The Best Seat in the House: My 48 Years in Local Sports Broadcasting

By Jim Doyle

Jim Doyles hands were shaking as he signed off after a radio broadcast of one of the most remarkable college football games he had ever witnessed. Although he was a seasoned broadcaster, Doyles hope remained the same as it did when he first started in the business: that through descriptions, gusto, and accuracy, he once again provided his listeners a good feel for what it was like to be there.

Doyle relies on nearly a half century of sports radio broadcasting experience to share a treasure trove of stories that range from the exciting to the bizarre and even the tragic. From the biggest comeback in the history of college football to a rainout of a college basketball game to the courageous story of high school football radio analyst fighting terminal cancer while continuing to broadcast the game he loved, Doyle provides fans an insightful, unforgettable behind-the-scenes look at the passion, commitment, and skill surrounding radio sports broadcasting in a small Pennsylvania town.

The Best Seat in the House reveals a radio sportscasters fifty-year journey through the world of broadcasting as he called plays, painted vivid pictures for his listeners, and reminded fans that nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491779514

Jim Doyle

Jim Doyle has been doing sports radio broadcasts in northeastern Pennsylvania since 1967. He has been inducted into the Bloomsburg University Athletic Hall of Fame, the Berwick Area Athletic Hall of Fame, and the Romanoski Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. Jim, also a retired English teacher, has received several awards that include the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters “Excellence in Broadcasting” award.

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Copyright © 2015 Jim Doyle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7952-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7953-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7951-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953736

iUniverse rev. date: 10/01/2015

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 The Start

Chapter 2 Character and Characters

Chapter 3 Inside Stuff

Chapter 4 Sidekicks

Chapter 5 When the Real World Intrudes

Chapter 6 The Best Laid Plans

Chapter 7 You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Chapter 8 The Best of All

In Addition

Four Decades of Highlights

Acknowledgments

To Leona and Chet – the best parents a son could ask for.

Disclaimer

It has been said that one’s memory fades as one grows older. Some things are forgotten, and others that are remembered may have actually happened differently than one recalls. I have done my best with this book to describe events exactly as they happened. I have done that to the best of my ability, so please – don’t sue me.

Foreword

I never got to hear him in real time, but I knew he was working. I never got to enjoy his excitement for the game live, but I knew it existed. I got to know the person before I knew the persona.

Growing up in Berwick and being enthralled with Berwick Football from a young age gave me the opportunity to meet and know who Jim Doyle was relative to Friday night football. As a young fan I was at the games watching, home or away, and as a player I barely heard the PA announcer let alone the guy on the radio. However, post-game interviews turned into comfortable conversations. There were no stories to generate, just information to report. The only occasions I really heard Jim were on some highlights from time to time on a re-broadcast or on the Sunday Morning Quarterback Show. That is when I really got to appreciate his quality of work, his love of the game, his appreciation of great effort by players and coaches, and his fascination with the history of high school football.

Jim has always done such a great job of painting the picture for your mind to see through his voice on the radio. He cares deeply for the game and the presentation of it on the radio. He understands that he can transform your car or kitchen into the bleachers at Crispin Field with his adjectives and excitement. His flow, his pace, his knowledge of the personnel and his coordination with his partner Andy Ulicny make him a listening pleasure!

Like all the great play-by-play announcers, Jim has qualities that make him special. His unique voice, his rhythmic cadence, his grammatical style and his catchphrases make him an uncommon talent and his broadcasts memorable!

As time moved on our relationship grew. I performed and he reported … we each had our roles and fed off one another. Jim was a trusted voice in the media. He was trusted by my coach George Curry and he was trusted by my dad, Ron Sr., and having those two endorse you was good enough for me!

I’ll never forget the highlight reel Jim put together as part of my announcing that I would attend the University of Notre Dame in January 1993. He strung together some of my touchdown runs and passes along with some interviews from the season. A cassette tape was made and I kept that with me for many years. When going through some tough times at college, I found comfort and inspiration in hearing the great excitement in Jim’s voice calling some of my best high school plays. I always felt it was a therapeutic reminder that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm!

Jim and I stayed in touch through my days at Notre Dame and remain in good contact today. He started out as a reliable member of the media and became a good and trusted friend. In fact not long ago, just a little while before receiving my annual happy birthday card from him, Jim burned a digital copy of that highlight edit he made many years ago of my high school touchdowns. Not only will that remind me of past fans, friends and moments, it will also serve as an historical marker for my kids as they grow in sports.

I’m excited that Jim has decided to share his experiences so we can all enjoy and witness his passion, commitment and enthusiasm mixed with his skill and knowledge that make Jim Doyle not only a great person, but the best in the business!

Ron Powlus

Berwick High School ’93

University of Notre Dame ’97

CHAPTER 1

The Start

My hands were shaking and I was fighting back tears. I had just signed off after a radio broadcast of one of the most remarkable college football games I had ever witnessed. It was played three thousand miles from home, at Toomey Field on the campus of Cal-Davis, not far from Sacramento, California.

It was an NCAA Division II National Semifinal, and it was a David-versus-Goliath matchup if there ever was one. Bloomsburg was definitely in the role of David. The Huskies had actually started the season with back-to-back losses. Their program under head coach Danny Hale got by with just a handful of scholarships available, while the unbeaten Aggies had a full complement of scholarships and a talent-laden roster. Cal-Davis was just a few years away from moving to Division I. Five years after this game, they would upset Stanford.

The Aggies were ranked first in the nation, and their fans, ten thousand strong that day, were so sure of a win that many wore shirts that said ‘Bama Bound, referring to the following week’s national title game in Florence, Alabama. Despite the disparity in scholarships and talent, and despite the home field advantage for Cal-Davis, the Huskies were in striking distance until disaster struck on the final play of the third quarter. A fumble recovery was returned for a touchdown, extending Cal-Davis’s lead to 19 points.

The momentum was clearly with the home team. At the postgame press conference, Danny Hale was asked for his thoughts following the third quarter. As honest as ever, he said I thought we might get embarrassed.

But the only people embarrassed at the end of the game were the Cal-Davis players and coaches, and the fans wearing the ‘Bama Bound shirts. Reflecting on that unbelievable final quarter, I don’t know which was more remarkable – the fact that the defense shut out a Cal-Davis team that had scored 48 points through three quarters, or that Bloomsburg’s offense scored 29 points in that quarter against the nation’s Number One team in a 58-48 Husky win.

The crowd that day was as large and as loud as any a Bloomsburg team had ever experienced, but most of that crowd, except for a small but enthusiastic Husky contingent, grew silent as that amazing fourth quarter progressed. Bloomsburg’s senior quarterback Eric Miller, all 170 pounds of him, led the comeback with skill and guts. His 15-yard touchdown pass to Tierell Johnson with 4:48 to play gave the Huskies their first lead of the game. I can still see Eric firing that strike to Tierell, one of the five touchdown passes he threw that day despite bleeding badly from a gash in his leg that kept him from the postgame media briefing.

After broadcasting a game as exciting as that one, my hope is always that I did justice to the game and that my descriptions, enthusiasm, and accuracy measured up. There is no way my performance that day matched the performance of the Huskies, but I hope I gave the listeners a good feel for what it was like to be there. That’s always been my hope since I started in this crazy business almost fifty years ago.

I grew up around sports. My dad, Chet, was a very successful boys’ high school basketball coach at Nescopeck, Bloomsburg, and Berwick. In sixteen seasons, his teams won a total of 292 games, including seven league titles and four district championships. Chet was a fiery, emotional coach, and I owe my passion for sports to him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t a good enough coach to make an athlete out of me, something I wanted more than anything in the world when I was growing up in Berwick in the 1960’s. I have used the following lines at a number of sports banquets over