Jack Fleming wrote:Nighttime in Morgantown, West Virginia on the campus of West Virginia University Halloween weekend: And the goblin riding in on a broom is wearing a sport coat a sweater and a red tie. His graying hair is parted neatly on the left side. And topping off a prominent nose and a persistent frown is a pair of eyeglasses, the trademark of one of the nation’s most successful football coaches – Joe Paterno. Joe is accompanied here by a frightening group of white-clad ghosts: The number 2 ranked and undefeated Nittany Lions of Penn State – A frightening scene, but Don Nehlen’s Mountaineers enjoy walking in where angels fear to tread. So tonight in ideal autumn weather, they will meet the invaders. They will do battle as a prohibitive underdog, but they will play this game with the knowledge that anything can happen in football on any given night on any given field it can happen. And they want it to happen tonight. The state of West Virginia is wired in on MSN for this effort, and it will be our pleasure to describe the action as these two old rivals get together. So light up your pumpkins, put on your scariest Halloween mask and keep that radio close by as the hills of West Virginia resound with the sound of gold and blue football. And the West Virginia University Mountaineers are on the air.
I don't think we could ever have done better than Tony. This shouldn't be a slight at all. I think of him as one of the best in the business. But there's something about growing up with a broadcaster that makes you yearn for those days. It would be nice to have some of the archived broadcasts (commercials and all) so we could go back and relive it.
Much the same for those of us who grew up listening to Marty and Joe on the Reds network. I used to hate running a Reds game, though. You could step out to the shitter and come back to dead air. You never knew whether they had taken a break or Joe was taking a swig.
Titties and beer...thank God almighty for titties and beer!
Oh man, he was the worst. I used to hate hand-jobbing Reds games. The number of times I leaped out of my seat in panic because I thought I had missed a legal or local were too many to count. And then all of a sudden, he'd say something like "there's the pitchhhhhhhhhhhhh" and cut to another twenty seven seconds of low crowd noise.
So sayeth His Royal Highness King Spike; greatest broadcasting talent of his generation.
SPIKE NESMITH! wrote:Oh man, he was the worst. I used to hate hand-jobbing Reds games. The number of times I leaped out of my seat in panic because I thought I had missed a legal or local were too many to count. And then all of a sudden, he'd say something like "there's the pitchhhhhhhhhhhhh" and cut to another twenty seven seconds of low crowd noise.
It's still going on with the Reds network. The problem is compounded by the processing on the network feed - the crowd noise falls below the gating, and the broadcast goes dead silent.
Dave Harman wrote:It's still going on with the Reds network. The problem is compounded by the processing on the network feed - the crowd noise falls below the gating, and the broadcast goes dead silent.
The complaint used to be the opposite -- the processing was something like an LA-4 without gating, and the crowd noise would, over some it's-the-same-every-time-all-the-time number of seconds, get pulled up all the way to 0.
"I don't know the same things you don't know."
"Yes, you do; you just won't admit it!"
"Yeeee...it looks like a 'Belt Buckle & Ball Cap' convention in here......"
Concerning the Jack Fleming "Halloween" intro for the Penn State game in 1986. I recall pulling that intro off of the game tape and saving it to cart where it would be played for the WAJR Football Friday Show every year even after Penn State was no longer on the schedule. Eventually, I saved it to a hard drive. It sends chills every time I hear it. Occasionally, over the years, people would ask for copies of the intro and I would oblige. It's curious to me that it has become such a big part of Mountaineer fans' history. Not curious because it's not worthy, but because something I decided to do 21 years ago as an afterthought reappears in text as I'm just surfing around the net.
As far as older Jack Fleming broadcasts are concerned, several years ago, MSN made available a 5 CD compilation of the best highlights in Mountaineer history called "MSN Classics" I believe. There still might be some out there.
I did copy the fleming tape from the metronews studio one night when I was doing an overnight. Not sure what happened to my copy, but recently rediscovered the other good stuff on the web. Sent an mp3 copy to my mother the other day.. She hadn't heard it before. She's been disowned, and I wrote myself out of her will... Maybe my reaction was a little strong?
