http://fangsbites.com/2013/04/thoughts-on-pat-summerall/

by Ken, under Pat Summerall

Growing up as a kid in the 1970Œs and into the 1980Œs, Pat Summerall and Curt Gowdy (along with Jim McKay, Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell) were the voices who influenced me the most. Summerall was on the major events for CBS, Gowdy for NBC and McKay and Cosell for ABC.

At his peak, Summerall called the NFL, NBA, the PGA, US Open Tennis and hosted the 1975 Pan American Games as well as a boxing tournament for CBS. Summerallfs style was to defer to the analyst and he had the fortune to work both as an analyst and a play-by-play man.

In 1962, Pat had the good fortune to pick up the phone and on the other end was an executive from CBS Radio seeking New York Giants Charley Connerly for an audition. The executive noticed that Summerall had a very good voice and asked him to audition as well. Summerall won the audition and the rest was broadcasting history.

As an analyst for CBS, Summerall worked with some of the best in early sportscasting history, Chris Schenkel, Ray Scott and Jack Buck. It was Scott who influenced Summerall the most as Scott let the pictures speak and used minimal wordage to describe the action.

Summerall then switched to play-by-play in 1974 and formed a popular announcing team with good friend, Tom Brookshier. They worked three Super Bowls and also had a lot of fun in and outside of the broadcast booth. But after the 1980 season, CBS broke up the Pat and Tom pairing.

CBS paired Summerall with Hank Stram and John Madden in the first half of the 1981 season to determine with which analyst he worked best. The network decided on Madden and made them their number one announcing team on the NFL on CBS and the rest was magic. Summerall was the straight man to Madden and the pairing worked.

But Summerall could also call tennis. He called the French Open for three years on the network, but his best work on the sport came during the US Open where he worked with Tony Trabert and Virginia Wade.

His voice was also perfect for The Masters where he worked the 17th hole until becoming the main voice in 1983 replacing Vin Scully and remained at the 18th tower with Ken Venturi until 1994.

Summerall always set up his analyst and got out of the way. He had a very good sense of humor and with Brookshier, would produce skits to open the NFL Today. They were quite classic.

And Brookshier once told the story of Summerall registering at a hotel when an unruly fan tried to berate him to the point where Pat had to cold cock him and then went back to signing in for his room.

While his later years on Fox were not his best, Summerallfs work speaks for itself. He will be missed.