USD Football 1994

Whoa,Nellie! continued

And speaking of professional athletes, Jackson has been shar- ing the broadcast booth for che past seven years with two-time Super Bowl quarterback Bob Griese. Griese handles the intri- cacies of the game while letting Jackson absorb the pageantry. "He takes care of all the his- tory and tradition," the former Miami Dolphin said. "He likes to say how there are four gener- ations of fans in the stands. He captures the flavor of it all and leaves me the nuts and bolts of the game. 11 I think he's just down- home. There's nothing phony about him. He's not trying to put himself on a pedestal." And Jackson agrees that Griese is at his best interpreting the X's and O's. "He does his homework. He explains why one team is win- ning and one team is losing. Sometimes it's hard to under- stand that, especially when that's your favorite team out there." Even Griese, though, can't always decipher those Keith- isms that Jackson seems to make up on the spur of the momenc. "Sometimes he'll say some- thing Idon't understand and I'll have to stop and ask him what he meant." Bob Goodrich, an ABC pro- ducer who has worked with Jackson for more than 20 years, often needs to do a double take listening in from the truck out- side the stadium. 11 He said something once about the rabbit jumping over the moon. We still have no idea what that means. Some expres- sion about having a good day, I think....Somctimes we'll look at each other and say, 'What the heck is that?"' Griese loves to tell a story about an incident that hap- pened nearly two years ago. "In the Atlanta airport, a guy comes down-a Russian professor from a Midwest uni- versity- and asks to sit next to Keith and Keith's wife. He looks over at her and says, 'You must be Keith's wife, Nellie."'

Whoa, now, let's get to the truth. That woman is Turi Ann, Keith's wife of 42 years, who travels with him throughout the season. The couple have three grown children. But back to football. After seeing so many great contests on the field, how would Jackson rate the best games he's done. His favorite is the 1967 showdown between the Univer- sity of Southern California and UCLA at the L.A. Coliseum. USC won, 21-20. "It had it all. O.J. Simpson and Gary Behan going for the Heisman with the Pac-8 Conference and national championship on the line." The second that comes to mind was the 1979 Sugar Bowl where Alabama stopped Penn State from scoring a touchdown on all four downs from the I-yard line with the championship up for grabs. With the ball less than a yard away from the end zone, Alabama lineman Marty Lyons saw how much space between the nose of the ball and the goal line was needed for the Nittany Lions to score-no more than six inches. Lyons looked up at Penn State quarterback Todd Black- ledge and said he'd better pass. Alabama won, 14-7. What Jackson is most proud of, however, happened off the football field. Last year he became the first announcer to win the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, given by the American Football Coaches Association honoring individuals whose ser- vices have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football. The award doesn't mean Jackson is ready to retire yet. He said he'll know when it's time to just watch the game he loves on the other side of the TV- like the rest of us. "I'll sit down one of these days, not be happy with my work and that'll do it." Don't count on that happen- ing anytime soon.

"I think it's part of the fab- ric of our society. Everybody has a smattering of understand- ing of it. It's ours. It was born and raised in this country. When I grew up in the South, we didn't have Falcons and Saints, we had Alabama, Auburn, Clemson and Chat- tanooga. I was a big Chat- tanooga fan." An alumnus of Washington State University, Jackson returned to his alma mater, where he broadcast Cougar games for four years, then did University of Washington games for eight years. Jackson has been involved in college football in some capaci- ty since 1952. He worked at NBC in 1957, joined ABC full time in 1964 as a radio news cor- respondent and served as sports director of ABC Radio West. In the mid-I960s, Jackson was doing a little bit of every- thing, including the 1965 NCAA basketball champi- onship game (UCLA vs. Michi- gan) on radio. As time passed and ABC increased its sports programming, Jackson handled Wide World ofSports. auto rac- ing, boxing, baseball, bowling and both the winter and sum- mer Olympics. As a matter of fact, Jackson is the only announcer ever to cover two athletes who each won five gold medals- Mark Spitz in 1972 and Eric Heiden in 1980. He said Heiden was deprived of his due recognition, mainly because of some ocher Olympians who did fairly well on ice, too. "He never got the credit he deserved. 11 Jackson said of Hei- den. 11 A certain hockey team got real lucky that year and stole all the glory." It's hard to tell who admires Jackson's work ethic and enthusiasm more-a nation- wide viewing audience or his colleagues at ABC. Chet Forte, who in 1970 was the producer and director for the first season of Monday Night Football in which Jack- son was teamed with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith,

showers Jackson with praise. "The one thing you can say about Keith is that he's a gen- tleman," Forte said. "Every- body loves him. He's terrific at what he docs. He's easy to work with. He uses every word and not any extra words. He's not just filling time just to fill it." Forte said Jackson was always more than pleasant

when working with his some- times cantankerous broadcast mates. 11 He got along with everyone very well. As a matter of fact, he got along with Cosell better than anyone at ABC. And Cosell liked him better than anyone because he knows how good he was. 11 Jackson worked only one year of Mon- day Night Football as ABC decided to hire Frank Gifford from CBS the following season and let Jackson go. It was cer- tainly disappointing at the time, but Forte looks back and realizes it turned into a blessing for Jackson- bringing him back to the college game. "You could imagine how tough it was getting kicked out of the booth, 11 Forte recalls. "(ABC Sports president Roane) Arledge wanted Gifford in there, but it turned into a god- send for Keith." Ironically, Jackson thinks his Monday Night Football experience gave him a greater appreciation for the college game- and the college campus lifestyle. "I like going to small-town America," he said. "The crowds arc cougher in the NFL but those guys are professional athletes."

STUART LEVINE IS A FREE-LANCE WRITER LIVING IN Los ANCELES.