Keith Jackson Moves Over to Basketball

The name Keith Jackson comes up and one sport leaps to mind: college football.

Jackson would prefer not to be associated solely with the sport he has broadcast for more than a decade for ABC. Jackson, doing college basketball this winter for the network, would rather be known as a jack-of-all trades. To go a step further, he would just as soon be known as a newsman covering sports.

“I’d rather be known as a professional than a specialist,” Jackson said. “I should be able to go out and do anything, given a reasonable amount of preparation,” Jackson said. “That goes back to having a news background. Yeah, I like basketball. I go back to the Seattle U. days when I got out of school. The Elgin Baylor days. I had an unusual arrangement, I was a newsman and actually did the sports on my own.”

The skills developed covering news helped Jackson become a well-rounded reporter, he says.

“No question about it and I’d urge it to anyone wanting to get into the business,” Jackson says. “The first thing you look for is the bottom line and then you go from there. Untrained young sports people go out and go to the opposite side, the glamour side.”

He claims the college football tag is only a minor source of irritation.

“They seem to always want to get me associated just with football,” he says. “I’ve only missed two sports. A demolition derby, and I’m not going to start now, and hockey. I’m from the South and I guess I still don’t understand the philosophy of hockey.”

Because Jackson has been outspoken, particularly during college football, he receives more critical mail during the fall than any other time of the year.

“The mail bag gets a little heavy during that season,” he says. “There is no sport as provincial as college football. People seem to hear and see what they only want to see and hear.”

Jackson has noticed some of that provincialism rubbing off on college basketball.

“College basketball is getting close. It’s amazing how they react in football, especially when they tell you the truth,” Jackson says. “I think it’s always been there because of the overexposure. Heaven knows we’re in a saturated market in college sports. Don’t get me wrong, I hope it doesn’t go away.”

The criticism hasn’t altered Jackson’s approach to college sports.

“No, I hope not. If anything, it’s made me more matter-of-fact. It’s made me ignore the provincialism of college sports,” Jackson says.

Various factors have led to overreaction of fans in both college football and basketball, said Jackson, who includes polls, championship playoffs and bowl games as partial reasons.

“The fact is that college football has always been a prime revenue producer for a university. And, the money crunch is heavy,” he says.

Jackson is a part of the network scheme that has led to the great proliferation of both college football and basketball games. Jackson saw the problem of overexposure coming years ago.

“When this whole thing started, I said you’d see the goose eat the golden egg. The TV people, especially those who purchased ABC (Cap Cities) say they will reduce the subsidy in sport,” he says. “It’s gone far beyond the pail. We have to get more rational, soon. You can’t keep throwing millions of dollars around. Networks aren’t benevolent organizations. Shareholders squawk.”

Jackson, who first basketball assignment is next Sunday, has worked with a variety of color commentators, including Bill Russell, Duffy Daugherty and now, Dick Vitale on college basketball.

“There is no secret about doing it,” Jackson said. “I look them straight in the eye and say these are the ground rules and this is the way it’s going to be. If they break the ground rules, I tell them so.”