Long-time broadcaster Keith Jackson dies

Keith Jackson, ABC’s signature voice of college football, remembered for his love of the game’s pageantry and his Georgia-rooted, country boy flourishes on autumn Saturdays through five decades, died Friday.

He was 89.

In a statement Saturday on Twitter, Robert A. Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, confirmed Jackson’s death.

“For generations of fans, Keith was college football,” Iger said.

Jackson worked at 10 Summer and Winter Olympics and on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. He was the play-by-play man for the inaugural season of NFL Monday Night Football and was at the microphone for baseball, pro and college basketball, and auto racing.

But he was best known for ranging the collegiate football map, from Ann Arbor to Tuscaloosa, from Columbus to Happy Valley, the home of Penn State.

“You always know it’s a big game when Keith’s there,” Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach, once said.

The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, now known as the National Sports Media Association, named Jackson sportscaster of the year five consecutive times, from 1972-1976.

Jackson once told The New York Times how broadcaster Ted Husing inspired his breezy style, advising him: “Never be afraid to turn a phrase. If you can say something in such a way that’s explanatory, has flavor and people can understand it, try it. If it means quoting Shakespeare or Goethe, do it.”

He was more partial to the lingo of his native rural South. Jackson’s “Whoa, Nellie!” punctuating an exciting play was his best-remembered good ol’ boy touch, though he maintained that he didn’t use it all that often.

Keith Max Jackson was born on Oct. 18, 1928, in the western Georgia town of Roopville, and grew up nearby, just outside Carrollton.

He joined the Marines as a teenager, then attended Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., receiving a degree in broadcast journalism in 1954. Jackson spent 10 years at the ABC affiliate KOMO in Seattle in news, sports and production, became sports director of ABC Radio West, then began broadcasting college football for ABC Sports in 1966.

When ABC’s Monday Night Football was introduced by Roone Arledge in 1970, Jackson was named the play-by-play broadcaster to work alongside Howard Cosell and Don Meredith, but a year later Arledge replaced him with a glamorous name, former New York Giants star Frank Gifford.

Jackson returned to broadcasting college football. His main color commentator from 1977 to 1985 was Frank Broyles, athletic director of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which resulted in an all-Georgia broadcast booth (Broyles was a native of Decatur, Ga.). Jackson also teamed with Bill Russell on NBA games.

After the 1998 season, Jackson concentrated on Pac-10 games to remain close to his southern California home. He retired after broadcasting the 2006 Rose Bowl game.

Jackson