Keith Jackson - Older Announcers Need To Know When To Call It Quits

Deciding when to retire from something you love has to be a difficult decision. Whether you are an athlete, business owner, architect, writer, or sports announcer, the decision to walk away from a life that has defined you for nearly half a decade is certainly not an easy one. That said, no one wants to be the one who is holding on to a position that they are no longer good at, especially in a field that has superior talent waiting in the wings.


Unfortunately there seems to be a trend of those kind of guys in sports casting – guys that don’t adequately do their jobs but just can’t seem to let go, yet are still working because of their reputation, not their current skill (or lack thereof).

The best sports announcers enhance the viewers’ experience. They can take an ordinary game and make it entertaining. They can take a great game and turn it into one of the most memorable moments in history (Al Michaels and his “Miracle on Ice” call “Do you believe in Miracles...YES!” falls into that category).

Good sports announcers give a completely neutral experience – they neither enhance nor detract from the moment. They do their jobs but don’t give you that extra something special.

Bad announcers on the other hand, can turn the focus of a great game to themselves and their incompetence. A blatantly missed call or a palpably false statement frustrates fans and makes them wonder how they still have a job. Fortunately, most bad announcers don’t last very long. But what happens when a great announcer goes bad in old age? Should he be forced to retire or should fans be mercilessly exposed to their ineptitude for years until they decide to leave on their terms?

Keith Jackson is the pre-eminent example of this. Jackson announced his retirement from college football announcing at the end of the 1998, with his last broadcast to have been the 1999 Fiesta Bowl for the National Championship between Tennessee and Florida State. This was the proper decision. At this point he was still revered as the greatest college football announcer ever.


However, he changed his mind the following fall and now does a more limited schedule of games almost exclusively on the West Coast. This past January, Jackson showed how far he has eroded during the National Championship Game between USC and Texas. The game was one of the greatest college football games of all time. Did Jackson enhance the experience as he would have years ago? No. Instead he did the exact opposite. He managed to turn the attention to his own inability to perform his job during a great game.

He brought a lifeless energy, coupled with a series of bloopers and missed calls and a puzzling silence as Vince Young crossed the goal line for the game winning touchdown. He also missed a knee down on a lateral play, which he later attributed to difficulty seeing through his binoculars!

If legends like Jackson and John Madden won’t willingly step down on their own, the networks are going to have to make the difficult decision to let them go. There are too many capable play-by-play announcers out there to let these guys continue to ruin broadcasts. I know it will be hard to do, but your audience will thank you.