Charlie Jones Opens 27th Season Sunday With 41st Analyst

In the unstable world of network television, it’s hard to keep up with this Jones when it comes to staying power.

NBC’s Charlie Jones has been a network pro football announcer longer than anyone else.

Jones will begin his 27th season Sunday when he works a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Oilers, which will be televised by Channel 4 at 1 p.m.

The gray-haired Jones, who missed the first two weeks of the season because of a track assignment in Rome, will be paired with Jimmy Cefalo, the 41st football analyst to work with Jones.

Jones’ first analyst was Fred (the Rifleman) Benners, a former SMU quarterback. The two worked an ABC telecast of an American Football League game at the Coliseum between the Los Angeles Chargers, who moved to San Diego the following year, and the Dallas Texans, who later moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs.

The date of the game was Sept. 10, 1960. In case you forgot, the Chargers came from behind and won, 21-20.

George Ratterman, a Notre Dame quarterback in the ‘40s who later played in the NFL, worked with Jones for seven seasons.

“With George, you never knew quite what to expect,” said Jones. “One morning over breakfast he said to me, ‘Hey, I got a really exciting announcement last night.’

“I said: ‘What was that, George?’

“He said: ‘I got a collect call at 3 a.m. from the Notre Dame Alumni Assn. They voted me the outstanding quarterback in Notre Dame history.’

“I got all excited and congratulated him. Then he said: ‘They called Johnny Lujack first, and he refused to accept the call.’ ”

Another time, Jones and Ratterman were working a Raider game at Oakland. At the time, Ratterman was running for sheriff of Covington, Ky. His platform included strong laws against gambling.

“We were at dinner Saturday night when he got a call,” Jones said. “He was gone for about 20 minutes. The next morning I asked him about the call.

“He nonchalantly said: ‘Oh, that was the FBI in Cincinnati. They said they have a report that a sniper in the hotel across the street is going to make an attempt on my life.’

“I said: ‘Wait a minute, I’m going to be sitting right next to you.’ He said, ‘I don’t think they’ll try it.’

“That was easy for him to say.”

Then there was the time in Boston, back in the days when games were played in fewer than three hours, that Jones and Ratterman had 40 minutes to fill after a game that had taken only 2 hours 20 minutes.

“Ratterman spent about 15 minutes interviewing Babe Parilli about the game. Later, after he appeared to run out of people to interview and I was wondering what we were going to do next, he said he had another interview.

“I felt relieved until I saw who he was going to interview. It was Babe Parilli, now in street clothes. He couldn’t ask him anything more about the game so he asked how things had gone in the locker room.”

One thing about Jones that stands out about Jones is his voice. It’s as if he was born to work behind a microphone.

But that wasn’t always the case. During his sophomore year of high school in Fort Smith, Ark., he was rejected when he tried out for a role as a father in the school play. He was told his voice was too high.

His voice changed that summer, and that’s when he first thought about becoming a sportscaster.

Jones went on to study radio and speech at USC, where he also played varsity tennis, then got a law degree from the University of Arkansas before joining the Air Force.

While stationed in San Diego, he announced San Diego State and San Diego City College football games on radio.

After the service, Jones went back to Fort Smith and worked in television and radio before being hired in 1960 by Lamar Hunt as the announcer for the Dallas Texans. Hunt also allowed Jones to work for ABC. Jones switched to NBC in 1965 when that network picked up the AFL contract, and has been there ever since.

Now Jones has the distinction of having a longer network run at football announcing than anyone else. Pat Summerall, in his 25th season, is second. Summerall, by the way, was one of Jones’ 41 analysts, working with him on the radio broadcast of Super Bowl III. Also, both were at the University of Arkansas at the same time.

Jones isn’t one for change. He and wife, Ann, whom he married in 1954, have lived in the same house in La Jolla since 1967. They have two children, son Chuck, 28, who works for IBM in San Francisco, and daughter Julie, 22, an art history graduate from SMU who is now studying in London.

Seven weeks ago Jones twisted his left ankle while playing golf and pulled the ligaments in his foot. He has reinjured the foot five times since then and it is now in a cast.

“I asked for the Kansas City assignment because of the easy access to the broadcast booth at Arrowhead Stadium,” he said.

Broadcast Notes CBS Thursday signed a four-year, $60-million deal with the College Football Assn. that will go into effect next season. Under the agreement, CBS will televise 15 CFA games a season. . . . Meanwhile, ESPN Thursday signed a separate four-year, $11-million deal with the CFA in which it will televise 28 games a season beginning next year. That means ESPN will offer Saturday college football doubleheaders. . . . On Aug. 4, ABC announced a four-year, $50-million deal with the Big Ten and Pacific 10 that will take effect next season. On the surface, it appears CBS and ABC are making a swap, but CBS is maintaining separate deals with Miami, the Atlantic Coast Conference and Army-Navy. . . . CBS’s deal with Miami enables it to televise the Oklahoma-Miami biggie Sept. 27. The ABC game that day will be Notre Dame-Purdue. . . . The Raiders fell about 30,000 tickets short of selling out Sunday’s game against the New York Giants in time to lift the TV blackout. . . . Announcers for the Ram game Sunday at Indianapolis will be Gary Bender and Hank Stram. They will also announce the Ram game at Philadelphia the following Sunday. . . . Even though the Rams played the San Francisco 49ers last Sunday, they were still beaten in the ratings game by the Raiders. The earlier Raider-Washington game got an L.A. Nielsen rating of 19.4, and the Ram-49er game got an 18.9. In San Francisco, the Ram-49er game got a 32.4 Nielsen rating.

Announcers for the USC-Baylor game on ABC Saturday at 12:30 p.m. will be Keith Jackson and the overly excitable Tim Brant. . . . After 5 1/2 years at ESPN, Greg Gumbel is leaving to join Madison Square Garden. “I’m looking forward to working in the big city atmosphere,” Gumbel id. “I think there’s room for another Gumbel in New York.” Greg is the brother of NBC’s Bryant Gumbel. . . . On Sept. 23, 1908, Fred Merkle of the New York Giants, in a legendary mistake, cost his team a pennant when the umpires ruled he failed to tag second base. Channel 5 and KNX sportscaster Keith Olbermann claims that Merkle did indeed tag second, and Olbermann annually does a feature on the incident. Olbermann’s piece will be show on NBC’s “Today” show next Tuesday morning.

NBC is televising the Angel game against Chicago Saturday at 12:15, and Channel 4 will carry it. ABC had originally planned to televise Sunday’s Angel-Chicago game at noon, but the network has chosen to forgo its three remaining Sunday telecasts because of the lack of a pennant race. Game time is still noon. . . . American Cablesystems will take over management of Communicom systems in Venice, West Los Angeles, Bellflower, Maywood, Culver City and Covina on Nov. 1. That’s good news for sports fans, since American has signed a five-year agreement to carry the Prime Ticket Network. American systems in Carson, Inglewood, Pomona, Tustin and Corona will also begin carrying Prime Ticket on Nov. 1. . . . Those yearning for a basketball game will get one Monday night on WTBS. An all-star game in which Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Spud Webb are scheduled to play will be televised at 7:05 p.m. The game will be played at Chicago Stadium. . . . Australia II’s victory over the New York Yacht Club’s Liberty in the 1983 America’s Cup will be featured in two one-hour programs on ESPN the next two Monday nights at 7 p.m. . . . The Australian Rules Football League’s elimination final will be televised live by ESPN tonight at 9:30 p.m. The Grand Final will be carried live next Friday at 9:30 p.m.