`s pretty obvious what it means,” Jackson now says. ”What I said, I just said. Those things come out. I don`t think of the terms I use. I just say what comes out of my mouth. I don`t caption pictures. Al (Michaels) does that.”
What do you do?
”I tell a story. I always try to start a telecast with a story, so at the end I can tie a knot on it and put it away.”
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This is college football`s biggest day, and no one personifies that sport more evidently than Keith Jackson. He is most certainly its reigning voice, an appellation he has earned during the 11 years he has announced its games for ABC. Yet, beyond that, there is something even more critical. For, you see, Keith Jackson still loves college football, loves it now the same way he did as a little boy in Carrollton rooting for Georgia or Scrappy Moore and his University of Chattanooga Moccasins. ”I don`t know why, but it is my love. It is my love,” he says unabashedly.
”It`s one of the few sporting events I`d pay to see. I love the ambience. New goats; old goats coming back”-and here he drifts off into a reminiscence, and he is back on High Street in Columbus, Ohio, watching a Buckeye cheerleader bounce on the lap of a 77-year-old alum-”little things like that is what I love.”
That feeling permeates his broadcasts and has helped establish him as a sport`s touchstone, and he is now one of those few personalities who is instantly recognizable by face or voice or phrase. Whoaaa, Nellie! Ooooh, golly! My, oh my! He`s a little-bitty thing. A bantam rooster. But he`s young. If he keeps eatin` his cornbread, he`ll be man-sized some day.
Those exclamations and descriptions characterize Jackson, who delivers them in a baritone carrying just a hint of his roots, and they have spawned any number of impersonators. Roy Firestone, the ESPN announcer, is the most heralded of them, yet students on campuses across the country-and especially in the South-rush up to the original when he is visiting their schools and offer up their own versions of his inimitable calls. ”I never think about that,” he says. ”But I will say I don`t think Firestone is the best. There`s a kid down at Tennessee who`s pretty good.”
Jackson himself was pretty startled when a man rushed up to him in front of Havana`s Libre Hotel, introduced himself and began to talk sports. It turned out the fan was an employee of Ghana Airlines based in that Cuban city, where he had juryrigged an antenna so he could watch ABC. Nor was Jackson expecting to be recognized while dining at Moscow`s Metropole Hotel, but that happened as well. A fan at a nearby table spotted him, jumped up and shouted, ”Hey, Keith. What the hell`s wrong with the Sooners?” New York`s cynical cab drivers now honk hellos to him while he is walking down that city`s streets, and even some at CBS are willing to admit that their rival is the prime representative of a sport they both cover. There are certain plays in certain games they telecast, these people will tell you, that Keith Jackson should have called.
These heralds and hosannas are more than enough to swell the hat sizes of most in his ego-driven profession, yet they have changed Keith Jackson but minimally. He golfs at country clubs now and owns a boat and indulges his two hobbies (”My recreational damnations” is what he calls them). But his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., is nearly bereft of the many plaques and honors he has received.
Those are boxed and ready for shipment to Washington State, his alma mater, where he plans to endow a scholarship. And in their place are a painting by a favorite southern artist, a caricature of him with the Georgia bulldog (Jackson is barefoot and holding a putter and a fishing pole), and four Robert Riger drawings. The first is of former President John Kennedy, who was cut down by an assassin`s bullet. The second is of former auto racing champion Jimmy Clark, who was killed while driving in a race. The third is of former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, who died in a plane crash. And the fourth is of former Olympic skier Buddy Werner, who was buried in an avalanche. ”The message is,” says Jackson, ”that they were all taken away before they finished playing the game. There`s a message there.”
Which is?
”Don`t waste a day. Get something out of it. That`s something I beat my kids over the head with. Once a day is gone, you don`t get it back.”
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The drinks have been freshened, and Keith Jackson is now considering the charge his critics most often level at him. His love of college football, they say, makes him blind to its sins and precludes him from saying anything bad about it. ”It`s not true that I`ve never criticized. I just haven`t done it during a telecast,” he responds.
”I`ve done it before telecasts, after telecasts. I`ve had howling arguments with (outgoing NCAA head) Walter Byers, but he called and asked me to emcee the honors luncheon (later this month, where Byers will be recognized for his long service to the NCAA). That`s the ultimate point. We`ve disagreed over so many things over the years, but he asked. You see. I`m not a cynic. I`m not cynical. If you are, what`s that make you? An ugly and angry person. Now, I`m no prude in any sense. I can rage with the best of them. I can curse with the best of them. But . . .”
Here Keith Jackson moves off on another reverie, and this time he is at O`Hare and about to board a plane. ”There`s a gentleman coming down to see you,” he is told, and soon an airport employee is in front of him, handing Jackson the wallet he had just left behind in a phone cubicle. The announcer, who did not know his wallet was missing, thanks him and asks how he can repay him, and-after learning the man is a Bulls fan-arranges for him to get a pair of tickets to each of that team`s remaining 10 games. ”But,” Jackson now insists, ”what is important here is the decency of the man who returned the wallet.”
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You admire decency, don`t you?
”I don`t just admire it,” says Keith Jackson, ever the southern gentleman. ”I covet it.”