The legendary broadcaster, known for his love of college football, received a peculiar tribute.
by Rich Watson
For over a generation, Keith Jackson was the voice of college football. Every Saturday afternoon, fans counted on his presence, providing the play-by-play on televised games from Tallahassee to Pasadena, from Ann Arbor to Austin. His death in 2018 was mourned deeply.
The University of Nebraska boasts one of the top football programs in the country. Jackson was as much loved in Lincoln as in any other major college town.
But why does Memorial Stadium have a bathroom dedicated to him?
Sports broadcasters
My father didn’t hold sports broadcasters in as high regard as many people. He thought they tended to say the same things again and again. He griped about “momentum” being an overused word by them. To this day, I can’t hear it in a telecast without flinching.
Still, I had my favorites growing up. Bob Murphy will always be the voice of the Mets to me, even though I only heard him on the radio. On TV, they went with Ralph Kiner and Kiner’s Korner like pitchers and catchers. (Also, much respect to Phil Rizzuto, covering The Other Team.) Nationally, no one could touch Vin Scully, doing the Game of the Week on NBC—plus he worked the 1986 World Series, so there’s that. Though Bob Costas did many sports, to me he was Mr. Baseball. In basketball, you had Marv Albert calling the Knicks, plus national games, also on NBC.
In pro football, Pat Summerall and John Madden often did Giants games on CBS as well as national ones, including the Super Bowl, and I liked them. I was a tad too young to appreciate Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football at ABC, but I enjoyed Al Michaels. He also did baseball, including the earthquake World Series in the San Francisco Bay Area.
College football? Wasn’t a huge fan, but even as a kid I thought Jackson had one of those authoritative kinds of voices, like whatever game you were watching meant something, no matter which team played or how high they were ranked.
I liked Wide World of Sports, so I heard him there, plus the Olympics and baseball—he worked the sixteen-inning Game 6 in the 1986 playoffs, so he’s a part of Met history too.
But college football was his forte.
Keith Jackson, in brief
The ex-marine from Georgia began in Seattle during the fifties, working radio and TV. In 1958 he worked a University of Washington crew race from the Soviet Union, making him the first American sports broadcaster to go behind the Iron Curtain. He also did news; he covered the 1964 Republican National Convention with Walter Cronkite.
In 1966 he joined ABC Sports, his TV home for the next forty years. He did many sports, including basketball (pro and college), golf, boxing and auto racing. Among the many moments he covered include:
- 1970: the first MNF game, featuring the defending Super Bowl-champion Jets.
- 1972: swimmer Mark Spitz wins seven gold medals at the Olympics.
- 1977: Reggie Jackson hits three home runs on three pitches in the World Series.
- 1981: University of Alabama head coach Bear Bryant wins his 315th game.
- 1991: the “Hello Heisman” game, in which Desmond Howard and Michigan beat Ohio State.
Keith Jackson retired in 2006. Initially, he thought 1999 would be his last year, but he changed his mind.
Universities from coast to coast loved him, but none gave him a more unique tribute than the one in Nebraska.
Nebraska Cornhusker football
NU was established in 1869 in Lincoln, NE (2024 population: 300,619). It has produced
- three Nobel laureates,
- four Pulitzer Prize winners,
- fifteen state governors and
- 22 Rhodes scholars.
Since 1923, the Cornhuskers have played at Memorial Stadium, which memorializes war veterans. It seats a cozy 85,458. Unfortunately, it’s turf, not grass. Perhaps you saw the stadium in the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man.
Jackson’s affinity for NU was such that he not only narrated a documentary on their Hall of Fame head coach, Tom Osborne, he also did the intro for the players’ tunnel walk entrances in 2006. Here’s one example:
As for his personal toilet, that was the result of NU’s former sports information director, Don Bryant.
Don Bryant and the NU press box
They called him “Fox.” He and Jackson were pals:
Fox was one of my favorite people…. Spending an afternoon with him was always refreshing. In addition to our profession, we both had a lot in common. We were both ex-marines and both loved to fish.
As a SID, Bryant acted as a liaison between NU and the news media, and by extension, the public, so he was familiar with the stadium’s sixth-floor press box.
Jackson never thought press boxes in general were as convenient as they could’ve been:
Fox provided the ultimate courtesy for me and my fellow broadcasters. I had whined so much about having to take catwalks outside on cold, windy days to go to the restroom. I often told Fox that I wished broadcast booths would include private bathrooms.
In 1999, the stadium renovated the press box. Bryant made sure it included a bathroom, plus a sign: “The Keith Jackson Toilet Facility,” signed “Fox.”
Who knew building a bathroom could be such a loving act?
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Did Keith Jackson call a favorite sports moment of yours? Leave a comment and let me know!
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