Wake Forest Athletics
100% COTTEN: Here We Go Again
8/18/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 18, 2005
It was 26 years ago about this time when I was just a few days from calling my very first college football game on the radio. On one hand it doesn't seem like that long ago, yet, on another it seems like a lifetime ago. The gray in my hair now suggests that it was indeed some time ago, not a lifetime, but over half of mine anyway.
That was three teams, a wife and two daughters ago. Much has changed, but the excitement and anticipation of that first game of the season remain exactly the same.
I was literally thrown right in the fire. I had never called or been a part of a game broadcast of any kind when I pulled my chair up there in the press box of Burke-Tarr Stadium in Jefferson City, Tennessee, and went to work calling games for the Carson-Newman College Eagles. I was 19 years old and a sophomore at the University of Tennessee, working as the Sports Director at WIVK radio in Knoxville. Carson-Newman's head coach Ken Sparks, still patrolling the sidelines at C-N, said I could call the Eagles' games if I wanted.
Oh, I wanted.
Sparks had been my high school football coach and would stand up with me at my wedding. Getting to call Carson-Newman's games was one of those "who I knew, not what I knew" deals. And I took it. But I was going to be as green as they came - as I said, having never been part of a game broadcast, at any level, before. One advantage I did have was knowing the then "Voice of the Vols" John Ward and current "Voice of the Vols" Bob Kesling, who served in many capacities in those days for the Vol Network. They agreed to let me stand in the back of the radio booth and observe during Tennessee's 1980 season opener under the lights at Neyland Stadium against the Georgia Bulldogs.
I got hooked. Ward was already a legend at that time, and watching him work made me long to do what he was doing. He seemed to be having the time of his life - and he was getting paid! I soaked as much of it in as I could, and, in the process, also got to see the emergence of one of college football's most storied players.
In the second half of the game, Georgia head coach Vince Dooley summoned a young but sturdy looking freshman to enter the contest. Number 34. Herschel Walker. The man-child proceeded to plow through the Vols' defense and lead Georgia to a come-from-behind 16-15 win. Walker was certainly special, but my experience in the radio booth was like magic. I would be behind the microphone in a week, and to me it did not matter that the stadium I would be in sat 5,000 not 100,000, and no player on the field would be even half as good as Herschel Walker.
The game was what was important, and actually being a part of that game is still special. I stayed at Carson-Newman for twelve seasons before moving on to Marshall in the fall of 1992 and to Wake Forest in the fall of 1996.
So much of what I do and how I feel about my job today is exactly how it was in my younger years. It still feels fresh. It still is fun. And now I'm the one getting paid.
So year ten begins for me and my family here at Wake Forest, and before it all starts up again I wanted to say thanks to all of you Deacon fans who have been so supportive over the years, letting us sink some roots in and become a part of your family. Thanks to Ron Wellman for keeping me around. And thanks to ISP for paying me.
Let's go have some fun, and I'll see you on the radio.
