"Starr. To Taylor. Touchdown."

Voice of the Baltimore Colts -- Chuck Thompson

The NFL is well underway. There are even articles NOT about the protests in the papers. But I must say, watching games now I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic for days gone by when I watched as a kid.

The NFL’s first commissioner, Pete Rozelle, was a brilliant guy. One of the things he instituted was a national TV deal. Every team received the same amount from the TV rights. So unlike baseball, there is parity. Small market teams like Green Bay get just as much money as the New York Giants. Granted there are less than 20 games a season as opposed to baseball where every team plays 162, but Rozelle smartly realized that there needed to be consistency in how the game was presented.

So here’s how it worked in the late ‘50s and ‘60s – if you had an NFL team in your market you saw all of their road games. The weeks they were home you saw a different game. If you didn’t have a team in your market you got a variety of games. CBS broadcast the games.

But unlike today, CBS had no assigned announcers. Each team had their own play-by-play man. So if the Rams, for example, played a road game in Cleveland the Rams announcer Bob Kelley called the game. If Cleveland played the Rams in Los Angeles then Browns’ announcer Ken Coleman called the game.

There were several advantages to this arrangement. First off, your announcer knew way more about your team than a network guy who just flew in for the game. Secondly, and most important, each team’s announcer back then was distinctive and gave his team a real character.

I used to love listening to these men who all had very different voices and styles. Compare that to today. Especially if you get the B or C team the games are called by generic interchangeable announcers who offer nothing but rudimentary play-by-play.

Bob Kelley had a great whiskey voice and a real sense of urgency to his broadcasts. Chuck Thompson of the Colts brought an elegance to his call (and always wore his signature hat). Ray Scott of the Packers was the voice of God just punctuating plays with two or three word sentences. “Starr. To Taylor. Touchdown.” Jack Brickhouse of “da Bears” had a friendly fatherly quality, Ken Coleman of Cleveland and Van Patrick of Detroit had signature voices, and then there was Chris Schienkel of the Giants who I never liked. We rarely got 49er games so I don’t remember who called them but I’m sure he was on the same level as these other gentlemen.

Were they homers?  Some were.  But so what?   So were all the fans in the stands.  

The three number one network NFL guys, Al Michaels, Jim Nantz, and Joe Buck all are exceptional announcers. But I bet even they would agree with me. Today the games are in glorious HD color with drone cameras and amazing angles and telestraters and whiz-bang graphics – but there’s something missing – personality, localization, familiarity, team identification. Sorry but I’d trade the first down stripe for Chuck Thompson.

from By Ken Levine