Paul Olden Will Announce UCLA Football, Basketball

Radio station KMPC has hired Cleveland Indians announcer Paul Olden to become the new voice of UCLA football and basketball, beginning with the basketball season.

Olden also will serve as the host of the station’s weeknight “Sportsline” talk show, beginning Monday, Oct. 23.

Olden is replacing Joel Meyers, who left the station to join NBC-TV as a pro football announcer.

It was announced earlier that Bob Starr, who does the Ram radio broadcasts, will also do UCLA football this season.

Olden has signed a multiyear contract.

Olden, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended Dorsey High School and Los Angeles City College, was hired by the Indians before the current baseball season.

Olden, who attended LACC at the same time as new USC announcer Pete Arbogast, may be best known in Los Angeles for a question he asked Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda on May 14, 1978.

The Dodgers had just lost to the Chicago Cubs, 10-7, in a 15-inning game in which the Cubs’ Dave Kingman had three home runs and eight RBIs.

Olden, working as a news assistant at KLAC, asked Lasorda: “What was your opinion of Kingman’s performance?”

Jim Healy, then at KLAC, used Lasorda’s expletive-filled response on his show the next day, and has used it many times since.