Jackson was also known for epithets like “Hold the phone!” when a penalty was called, or “fum-BLE” if a player dropped the ball.
He attempted to retire at the end of the 1998 season, citing his nearing 70th birthday. He called the first BCS National Championship Game between Tennessee and Florida State as his apparent last game.
The retirement was not to last, however, and Jackson returned to ABC the following season, though with a much more limited range, keeping mostly to the West Coast, near his home in California. He finally retired for good in 2006, calling the 2006 Rose Bowl game with Texas facing Southern California in the BCS National Championship Game.
Jackson received numerous honors throughout his career, including a Gold Medal Award in 1999 from the National Football Foundation, and a 1994 induction into the ASA Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the NSSA Hall of Fame in 1995, winning its National Sportscaster of the Year award five times in a row.
A native of Roopville, Ga., Jackson was best known for calling college football games for more than 50 years before retiring in 2006. He was a fixture on baseball broadcasts, too, serving on the set of the 1977, '79 and '81 World Series, splitting play-by-play duties with partner Al Michaels.
"For generations of fans, Keith Jackson was college football," said Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. "When you heard his voice, you knew it was a big game. Keith was a true gentleman and memorable presence. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Turi Ann, and his family."
Jackson was a part of ABC's coverage for several Midsummer Classics and postseason matchups, including: the 1978, '80 and '82 MLB All-Star Games; the '80 NL Championship Series; the '76, '78, '80 and '82 American League Championship Series; the '81 AL Divison Series; and the '78 AL East tie-breaker game between the Yankees and Red Sox.
Jackson also called a number of Monday Night Baseball and other various regular season games for ABC throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s.Jackson was awarded the Gold Medal Award by the National Football Foundation and was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1999. He was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame in '94, and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in '95.
A resident of California, Jackson passed away in Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife, Turi Ann, three children, Melanie, Lindsey and Christopher, and three grandchildren, Ian, Holly and Spencer.
Jackson’s sportscasting career began in Washington in the early ’50s, and covered a variety of sports events, including minor league baseball and hydroplane races. His coverage of NCAA games, however, gained him the most notoriety, particularly for the colloquial phrases he employed, such as referring to linemen as “big uglies.”
He was well-known for his supposedly signature phrase, “Whoa, Nellie!” although Jackson repeatedly denied over the years that the phrase was a catchphrase of his and stated he had learned it from earlier television announcer Dick Lane.
“This ‘Whoa, Nellie!’ thing is overrated,” he said. “There were all kinds of stories going around.
(Reuters) - Sportscaster Keith Jackson, who brought a folksy, excitable demeanor and down-home exclamations such as “Whoa, Nellie!” to 40 seasons of play-by-play calling as the authoritative voice of college football for ABC Sports, died at age 89, his employer ABC reported on Saturday.
The legendary sportscaster died late on Friday surrounded by family.
“For generations of fans, Keith Jackson was college football,” said Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Co, which owns ABC.
“When you heard his voice, you knew it was a big game. Keith was a true gentleman and a memorable presence. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Turi Ann, and his family,” Iger said.
Jackson’s work for ABC covered a wide range of sports and included 10 Olympics and 11 World Series but college football was his domain. At his peak, he was associated with the sport almost as strongly as any player or coach.
He presided over games with a rumbling baritone, a distinctive speaking rhythm, a trace of a Southern accent and a string of colloquialisms that made a Keith Jackson broadcast sound like no other.
In Jackson-speak, a talented player was a “hoss” and an even more talented player was a “hoss and a half.” Hulking offensive linemen were “the big uglies down in the trenches.”
He would describe an especially rough game as a “slobber knocker” in which the players were “rockin’ and a-sockin’ and a-whackin’ and a-crackin’.” He referred to the prestigious Rose Bowl game as “the granddaddy of them all” and when a player dropped the ball, Jackson would roar, “Fum-buuuul!”
The phrase he was most associated with - and the one used by anyone who ever did a Keith Jackson impersonation - was “Whoa, Nellie!” Jackson said he did not know why the exclamation was so closely tied to him.
“I never did use it that much, just a couple times ...,” he said in an interview with the website www.lostlettermen.com. “I don’t know how that thing got hung on me. The media likes to hang things on you and that was my bad luck, I guess.”
Some said Dick Lane, a Los Angeles sports broadcaster, was the original source of “Whoa, Nellie” but Jackson told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 that he borrowed it from his great-grandfather.
Jackson’s style evolved from advice he was once given - never be afraid to turn a phrase.
“The older I got, the more willing I was to go back into Southern vernacular because some of it’s funny,” he said in a 2014 interview with “Fox College Saturday.”
Jackson grew up near Carrollton, Georgia, picking cotton and plowing his poor family’s farm. After four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, he studied broadcasting at Washington State University and covered the school’s football games starting in 1952.
After graduating, Jackson worked both news and sports beats for a Seattle television station before joining ABC Radio in Los Angeles in 1965. The next year he moved to the network’s television branch and joined ABC’s college football broadcasting team.
Jackson switched his focus to the National Football League in 1970 as part of ABC’s “Monday Night Football” crew when it made its debut. Frank Gifford replaced him the next season.
But Jackson’s major interest was always college football.
“I think college football is a reflection of Middle America,” he told Sports Illustrated. “You go into a college football town and you will find three generations of a family sitting together. It’s a rallying point for the university, the community and the families.”
Critics said Jackson went too far as a booster of college football, looking past its scandals and controversies, such as not compensating players for the money their play brought in for their schools.
Jackson retired from ABC in 1988. But just a few months later the network coaxed him back with a schedule that would allow him to stay relatively close to his home in Sherman Oaks, California.
He retired for good at age 77 after calling the 2006 Rose Bowl in which Texas defeated Southern California for the national championship. “I don’t want to die in a stadium parking lot,” he told The New York Times.
Jackson met his wife at Washington State University and the couple had three children.
In 2014 Washington State renamed its broadcasting building after Jackson.