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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

The Voice Has Reasons To Be Beleaguered

John Blanchette The Spokesman-Re

Keith Jackson has called crew races in Russia and shared a booth with Howard Cosell, the broadcast equivalent of the gulag.

He was, lamentably, the original voice of trashsports - the Superstars - and, legendarily, the enduring voice of college football, duty which has taken his ABC-TV blazer to all the fabled outposts of the game: Tuscaloosa, State College, South Bend, Lincoln, Knoxville …

But never Pullman.

Well, OK, football at Washington State University has authored as many foibles as fables. Still, you’d think at least once in 30 years the network would have shipped Jackson back to his alma mater to do a game. Egad, the Cougars have had him home to raise money for the swank alumni barn, to moderate seminars, even to give the commencement address - the advice he imparted to the graduates being somewhat more sage than, “Whoa, Nellie!”

But never has Jackson done network play-by-play at the old school. Until now.

The Cougs entertain UCLA at Martin Stadium on Saturday, enough of an attraction to cajole ABC into sending the first team of Jackson, Bob Griese and Lynn Swann for the call. That, of course, was the whole point behind moving the game to Aug. 30.

The downside? Because the game’s on local TV, it’s Labor Day weekend and nobody has drained the lakes, plenty of good seats are still available.

Not coincidentally, Jackson has identified that as a nationwide trend.

“The thing that’s hurting (college football) more than anything else is television saturation,” he said. “You’re starting to see more empty seats.”

Exactly 267 more per game, according to the NCAA’s own accounting. For perspective, the lost ticket money is enough to buy top-of-the-line pole vault standards, but not enough to fund women’s field hockey.

So Jackson is either a bellwether far ahead of the flock, or a little grumpy that his is no longer the only game on the tube. The view here is that a dozen games on cable on any given Saturday make for too many choices - at least for the long-term good of a school as awkwardly positioned as Wazzu, if not for the game in general.

On fall Saturdays, what you’ll get from Jackson is down, distance, coaches hitchin’ up their britches and linebackers laying on good licks. Keith’s never confused his microphone with a soapbox. The game was the thing even when he was calling them in his head growing up on a farm in Georgia.

Talk to him off air and he’ll see “all kinds of crevices waiting to crack open” and swallow the game he loves.

Besides college football being on every channel but Nick at Nite, his current concerns include rampant Nike-ization of college athletics and the ticket extortion practiced by the bowls. Nebraska having to eat $900,000 worth of Orange Bowl tickets, he pointed out, will kill the bowl system faster than any kind of national playoff.

His harshest words Tuesday were saved for the new NCAA board of directors, which in its first-ever meeting voted to delay implementation of the athletes’ right-to-work bill passed by the membership at the last NCAA Convention.

“If they don’t wake up, they’re going to wind up back in court because the kids are going to sue - and win - for some allocation of all this money they’re producing,” Jackson predicted.

“I’m absolutely astounded that this little group is able to table what passed at the convention - allowing the athletes to go to work and earn some walking-around money. It’s not only dumb, it’s outrageous.”

Perhaps he won’t be so strident Thursday evening when he headlines WSU’s annual kickoff dinner at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, for then Jackson will be hip-deep in the good-times atmosphere that’s kept him coming back to the college game for 31 seasons.

“It’d be a damn shame if they screw around with it and ruin it,” he said. “It’s still a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon.”

Just how many more Saturdays there will be for Keith Jackson remain to be seen. He has two years left on his ABC contract and he’s “pretty much made the decision to retire after that.

“The traveling drives me crazy,” said Jackson, who just handled the Pigskin Classic in Chicago. “My wife goes with me now, but even so, it’s hard. You just wear out.

“I might consider more of a regional schedule. I’d be more entertained by that. We had a nice trip to Chicago - bad game, but a good trip - and this will be a good trip. We’ll go back to Michigan and play some golf and visit some friends and that should be a treat. And if the Huskies get out of Provo alive next week, we’ll probably do Nebraska-Washington in Seattle. But then we’re still looking at trips to Penn State and Tallahassee and, man, you can’t get there from here.”

A lot of people say that about Pullman. For Keith Jackson, technically, it was true. Until now.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

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