Keith Jackson has truly lived an extraordinary life.  Born in 1928, he grew up on a farm in West Georgia, where he rode a horse to high school and traveled to church in a horse and buggy.   From those humble roots, Jackson became one of the legends of broadcasting, an Emmy award winner who has played golf with men who walked on the moon and called some of the most memorable events in sports history in 31 different countries.  Best known as the voice of college football, he has enjoyed a career covering practically every major sporting event during a celebrated career that spanned more than 50 years.

Jackson spent four years in the Marine Corps, serving part of his time in China.  In 1950, he enrolled in Washington State College with the intention of earning a degree in Political and Police Science and returning to the Marines. 

One evening, while pounding the books in his dorm room, Jackson listened to the radio broadcast of a Washington football game.  He made notes during the game and on the following Monday, he walked into the Broadcast School building and suggested to Burt Harrison, a member of the faculty, that “he might do a better job than the fella you have doing your games now.” 

Harrison had worked for the legendary journalist William Allen White at the Emporia, Kansas Gazette.  An old school kind of man, he handed Jackson a tape recorder and said simply, “prove it.”

One WSC game and one high school recording later, Jackson returned the recorder.  Two days later, Harrison found him after a class and took him into a studio at the campus radio station.  After telling Jackson that the table, microphone and studio were the ones that Edward R. Murrow used when he was a WSC student learning to be a broadcaster, he sat Jackson down and handed him some newswire copy, telling him to read.

Goodbye, Marines…hello, broadcasting career.

Post-graduation, Jackson joined KOMO-TV and radio in Seattle, working in both sports and news and began broadcasting Seattle Rainiers (Pacific Coast League) baseball games.  He made history in 1958, broadcasting the first live sporting event from the Soviet Union to the United States, a race matching the University of Washington crew team vs. the USSR’s national championship team. 

Jackson joined ABC Sports in 1962.  With the network, he served as the play-by-play announcer for the network’s coverage of college football for more than 40 years. Jackson’s folksy, down-to-earth style was a perfect match for the college game.

Although his name is synonymous with college football, Jackson also covered 11 World Series and league championship games;  AFL football; NBA games; automobile races, including NASCAR, Indy 500, NHRA and the Monaco Grand Prix; Wide World of Sports events, both big and small, in 31 different countries and was Monday Night Football’s  first play-by-play announcer in 1970.    

Jackson also worked ten Winter and Summer Olympic Games for ABC Sports, covering the two greatest gold medal winners in the history of the Olympic Games, Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in swimming at the 1972 games and Eric Heiden, who won five individual gold medals in speedskating in 1980. 

Jackson retired after the 2006 Rose Bowl and hasn’t been to a game of any kind since.

Jackson received a Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.  In the 1990’s, Jackson was a three-time Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Sports Personality, Play-by-Play.  In 1999, Jackson was awarded the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame’s Gold Medal, its highest honor.  He was named to the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1999 and was chosen the winner of the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award  by the American Football Coaches Association in 1993 as an individual "whose services have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football."  In each case, Jackson was the first broadcaster to receive these honors.  He was named National Sportscaster of the Year five times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association and is in the group’s Hall of Fame. 

Married to wife Turi Ann for 55 years, the Jacksons have three children, Melanie Ann, Lindsey and Christopher, and three grandchildren, Ian, Holly Elizabeth and Spencer.  After spending 27 summers in British Columbia, they now reside full-time in the Los Angeles area.