Even the “Granddaddy of Them All” has a dad.
That’s the late and legendary ABC Sports announcer Keith Jackson, who coined that term for the Rose Bowl Game and it stuck. He clicked off his microphone for the last time precisely 20 years ago after Texas beat USC on this storied field.
The game was a classic and so was Jackson, the Saturday evening soundtrack for generations of college football fans. His melodic baritone filled millions of households with tales of Southerners and soph-ah-mores, with praise for the “big uglies” and proclamations of “Hello, Heisman.”
“I still hear his voice,” said his daughter, Melanie, standing Thursday in the office of the family home in Sherman Oaks, where Keith and Turi Ann raised their children Melanie, Lindsey and Christopher. “I come up here sometimes just to say hi to him.”
Jackson, who died in 2018, still lives in the hearts of his family, friends and fans, and his countless stories and famous calls are woven into the lore of college football — although he covered many sports — and the history of the Rose Bowl itself.
“He knew the Rose Bowl better than any place,” said Turi Ann, preparing to have a small group of family over to watch the game, as she does every year. “This was always a special, special day.”
As they entered the stadium, fans of Indiana and Alabama were greeted by a statue of a smiling Jackson that was dedicated a year after he died. He’s clutching a microphone and, as always, impeccably dressed.
The family made sure that statue was an accurate representation of Jackson, and they thought an early version made him look like Earl Scheib, the guy who built the discount car-painting empire.
When it comes to getting every detail just right, the Jacksons have an expert in the family. Son Lindsey is married to puppeteer and former Disney imagineer Terri Harden, whose enormous body of work includes controlling the face of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in “Ghostbusters.”
If a bronze Keith Jackson was going to be standing outside the Rose Bowl, he was going to look like Keith Jackson, right down to the penny loafers.
In this age of uncertainty and transition in college sports, the memory of Jackson endures for millions of fans. He embodied tradition. He looked at the Rose Bowl as hallowed ground. The former Marine approached his job in a deeply serious way.
“He almost never needed more than one take,” Melanie said. “When he wrote those game intros, it was like poetry. He’d write them out and then say them. … He didn’t give opinions, he just told you what was happening.”
How would Keith feel about the state of college football, with players making millions and staying at one school for moments? And what about UCLA trying to break its Rose Bowl lease?
“I don’t know if he’d be happy or not. I can’t say for him, really,” she said. “But I think anything that takes away from the authenticity of the game and the broadcast and the viewers, that’s what would bother him.”
Keith and Turi Ann Jackson were living in Seattle when their daughter, their eldest child, was born. Turi Ann went into labor in the middle of the night, and Keith rushed her to the hospital. He was so flustered that he was still getting dressed in the car as he drove. At one point, police pulled him over for speeding — and were understandably confused to find a man half-dressed behind the wheel. After he explained that his wife was in labor, they quickly waved him on.
Melanie was born on Oct. 18, 1955, her dad’s 27th birthday. They shared a special connection, and every year on that day, the family meets at the statue, rests a bouquet of roses in Keith’s arms, open a bottle of good wine — a passion of his — share stories, laugh and cry.
On that shared birthday, a year after Jackson died, Melanie swaddled herself in one of his designer sports coats and listened to her dad’s favorite song, the Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney duet “That Lucky Old Sun,” over and over until she fell asleep.
Lucky old sun ain’t got nothing to do
But roll around in heaven all day
Jackson, a child of the Depression who grew up on a farm outside Carrollton, Ga., was among the most successful announcers in the history of television, but maintained a bit of that mentality of the kid who had to use pages of the Sears catalog for toilet paper. If he made a pot of coffee, he’d want you to finish your cup — or put it in the fridge to drink it later. His big splurge was to have a Snickers bar on the plane when flying home from a game.
After games at the Rose Bowl, the family would meet at Clancy’s Crab Broiler in Glendale, where Keith regularly ordered the fish soup. He was a regular guy, who loved spending time in a home filled with plaques and trophies and photos and footballs.
Melanie said the family would sometimes get seats for the Rose Bowl, but it was never a fancy VIP experience. They parked far away, walked in with the crowd, and watched like regular fans.
Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, his friend for decades, was alongside Jackson as color analyst for that final 2006 Rose Bowl.
“I’ve rewatched that game a few times,” Fouts said. “I don’t know if you could do a game better than he did. With his voice and his way of calling the game, it’s a treasure.”
At the Jackson home, filled with memories and the echo of Keith’s voice, there are too many treasures to count.
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