Perfect Call

The life and immaculate ascension of the ‘Voice of the Mountaineers’

At noon on Thursday, Jack Fleming phoned his commentary in to WAJR radio as he has done from his Pittsburgh home on a regular basis since being relieved of his play-by-play duties with the West Virginia Mountaineers four years ago.

His voice was full, his delivery crisp, his demeanor happy.

No one knows if it was 10 minutes after he hung up the phone, an hour or five hours, but sometime later that day “The Voice of the Mountaineers” sat down in his chair and died.

It was almost the way he would have asked to go.

“His whole vision of the way he wanted to go was to do a Mountaineer game, sit down, take a nap and never get up,” said Dale Miller, the general manager at WAJR.

Gale Catlett, who became a fast friend of Fleming’s after he returned to his alma mater to coach basketball in 1978, echoed that thought.

“He wanted to work until he was dead,” Catlett said.

WVU, from where he graduated, was Jack Fleming’s love. Radio broadcasting was his passion.

“Sometimes we’d have a show to do that night and I’d talk to him during the day. It’d be snowing and I’d tell him not to bother coming in,” Catlett said. “But he’d drive through that snow to get there. He wanted to be on the air. He wanted to talk to the people.”

And long before E.F. Hutton talked, people listened.

One of those people who listened was John Raese, chief operating officer of Greer Industries.

“I remember back in 1959 when West Virginia and Jerry West went to the NCAA finals, the family was out in California,” Raese said. “Dad took all of us up on top of a mountain in Palm Springs so we could pick up the broadcast of them playing Louisville in the semifinals.”

You have to picture this. Here was Dyke Raese, the only coach to bring WVU a national basketball championship, when he won the 1942 NIT, with his family up atop a mountain in California, rooting on the Mountaineers through Fleming’s call on WAJR that was picked up and carried by clear-channel, 50,000-watt station KMOX, of St. Louis.

That, to Jack Fleming, was what life was all about: WVU playing for a national championship, him laughing at the microphone and people hanging on his every word.

The 7-10 split

Dale Miller simply shakes his head when he thinks about it.

“Jack Fleming started broadcasting on this station in 1945, and he was on the air yesterday,” he said as he sat in the vestibule leading into the WAJR studio. “Think about that. He broadcast for 55 years of the 65 years this station was on the air.”

Fleming began his career after being discharged from the U.S. Army Air Corps, which he served as a navigator during World War II. He was shot down over France, parachuted into a tree and was rescued by a group of women who worked for the Underground.

In the early days, Fleming would do anything. He’d engineer the board or broadcast ... bowling?

“Jack did bowling out of Suburban Lanes,” Miller said.

If that wasn’t hard enough to do, John Raese recalled another chapter of the life of the early Jack Fleming. “I was a Little League star,” Raese said, laughing. “I played for Sanitary Milk. He’d be out there broadcasting the Sanitary Milk-Horton Ford game, then the next day drive to Pittsburgh and do the Steelers game. Any sports assignment, he would do.”

What might have been

Jack Fleming had the voice, he had the passion. What he didn’t have was the desire to become a nationally known broadcaster.

He was at the top of his game at the same time as the likes of Chris Schenkel, Keith Jackson and Ray Scott were on top of theirs.

If he’d been in New York ... if he’d been in Los Angeles ...

“If he had the major type of representation that those guys had, I think he would have been one of the chief announcers on the NFL on CBS or NBC,” Miller said. “He could have made millions and millions.”

No one doubts that.

It was just that wasn’t Fleming’s style.

Jack did some television but loved radio. He loved WVU. He loved his life.

He had a couple of times when he thought of moving out. Once he went to Chicago to do Bulls in the pre-Michael Jordan days.

“Grew his hair long, hung out with Bob Love,” Miller said.

But that wasn’t really his gig, and he came back home.

Then there was the chance he had to go to work for KMOX, in St. Louis. Bob Hyland, the general manager of the station, offered Fleming a chance to broadcast the St. Louis Spirit in the ABA.

He offered him $20,000 a year with the proviso that if he made it to three years, the salary would jump to $100,000.

“I can’t afford to come to St. Louis for $20,000,” Fleming told Hyland, turning down the job.

There is an irony in this. Hyland hired someone else, a local guy by the name of Bob Costas. Hyland wound up promoting him nationally, just as he had done with Jack Buck and Joe Buck and Dan Kelly.

But in the end, the most famous call in all of NFL history is Fleming’s radio call of Franco Harris’ “Immaculate Reception” that won a playoff game for the Steelers.

That call was an example of how good Fleming could be.

“It was,” said his radio partner Myron Cope, “a perfect call.”

It also made one wonder what Fleming might have become had he been in the ideal broadcast situations. That, however, didn’t happen.

Fleming spent much of his career without a true color analyst, an X’s and O’s guy who knew the game. He had folksy Woody O’Hara at WVU, the flamboyant Cope with the Steelers.

But he didn’t have a John Madden to explain what was going on.

“I don’t really know what’s going on out there,” he often told Miller.

So, he would stick with what he saw. You may not get an in-depth analysis of how the off-side guard kicked out the blitzing linebacker, allowing the tailback to cutback into a wide hole.

“What Jack did do was have a quirky vision,” Miller said. “He may not be able to take apart the X’s and O’s, but he’d see a guy peeking strangely over from the Georgetown bench. He always caught that odd angle.

“At Penn State, he’d note that these people are Mercedes drivers or cheese eaters or wine sippers,” Miller continued. “He’d let you know that way that they weren’t the common people who rooted for West Virginia.”

Legendary Temper

Like so many people blessed with a unique talent, Jack Fleming was difficult to read at times.

“His temper was legendary,” Miller said. “He’d go off lightning quick. He could cast a look at you that would scare you to death. I remember him doing that often, then two minutes later looking at me and winking.”

People were awed by him.

Jay Jacobs, the former WVU player from Morgantown who is the color commentator on the radio broadcasts, remembers Fleming doing broadcasts from the old studio on Spruce Street.

“I’d sneak up there and watch him broadcast. I’d bring a note pad and take notes. No one could do basketball on radio like he did. He’d make the game just build and build,” he said.

Five years ago, they asked Jacobs if he wanted to join Jack on the radio.

“The first thing I could think of, is this cleared with Jack? He liked to work alone and I didn’t want to move in on that,” said Jacobs. “It was Jack’s show. I knew that. I’d just try to get in four, five or six-second comments. I really felt for a while I had to win his respect.”

So, too did his long-time partner on Steelers broadcasts - Cope.

Talk about your odd couple: the smooth Fleming and the King of Yoiks in the broadcast booth. Cope, a freelance journalist who stands about 5-4 and has an irritating voice and a unique delivery, had joined WTAE, in Pittsburgh, and they wanted to promote him by putting him on with Fleming.

“We thought, this will never work,” said Steelers President Dan Rooney, whose father Art, was running the team at the time. “And it was a struggle. Jack exercised some tremendous patience. It took three years before they could work together.”

Cope was forever jumping on Fleming’s play-by play. He recalls one game where Frenchy Fuqua was off on a long touchdown run, Fleming describing it to perfection as Cope was screaming, “Frenchman, what are ya doin’ looking’ back?!”

The two learned to co-exist. Cope, of course, started the Terrible Towel craze.

“He hated it,” said Cope, who would have one at his elbow at each game and wave it at the proper moment. “Of course, I think he was only kidding about hating it."

The final countdown

As all good things must come to an end, so too, did Fleming’s play-by-play career.

Sports announcing was changing. As Miller noted, “Pat Summerall gets $600,000 a year to do play-by-play, and John Madden gets $8 million to do color. That wouldn’t sit well with Jack, who believed play-by-play was the thing.”

The Steelers eventually decided that they wanted to change their broadcasts, replacing Fleming with Bill Hillgrove, who was willing to sit back and let Cope and former player Tunch Ilkin act like raving maniacs in the booth.

Then, as he aged, there was a series of ministrokes that robbed Fleming of some strength in his voice and vision. Nothing serious, but four years ago Mike Parsons, the WVU assistant athletic director who runs the Mountaineer Sports Network, decided to promote Tony Caridi to play-by-play and cut back on what Fleming did.

He did not go quietly.

“This decision was made for me,” Fleming said at the time, claiming his health was no longer an issue. “I wanted to work. They gave no reason except that my work deteriorated. I didn’t impress the right people, and now it’s the end of my career. I’ll still come to games. Maybe they’ll give me a broom and let me sweep the peanuts out of the press box.” As time went by, though, Fleming became content in his new job. He wrote an Internet column, did commentaries and occasionally would come to games, last being seen in public at the final game at Three Rivers Stadium, two weeks ago.

By then he was comfortable in his life, just as he was comfortable in his death.

Jack Fleming

'Voice' of WVU Bail-Out Over France Helped Chart Airman's Life Course

What happened to him as a navigator on a B-17 bomber during World War II might have plotted the course Leo W. Fleming Jr. was to follow as a career.

To West Virginians everywhere, he’s known simply as Jack Fleming or as the “Voice of the Mountaineers.”

To those French folk who came running out of Chateau Thierry to a vineyard atop a hillside, he was an American airman who had bailed out of a troubled ship.

It was the 23rd-and last-bombing mission for the young second lieutenant from his bomber group’s base in England to Frankfurt in Germany.

This September day in 1944 the B-17 Fleming was helping to fly had two engines knocked out by enemy fire and he and his parachute barely made it back to friendly lines.

As he landed in the vineyard overlooking that famous French village, however, Fleming drove a stake into his mouth. Result: Cut lip, loss of upper front teeth, broken jaw, and a variety of facial abrasions.

A Bloody Mess

“I was a mess,” he recalls. “I thought I was going to die but, actually, I was not mortally wounded.”

His rescuers helped him to a field hospital which, in turn, had him flown back to England where he remained hospitalized until January 1945.

Then, as he was about to return to combat, Fleming developed hepatitis and returned to the States for convalescence.

He wound up at White Sulphur Springs, in his native state, where the swanky Greenbrier Hotel had been converted to Ashford General Hospital for military use. It was there that the Morgantown native, whose accountant father wanted him to study engineering, first got the broadcasting bug.

Before entering military service, he had enrolled in pre-engineering at the University and then switched to journalism. He recalls liking a speech and radio course he took at that time with Don Knotts, the TV-movie star.

With this brief background and urging by a couple of friends, Fleming welcomed the opportunity to cheer up other patients at the military hospital.

Lt. Harry Adams, former WVU cheerleader, happened to be the recreation officer there and Miss Irene Spitz, a Morgantown native, was with the Red Cross chapter.

“I worked with them conducting quiz shows in the wards and giving periodic news reports and playing records over the public address throughout the hospital,” Fleming says.

From that makeshift start during the early months of 1945 up to the present time, he has developed into one of the nations foremost and busiest sportscasters.

He has broadcast nearly 1,000 games in football and basketball, pro as well as college and high school, along with untold dozens of boy baseball and other events.

Those included an estimated 425 basketball and 170 football games involving WVU teams; some 100 Pittsburgh Steelers pro games since 1958, and 78 Pittsburgh Rens basketball games in 1961-62.

Enjoys Travel

“I don’t mind traveling,” Fleming says, “I enjoy it."

It is a good thing he does, for his assignments have taken him hundreds of thousands of miles via almost every conceivable mode of transportation.

In his Pittsburgh work, even the home games are “on the road” for this 42- year-old father of two.

Born in 1923 just a stone’s throw from Mountaineer Field, Fleming lived on the Sunnyside of town until he was old enough to start school.

“I remember sitting with my mother in front of an upstairs window and looking out into the Stadium where WVU was playing football,” he recalls.

Most of his boyhood was spent in other sections and he completed all of his pre-college schooling locally with graduation from Morgantown High in 1941.

He served in the Air Force from 1942 to October of 1945, after which he returned to Morgantown and immediately became associated with Radio Station WAJR.

Work, Study

Resumption of his WVU studies followed in February 1946, along with his radio job, and he completed work for his bachelor of arts degree in speech in the summer of 1948.

For three years he earned a reputation as Jack “No Breakfast” Fleming, doing the early- morning show of music and news.

His first sports broadcasting was in the role of “color” man for Sid Goldberg, who was filling in for Charlie Snowden in the fall of 1945.

Fleming also helped Snowden after his return in 1946, then was given a trail on his own in the winter of 1947 - an assignment to broadcast a Morgantown-Elkins high school basketball game.

That summer he also did the play-by-play of Morgantown’s State American Legion junior baseball championship conquest of Parkersburg.

Now Fleming was ready to take over the WVU football and basketball network, beginning with the fall of 1947. Except for the years of 1960 and 1961, he has been the “Voice of the Mountaineers” since.

He is manager as well as sports director of station WAJR and has been honored three times as State Sportscaster of the Year.

Fleming, who resides at 377 Jacobs Drive, also is a former member of City Council and remains active in local civic and business affairs.

As one admittedly “always interested in athletics,” he organized intramural and industrial teams in basketball and softball annually from junior high through college.

Fleming served as sports editor of the Red and Blue Journal in high school and of the Daily Athenaeum in college.

He also found time to do some football officiating in area high school circles ... and got paid for it. On some occasions he even tried his hand-and-toot as basketball officiating.

Family Fans

Fleming married Glenna Plunkett of Greenbrier County on Aug. 19, 1946, while both were attending the University. They have two children, Sandy, 16, and Nancy, 14.

“They’re all good Mountaineer fans,” Jack admits.

He confesses that he himself might sound like a fan at times, too, when broadcasting WVU games.

"I strive for accuracy,” he explains. “But I also strive to entertain ... make it as colorful as possible ... because you can’t lose sight of the fact it is a show.”

“So I try to interpret from the fan’s standpoint when doing WVU games.”

In defense of possible criticism, Fleming points out that he mentions officiating on occasion because it has become increasingly vital over the last years, especially in basketball.

“When it is seemingly hurting your team,” he reasons, “you have an obligation to let others know. Otherwise, they are not getting a clear picture of the game.”

Basketball is his favorite sport to broadcast and many observers believe he has no equal in describing this sport.

“The game is so fast you don’t have to fill in as much as you do in football or baseball,” Fleming notes. It’s just a matter of developing the technique to do it.”

He tries to “keep the ball located” for his listeners -- to create a picture in the fan’s mind as he would see it- rather than delve on theory or sidelights.

Fleming rates baseball as the toughest sport to broadcast because “you have a lot of time to fill and must develop things to talk about.”

In basketball, there isn’t time to recap plays.

Football has become the dominant sport in broadcasting down through the years, and television has tended to change techniques governing description of its games.

TV has yet to affect basketball so greatly.

Give Fleming a place “where I can see the game” and he’ll manage to do his work carefree, but he says facilities have improved 1,000 percent since “the old days.”

“I used to work in the stands with fans all around me,” he explains. “And we’ve worked from such spots as the roof of a station wagon, school windows and rooftops and even on the sidelines.”

Fleming ranks the football broadcasting facilities in Mountaineer Field’s new $165,000 Press Box as the best in America.

Likes It High

For basketball, he prefers the higher perches ... like the roof- nest at Blacksburg, Va., or one of those at Raleigh, N.C.

“I keep individual scoring as well as a running score of the game,” Fleming explains, “and the higher I am the less head movement is necessary. I just use my eyes.”

He also serves as his own engineer for WVU basketball games away from home, but not even an engineer could have spared him the biggest technical trouble of his broadcasting career.

It was the second half “blackout” of a Milwaukee Classic game last month, forcing him to finish the broadcast via telephone.

Someone inadvertently had kicked the line loose inside the arena and not until some 11 minutes had elapsed was Fleming back in business.

“It took me by surprise,” he says. “We’ve had line trouble before but never this bad. Hereafter, though, we’re prepared to go right to the ‘phone without much delay.”

Among more pleasant memories, he cherishes WVU’s 100-75 victory over previously unbeaten New York U. in Madison Square Garden in 1952 and the 17-2 drought-ending football victory over Pitt in 1947 at Pittsburgh.

Fleming became so excited doing the latter that he went off the air without realizing that the hated Panthers had been awarded a safety. He had the final score 17-0.

An obviously drunken fan poked his fist into the radio booth that day and struck Vic Peelish, former WVU player who was helping Fleming spot.

On another rowdy occasion Jack himself got into a debate with a one-eyed Washington & Jefferson fan during a basketball game at Washington, Pa., and was whacked hard on the head.

“He waited until I got busy, he hit me hard as he could, then took off running,” Fleming recalls.

This happened the same night a WVU manager forgot the players shoes and the game had to be delayed an hour until someone drove speedily to deliver them.

Happier was the verbal jockeying Fleming had with a Davidson fan during the Southern Conference tournament last year at Charlotte, N.C.

“He sat behind me, reached a peak pitch during our game with Davidson, then developed warm admiration for the upsetters of his favorite team and cheered for them the next night,” Fleming relates.

The Davidson man saw Jack in Charlotte earlier this month and said that he requested the same seat behind the WVU broadcaster for this years tourney.

Because of occasional overlapping assignments, Fleming has had some awfully tiresome travel.

Example: After a WVU game at Williamsburg, Va., he drove to Richmond to catch a plane for New York’s LaGuardia Field. There he took a helicopter to Kennedy International for a jet to Chicago, where he met other members of the Steeler broadcasting crew and grabbed another jet for San Francisco.

He arrived there at 5:30 A.M. Sunday, or 13 ½ hours after he had left Williamsburg, and caught a few hours of sleep before going on the air with the Steeler-49er game that afternoon.

Another rush-rush-rush trip of 2 years ago stands out in his memory.

Fleming left here by bus Friday for Pittsburgh, from where he flew to Greenville, S.C., with the WVU basketballers for a Saturday night game there.

He left Greenville shortly after the game by plane for Charlotte, where he checked into the airport motel and rested until 5:30 A.M. From there he flew to Philadelphia, thence to Pittsburgh to broadcast a Steeler game that afternoon.

Back to South

Back to Greater Pittsburgh Airport he went Sunday evening, changed back into lighter garb, and flew to Charleston, S.C., via Charlotte in time to do WVU’s game at the Citadel Monday night.

As the man says, though, he enjoys travel.

Jack Fleming also points out reassuringly that he and his family are as close and as happy as ever despite the few times he might have omitted his traditional signoff:

“Goodnight to Glenna, Sandy and Nancy and to Mountaineer fans everywhere.”

He has tried to eliminate this reference to his family in recent years to avoid possible embarrassment to his teenage daughters, but listeners particularly women, have questioned the deletion.

They think it’s a “personal touch” and expect it.

Voice of the Mountaineers Jack Fleming

'My enthusiasm for WVU athletics is sort of built-in’

Part I

“For the play-by-play of this afternoon’s game, the ‘Voice of the Mountaineers,’ Jack Fleming …”

No matter where you look in this state, the name Jack Fleming, who began play-by-play duties for the West Virginia University Mountaineers in 1947, is a household word. The younger set of West Virginia sports fans have grown up listening to Fleming’s enthusiastic descriptions of WVU athletic events.

His professional duties have often called him away from West Virginia in more recent years (Fleming now resides in the Pittsburgh area), but he enjoys his frequent return trips to his native Morgantown and makes no secret of his genuine enthusiasm for WVU athletics.

He also doesn’t forget about the very start of his broadcasting career, “I started at the University during the war years, with a major in engineering. In about a year, a friend of mine, who was a professor, recommended that I get out of engineering; I wasn’t doing all that well,” Fleming recalls.

“I was doing well in English, speech class, phys ed, so I switched to journalism. I wanted to be a writer, before I even thought of broadcasting. I’d written sports in the Red and Blue Journal (Morgantown High School) at the same time as Mickey Furfari (executive sports editor of the Dominion Post).”

Fleming joined the Air Corps, and was injured in a parachute jump in France in 1944. He eventually wound up at a hospital in White Sulphur Springs – the Greenbrier Hotel was serving as an army hospital at the time. “We had a studio; we read the news and went around to the wards and had quiz shows and gave out soap and cigarettes and things like that.”

After his time at the Greenbrier, he went to Texas until he was discharged from the service in 1945 and returned to Morgantown. “On this particular noon I was walking my date home; she lived up in Woodburn, above the radio station which was on Spruce Street. I told her, ‘I would like to try it.’ She said, ‘Why don’t you go in and talk to them.’ So I walked her home and came back, went in and I got a job, only because they had nobody at the time.

“They had a minister who was 4-F because he was a minister, and a young guy who was 4-F because of his health, and three women. This was the 40s, and the only reason they had women was because there was a war on, and they wanted to get the women out as quickly as possible. At any rate, they were clearing out the staff and they hired me.

“I was pretty bad. I liked sports, and I did the color on the football and basketball for two years and then play-by-play … I stayed with that station (WAJR) 25 years.”

His first play-by-play broadcast was in the spring of 1947, when Morgantown High and Elkins played basketball at the old Elkins gym. “The other fellow was having some problems; he was about to leave. He’d been pretty well shot up in the war, so they sent me to Elkins and told me to take a try at it … I remember it very well,” Fleming said.

The enthusiasm he displays on broadcast come naturally, according to Jack. “Being a native, my enthusiasm for West Virginia University athletics is sort of built in … I patterned myself in the beginning after the man ahead of me; his name was Charlie Snowden. I had listened to him in the ’42 NIT (National Invitation Tournament – basketball), which West Virginia won, and he had paid his way up there to broadcast.”

Fleming believes his basketball broadcasting ability, early in his career, was ahead of his proficiency with football. “I don’t think I really developed my football to any extent until I got with the pros (Pittsburgh Steelers in ’58.

“People would always say, ‘You do OK in football but we really love your basketball.’ Then when I go into working in Pittsburgh in ’58, living in Morgantown and doing the Steelers, then I started hearing that my football was improving. You always have to improve.

“But the enthusiasm doesn’t die. There are nights – particularly in the wintertime, when you don’t have the voice, when you have a cold or are having a bad day, and everybody has them – when you walk out feeling like you haven’t worked to the full extent of your money, but you come back the next time.

“Actually, at my age, you have to control it a little more; you can’t go utterly berserk.”

Perhaps Fleming’s most discussed trait is his knack of getting on the officials when the calls are not going his team’s way. “I’ve tapered off on that considerably,” he grinned, although he recalls a few “incidents” that have occurred over his career.

“There was one official – he’s dead now – who called the last foul on Mark Workman (WVU basketball All-American) in a game at Pitt. (I said) ‘Workman fouls out of the ball game thanks to this call by this guy,’ and he was pretty upset. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

His biggest run-ins, though, came when he was working in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Chicago Bulls in the early 70s. “One official and I actually left the game. It was an out-of-bounds play, and he was rather short and he didn’t see it,” Fleming explained. “It was tapped out by the opponent. The ball should have gone to Chicago, my team, and it went instead to the other team. As he came by – that was my technique, always ahs been, I talk loudly enough so they can hear me – I said it was a lousy call.

“He stopped. We got into a debate. In the meantime, the game’s going on. This went on for about 15 seconds. Another one came over and said, ‘You hoopie, take care of your job and I’ll take care of mine.’

“I’ve had my running debates wit them, but nothing that’s been too serious.”

Over 30 plus years of sports broadcasting, Fleming has had a number of memorable moments. One, in WVU football, came in his first year as the play-by-play man. “We beat Pitt for the first time in 19 years, 17-2, in a game that ended near the West Virginia goal line … in the fog … the crowd was getting raucous,” he recalls.

“I had an injured football player, a big guy, Vic Peelish from Beckley, working in the booth with me as a spotter, and one of the Pitt fans reached in and punched him, and he picked up a chair and threw it at the fan … all of this was happening.

“In the meantime, the goal posts were going down, there were people on the field; and the game ended 17-0. I got downtown, and they used to put out the football extra, and the final score was 17-2. There had been a safety scored down in the middle of all that.

“I remember that very well. It was a great victory after 19 years. It would compare with the way we’ll feel when we beat Penn State this year.”

Another memorable moment came just a few years back, in 1975, at old Mountaineer Field on the downtown WVU campus, when West Virginia beat Pitt 17-14 on Bill McKenzie’s field goal as time was running out. “I don’t think anything could top the West Virginia-Pitt game the last time we beat them …the crowd, the afternoon, the atmosphere, the scene, the game, everything. I said to a guy from Pittsburgh at halftime, ‘No matter who wins, it’s a great, great show.

“Then we come down and win it on McKenzie’s kick. I think those were two that really stand out.”

Memory of WVU basketball is “probably the place where my mind is most crowded,” Fleming commented. He lists the names of those he followed early in his broadcasting career – Lee Patton, Whitey Gwynn, Fred Schaus, Leland Byrd, Clyde Green, Bobby Carroll and Mark Workman.

“The most exciting single game, he reflects, “was at Villanova during the Jerry West era. We were down 17 points, say, with three minutes and 30 seconds to go. We came back and won it on an out-of-bounds play at the end.

“I had these Philadelphia people – you work right in the crowd at the Palestra – and they had been on y back, on my back. We came back and we won it, and I screamed the final score and went to commercial, and then turned around and said, “Take it and shove it!’”

The past season was another high point for Fleming, as he talked about the years covering West Virginia University basketball. “I don’t think that anything can match the excitement that I felt this past year, seeing Gale (Catlett) and his kids bring it all back,” he commented.

“The victory at Minnesota (in the NIT), although it was not a thrilling finish, was as big a win as we’ve had had, dating back to the late 50s or early 60s.”

Fleming “doesn’t recall that much” about WVU’s loss by a single point to California in the NCAA finals in 1959. “I know this – had we had Chris Smith, a big guy from Charleston who went to Virginia Tech – I think we would have won the championship,” Jack pointed out.

“I actually don’t remember that (game) nearly as well as some of the other big games … I remember playing in the NCAA at Charlotte, playing St. Joseph’s. Jack Ramsey, in a tie ballgame near the end, called back-to-back time outs. They mapped their strategy, threw the ball in and Ronnie Retton stole it and West Virginia won the game.”

Fleming’s sports broadcasting career, in addition to his work with the Mountaineers, has included time with professional teams – the Steelers, the Pittsburgh entry in the old American Basketball League (ABL), and three years of radio and one of television with the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

While covering the ABL in Pittsburgh for one season, Fleming got to see a youthful Connie Hawkins, considered one of the most talented one-on-one performers of all time -- a player who was banned from the NBA for several seasons because of alleged association with gamblers while in college. Hawkins’s struggle to get into the NBA (he was eventually successful), was chronicled in the fascinating book Foul and a series in Life magazine.

“I totally enjoyed that experience. Basketball is relative … the NBA was smaller … it could be right now that they’re utilizing the talent more,” Fleming related. “I still think you can go outside the NBAS and pick up ex-players, put them out on the floor and have a good game.

“That’s what we had. We had some NBA rejects, people like Hawkins who weren’t allowed to play in the NBA. It was enjoyable.

“Hawkins, at that point in his career, was incredible. He could bring the ball up the floor like a little man, so graceful and beautiful on the court. Off the floor, he was just like a child. He’s come from a very deprived situation in New York.

“Over the years he changed. Later I ran into him in the NBA. We had the NBA all-star game in Chicago. I emceed the banquet and did the national radio. We had a tiered dais. My job at the banquet was to interview, briefly, all of (the players).

“Bill Bradley (a former Rhodes scholar then playing for the New York Knicks) had great remarks. Bob Love was down near the end, from our team (Chicago). He stammered: I was very frightened about that. Love came through beautifully. I’m over the hump.

“Hawkins had been brought in to fill in, I think, for West. I looked at Connie very friendly and said something about the old card games we used to have on the airplane back in the old days in the ABL. (He said), ‘I don’t know nothing about that.’ All I know is that I get fined by Mr. Colangelo (Phoenix Suns --- Hawkins’s team – general manager) when I won’t go on the court and I get fined by Mr. Kennedy (then NBA commissioner) when I won’t get off the court.’

“He used me to air a complaint against his general manager and the commissioner. From that point on, he had gotten too big for me. He used me.”

Fleming covered NBA basketball with the Chicago Bulls from 1970-73 as the radio play-by-play man, and later returned to do about 20 road games on television for one campaign. The television work was “not that exciting” because it was difficult to re-establish ties being with the team on such a limited basis.

The three years with the radio, though, were a different story. “I like basketball from the standpoint of sociability, because there are more games and a smaller group of people, whether it’s pro basketball or college ball,” Fleming explained. “The more games you play the happier I am. The fact that they play 82 games – I love it.

“I wish West Virginia played 82. I’d do basketball the year around … throw in a little football … I really would. I love it that much.”

In 1958, Fleming began an association with the Rooney family and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He saw this team from the time when it struggled to win one game a year until it dominated the National Football League in the 70s.

“My first assignment with them was to do the color on the road games. I didn’t work on the home games. The play-by-play man was Joe Ticker. A fellow named Red Donneley from Steubenville (Ohio) did the color. When they went on the road, Tucker moved over to local TV; Donneley did play-by-play; and I did color.

“Unfortunately, Joe lost his mother. We went over to Philadelphia. Donneley went on the TV and I got to do the play-by-play, took my own crew with me. That was memorable.

“Coming up through the years, from Forbes Field through Pitt Stadium, I have nothing but good, warm memories. I’d never been that much upset with losing.

“I can remember the day that we were out in front of Dallas, at Pitt Stadium, coming down to the end of the game, and I said, ‘There’ll be dancing in the streets of Oakland tonight.’ Boom, boom. Dallas came back and won the game. I thought I’d never do that again.

“We get to Chicago – I lived in Chicago then. I’d made all these bets with my cohorts. We had like a two touchdown lead or something. At the end I couldn’t help but say, ‘Ill have fun collecting by $1 bets tomorrow.’ All the sudden one fumble and they go, another fumble and they go out past us. Those were memorable.

“Now if you want to come down to the most memorable single moment, it would be the Franco (Harris) catch (of a deflected pass that beat Oakland 13-7 in the 1972 playoffs). That’s been used all over the country and around the world, and they used our tape on it.

“The very fact that the team gradually attained success, to know these people and to see that they put it all together—I mean the players and the coaches – has been an overall great experience. I can’t point to any Super Bowl that’s been particularly exciting; they were all great experiences.”

Fleming did receive a brief try at major league baseball, working with Nellie King on the Pittsburgh Pirate broadcasts for about three weeks in 1971 while Bob Prince was ill. “It was a great learning experience,” he said. “My baseball had been confined to Little League, Pony League, American Legion and some West Virginia ball.”

Major League ball was “much easier to do” than other varieties of sport,” Fleming believes. “There’s no question in my mind I could do it,” he concluded. “There’s no chance in Pittsburgh. Joe Brown (former Pirate general manager) wrote me off saying I had too much of a football image.”

Part II

A television opportunity with WTAE-TV (channel four) in Pittsburgh brought Jack Fleming back to this area, after he spent three years covering the Chicago Bulls and serving as sports director at WIND radio. The return led to him rejoining the Mountaineer Sports Network, an opportunity for which he is “:grateful,” but, looking back, Fleming wonders if it wasn’t too late in his career to switch from radio to TV.

He was reluctant to leave Morgantown for Chicago in the first place, but was happy while he worked there. “They offered me the job, and I said no,” Fleming remembers. “Then they talked me into going up there. I got a look at the city – the area where I would work, where I would live – and I met some of the people. I liked it.

“I spent 25 years at one station. I talked to my family and I talked to the Rooneys (Pittsburgh Steelers). They said, ‘It won’t upset us a bit,’ So I made the move.”

He enjoyed the work, even when he wasn’t doing the play-by-play for the Steelers and the Bulls. “Radio is basically where I belong,” he said. “I didn’t have that much work to do. I did the Bulls; I did the Steelers; and at different times I did the sports show for them. For a while it was in the morning. Most of the time it was 6 or 6:05.

“I’d go out and get an interview at Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs), go to sleep in the stands, watch the game, go down on a Wednesday afternoon to Cominskey Park (Chicago White Sox) … It was a good job, in the third largest market in the country. You’ve got pro basketball in the third market and pro football in what was the ninth market.”

He left this behind, though, to try television with WTAE for three years, beginning in 1973. During his time with the station, he was involved in a highly publicized incident at the WVU Coliseum when he openly cheered for the Mountaineers in a basketball game against Pitt.

“The interesting thing was that the people down here were cursing channel four, saying that they gave me the business. Te Golden Panthers (at Pitt) are telling everybody they got me fired, and none of this is true,” Fleming emphasized.

He explained that he never signed a contract with the station, and worked out the three years on a verbal agreement. John Conomikes, the station’s general manager, had a heart attack early in the fall of 1973, soon after, Fleming came to Pittsburgh and didn’t return to work until the next January.

Conomikes and Fleming met, and it was noted that “things just aren’t going right,” Fleming recalls. “We never signed a contract,” Jack added. “We had a verbal agreement, which, you’ve got to have a feeling, a lot of other stations might have broken. They are good friends .. good, honorable people … I worked out my three years with them,” he said.

“Looking back, I’m a little disappointed that I made the move … it was a little too late for a radio man to make it (transition to television), unless you’re really in some specialized field. On the set, I wasn’t cutting it from the standpoint of image.

“I thought, and they agreed, that I gave them piles of work. I worked without any help. In other words, I did six days a week, and a lot of those days started at eight in the morning and went to midnight, with time off to grab a bite and a shower.”

Ed Conway, the station’s former sports director, was rarely permitted to work, Fleming pointed out.

“I came in there and I gave it a shot,” he continued. “I think I did a good job for them, and they admit it. I worked as hard as anybody they had. I was the first guy to ever come down here (WVU) and cover anything. I was the person that told them there was something down here. I’ve been to Fairmont State (basketball). I went out and covered insignificant things at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon – did all these things, but that wasn’t good enough. The image wasn’t getting across. They wanted something else, Conomikes told me that that day.”

When Jack tenant, who had been serving as “Voice of the Mountaineers” since Fleming went to Chicago, decided to go to Louisville, Leland Byrd, former WVU athletic director, called Fleming to offer him the job. “I go to John (Conomikes) and John said, ‘No, you can’t do it because you’ve got to be on the news,’” Fleming said.

“(I said) ‘Hey, we’ve already agreed that my time is limited, and I need to establish a new base,’ He said, ‘You’re right.’ That’s when I came back.”

Fleming enjoys the opportunity to again cover West Virginia University sports. “They have been very good to me,” he commented. “I lost the rights once (early 1960s) – we lost two years – and went to Chicago and Pittsburgh -- we lost four years. Dr. Byrd was the man who brought me back, and I’ll always be grateful.”

He enjoys looking ahead to the next Mountaineer football and basketball and Steeler football campaigns. “I am totally enthusiastic about the things that are happening (at WVU),” he said.

West Virginia football is now moving in a positive direction under Don Nehlen, Fleming point out. “I thought the man did a terrific job. I love Frank Cignetti., loved his work,” he commented. “I thought that he didn’t get the full chance that he deserved.

“We made the transition, and in comes the new man. I think we have to get behind his administration. I think he did an incredible job. You like the things that you saw in the program

“Then Gale (Catlett) –that’s just another story. We’re old friends from back when he was in high school. I would see him when I was in the pro league and he was at Kentucky and Kansas and those places, so we’ve had this running friendship. We have great chemistry.

‘We’re both sort of hams. We do a radio show. We like to needle each other. He’ll get me about age and I’ll get him about how ugly he is, or something like this. Great communication.

“I think that the important thing about Catlett is that he has revitalized West Virginia basketball. Eighteen years it’s been, and we’ve had some good coaches here and some good players, and we’ve never really had things going, statewide support.

“It declined while Bucky (Waters) was here. We had 19-9 seasons, but nobody was really that stirred up because we weren’t running with the ball … Catlett has put an exciting dimension to the game at West Virginia University.”

Fleming also considers the Steelers to be a solid entry in the National Football League, in spite of a disappointing 1980 campaign. He feels the entire season was ruined for the club in its two upset losses to Cincinnati. “I’m not the least bit pessimistic,” he concluded.

Fleming now resides in Pittsburgh for professional reasons. In addition to his play-by-play duties, he does freelance work on radio and television, including some commercial activity. He also keeps hi Morgantown ties, as he has throughout his career. “At this point in my career, I would like to live here (Morgantown), but there are no job opportunities. Pittsburgh is where the work is,” he explained.

“If I had my druthers, I would like to have a job here, maybe running the network, that would also allow me to broadcast West Virginia and broadcast the Steelers, but we’re happy up there.”

Although he has been involved in the broadcasting business since the 40s, the enthusiasm doesn’t die. “I look forward to the next 25, 30 or 40 years,” Jack grinned.

Jack Fleming

In his 39th football season, the voice of the Mountaineers is awed by support for team

Jack Fleming simply shakes his head. As he enters his 39th season as the voice of West Virginia University football, Fleming is in awe of what he sees on autumn Saturday afternoons at Mountaineer Field in Morgantown.

"I marvel at the support,” Fleming told The State Journal. “I continue to marvel. I can’t stress it too much. You hear about the economy of the state and see all those people pour in there to support this team. The support is there.”

In this centennial season of Mountaineer football, more than 60,000 of those faithful Mountaineer fans will greet their new team Saturday, Aug. 31, and a new football conference -- the Big East -- in a night game against the oldest of WVU rivals, the University of Pittsburgh.

And Jack Fleming, the Morgantown native, West Virginian alumni, and veteran broadcaster, will report this latest chapter of WVU sports history over the Mountaineer Sports Network and its 62 radio stations in West Virginia and several states. With color man Woody O’Hara by his side, he will welcome the listening audience with, “The hills of West Virginia resound with the sounds of Mountaineer football.”

Fleming, who also provides play-by-play announcing for Mountaineer basketball, doesn’t hide his feelings. His life is filled with the Old Gold and Blue. Two daughters from his first marriage are WVU graduates. A granddaughter is a senior in forestry at WVU. And, if he has his way, his two young daughters from his current marriage will follow the path to Morgantown when the time comes.

“I have a lot of years and a lot of loyalty,” said Fleming, who makes his home in this Pittsburgh suburb so he can be close to his job as play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League. “I love the school, and I love the state.”

Mike Parsons, assistant athletic director and executive producer of the Mountaineer Sports Network, sees Fleming’s loyalty to the Mountaineers as a strength of the MSN football radio broadcasts, which reach an estimated 500,000 people -- about 52 percent of the state’s population 12 years old and older. (MSN is one of the largest college sports radio networks in the nation in numbers of stations.)

Television has increased its football coverage, but that occurs on a sporadic basis, Parsons said.

Radio and Jack Fleming are constants.

“The one think about radio is that it’s consistent and live, and we sell the fact that it’s Jack Fleming,” said Parsons, who is responsible for arranging affiliations and advertising support for WVU sports broadcasts through the in-house network. “He is very much a Mountaineer, his broadcasts are very much West Virginia oriented, and that’s what we want.

“The fans wouldn’t be listening if they weren’t fans, and we feel they want to hear from a West Virginia partisan.”

The son of an accountant, Fleming lived his early years in the Sunnyside area of Morgantown, at the time a stable residential area just a stone’s throw from old Mountaineer Field.

The stadium and the schedules and the crowds have all grown and changed before Fleming’s eyes.

Fleming recalls his childhood autumns, when he would watch West Virginia play Davis & Elkins and Washington & Lee and West Virginia Wesleyan. The crowds were small in those days, he recalled, maybe only a couple of thousand people. The Mountaineers were on the edge of big-time college football, but the program gained momentum after the war.

Fleming began his broadcasting career in 1945 in Morgantown, where he was earning a speech degree at WVU. In 1947, he began working the WVU football games for a loose-knit network whose member stations provided the announcers for the games on an alternating basis. One announcer became ill and left the state.

Fleming stepped in. Except for two interruptions totaling six seasons, the job has been his ever since.

During those early years at Morgantown radio station WAJR, Fleming broadcast area high school games on some Fridays and the Mountaineers on Saturdays. In 1958, he hooked on as the play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers-a job he has held steadily since then. The Steelers, one of the NFL’s poorest teams in those years, filled out his weekend work schedule. They eventually would play and win four Super Bowls-and Fleming would be at each one.

“On one Friday,” Fleming recalled, “we went up to Tucker County to broadcast a Morgantown St. Francis game against old Mountaineer High at Thomas. No one had ever done a game from there, and we had to hook our line to a tree. The next afternoon, we were at Pitt stadium to do West Virginia-Pitt. Then it was off to Greater Pitt (airport) and to Los Angeles, and on Sunday we were in the Coliseum for the Steelers and Rams.”

Fleming lost his announcer’s job at WVU for the 1960 and 1961 seasons. Another radio station won the rights to originate the broadcasts for those two seasons, but Fleming returned in 1963. He left in 1970 for Chicago and a whirl as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Bulls of the National Basketball Association. He stayed there for four seasons, and returned to Pittsburgh in 1974 to try his hand at television.

Fleming said his TV shot didn’t work out, Leland Byrd, then the WVU athletic director, asked him to replace Jack Tennant, who announced Mountaineer sports for four years in Fleming’s absence before taking a job at the University of Louisville.

“I’ve been there ever since.” Fleming said.

From Fleming’s perspective, no one person or event has led West Virginia football from the outskirts of the big time to its status today as a frequent visitor to the nation’s top 20 and post-season bowl games and a member of a highly regarded new football conference. He skips over the names of the football coaches he has known- Bill Kern, Dud DeGroot, Art Lewis, Gene Corum, Jim Carlen, Bobby Bowden, Frank Cignetti, and the present coach, Don Nehlen.

He has kind words about all of them- even those whose losses mounted up faster than wins.

But the new conference, he confessed, is something he still is analyzing.

“As most fans are, I’m vaguely aware with all the problems that started with Penn State and that avalanche of activity to get into conferences,” Fleming said. “I don’t totally understand the economics. This is big business ...

“The Big East, I guess is a logical thing. I am personally disappointed that they (Mountaineers) are not in it in basketball ...

“I’ve been here a long time, and most of us who have been have coveted the idea of a total sports conference. Either Penn State or Pitt blocked it one way or the other. I guess (Penn State football coach Joe) Paterno worked for it and gave up. I don’t know the ins and outs, but it never happened, and it’s a shame.”

But the possibilities, he said, are attractive- bowl affiliations and big markets through member schools Miami, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Temple, Syracuse, and Boston College.

“But it puts stress on your program,” he said. “If you’re going to move and groove in that conference, you’ve got to do something to keep up with them. You’re talking about Miami, you’re talking about Syracuse, which has a solid program. Pitt is down now for obvious reasons, but they’ll bounce back.

“So you’ve got a big assignment, but we’re capable. We have the finest facilities in the country barring none and capable people. We have that and the backing you get from the people in the state.”

While West Virginia joins Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Miami, Rutgers, Temple, and Virginia Tech in the Big East football league, the Mountaineers apparently will cease their long-standing relationship with Penn State, which is the 11th, newest, and easternmost member of the Big Ten.

The end nears for a relationship that Fleming would like to have seen end years ago.

“I’m so happy,” said Fleming, who admitted that he might not be in the mainstream on the issue. “I have advocated for years- during that long stretch when we couldn’t beat them for about 30 years- then what is the point in playing these people when you can’t win?”

Even when West Virginia snapped Penn State’s dominance over WVU 17-14 in 1984, Fleming couldn’t enjoy the victory.

“Most of the thrill was taken out of that big victory because they didn’t have the fences up, and the idiots ran over the field and Joe got to call the game,” Fleming recalled. “That ruined it for me.”

In addition, Fleming won’t miss the winter basketball trips to Penn State’s remote campus.

“(Indiana University basketball coach) Bobby Knight hit it on the head,” Fleming said. “It’s terrible. Indiana will be flying into Pittsburgh or Harrisburg and busing into State College. He says it’s a wintertime Boy Scout trip or something. It’s just a terrible place to get to.

“Pitt is different,” he said. “Pitt causes me great consternation … We always have a chance to beat them. I went a lot of years as a kid when we couldn’t beat them, but that has leveled off. But with Penn State, I just think it’s out of sight. May they rest well in the Big Ten.”

Flemings’ memories and thoughts about WVU and sports abound. A sampling:

* On WVU’s stay in the Southern Conference, which ended in 1968, and the Atlantic 10:

“I saw it grow, and I liked the Southern Conference. It was not advantageous in football. I think Jim Carlen wanted out because you pretty much had to be confined to William & Mary and VMI. But in basketball, it was a great conference. Starting with the big Southern, before it split, and then later the social aspects were just terrific, the people in the south and the friends you made …

“You don’t find that in the east. You’re never going to find it. It’s a different type of people, a different type of activity, and believe me, it’s no fun. You go to the Atlantic 10 basketball tournament, and you might as well go to the Alaska Shootout.”

* On his most memorable football game:

‘The ‘75 Pitt game, which West Virginia won (17-14) on a field goal by Bill McKenzie at the end. Randy Swinson caught the ball and went out of bounds. It was a magnificent football game. The stadium was full. National television was there. That sticks out in my mind to a degree- but possibly no more than Dick Nicholson falling in the end zone at Penn State to give us a big victory (19-14 in 1954) in that period when we beat them three times in a row before darkness settled in.”

* On the upcoming season:

“I’m very much encouraged. I’ve had a strong belief in the program all the way through. I think, sure, you’re going to have your ups and downs. Maybe you’re a Penn State or a Notre Dame and you get it on a given level and keep it there. But I don’t think that’s going to happen to the average school …

“I think the critical item is quarterback. The running backs are there. The receivers. I think the offensive ling will be able to get the job done. You have got to have a quarterback to lead that team.”

* On the possibility of playing Marshall University in football:

“I’d rather play them in football than Bowling Green.”

* On former head coach Bobby Bowden, who has built a highly successful program at Florida State since he left WVU after the 1975 season:

“I came down from Chicago (where he was working at the time) to be marshal for the homecoming parade (in 1970). I went to the game. They played Duke. I saw him punt the ball (through the end zone) into the seats from the 34-yard line. I thought, ‘My God! This guy can’t coach.’ That shows you how much I know. I never asked him about that. That was one of the most remarkable things I had seen.”

* On Don Nehlen, the Ohio native who is entering his 12th season at WVU and has taken the Mountaineers to seven bowl games.

“We have our best talks on Fridays before the game at home down in his office or out on the road in the hotel. I’ll never forget. I had my wife with me last fall. Usually he has things to do- bed checking and he used to like to watch ‘Dallas’ on Friday night. We like to do our pre-game show and get out of there. He sat down on the bed and wanted to talk. He said, ‘You know, I think we can get them.’ He outlined to my wife and me exactly what they had discovered watching Pitt films. You know the outcome. They kicked them good (38-24). He knew exactly what was going to happen. He was just glowing, and that isn’t like a coach the night before a game.”

* On old Mountaineer Field, abandoned after the 1979 season and eventually razed:

“You have to grow and there was no where to grow there. But I loved it. I miss it. I still miss it ... It was one of the finest viewing stadiums that I have ever worked in from the standpoint of a broadcaster because you were so close.”

* On Gale Catlett, the WVU basketball coach whom Fleming met when Catlett was playing Hedgesville High School in the state basketball tournament in Huntington:

“There was hardly anybody in the building. In those days, you didn’t get advance information to any degree, and I went over to poll the delegation (from Hedgesville) on heights and weights. This big kid stepped out and said, ‘Me. Fleming, I’ve always wanted to meet you. My name is Gale Catlett.’ It’s been a friendship ever since.”

* On memorable players:

“As you grow apart from them in age, you know them a little bit less. The squads have gotten bigger in football, so it’s harder to know them. I guess as a player, Major Harris had to be one of the greatest show pieces you could watch. Yet I recall, going back to the 50s, watching Freddy Wyant as an option quarterback and what a thrill it was to watch this guy. I got to see Sam Huff, Joe Marconi, Beef Lamone, Tommy Allman, Bruce Bosley, I’ll leave somebody’s name out.

“Some do stand out. For instance, a guy in this current era like Dale Wolfley. I knew both of his brothers. Craig played for Syracuse and the Steelers. Ronnie had played at West Virginia before him. What a great family and what a fine leader this young man was.”

Fleming, who casts aside any questions about his age, wants to work as long as he can.

“I feel good,” said Fleming, who fills out his year’s work by announcing for commercials and working banquets. “You’ve got to have physical stamina to stay with it. You’ve got to have the voice to stay with it. You’ve got to have eyes. God has to bless you in a lot of ways.

“My problem is that I have an 8-year-old and I’d like to get her through WVU,” he continued. She’s in third grade, so that means she’s got about 13 years to go before she graduates from my alma mater. And I’ve got to work. A lot of people think that since I’ve been there so long that my kids get a free education.

“No. Not so.”

In other words, Jack Fleming will be back in the press box, watching in awe as the Mountaineer faithful stream into the stadium and getting ready to tell those who can’t be there what their favorite team- and his favorite team- is doing on the field of play.

Fleming to Receive 1999 Chris Schenkel Award at College Football Hall of Fame

The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame has announced that Jack Fleming will receive the 1999 Chris Schenkel Award, which will be presented at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., Aug. 13, 1999, during the Hall's Annual Enshrinement Ceremonies.

A football broadcaster for West Virginia University, Fleming becomes this year's recipient of the award, which was created in 1996 to honor Chris Schenkel for his life-long commitment to excellence in broadcasting and his long and distinguished association with The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. At the request of Chris Schenkel, the award is to be presented to a broadcaster who has had a long and distinguished career broadcasting college football, with ties directly to colleges and universities.

Jack Fleming has been in broadcasting for 47 years. During this time, he broadcasted West Virginia University football games and received many honors, including seven West Virginia Sportscaster of the Year awards. He broadcast two West Virginia national championship appearances and 15 bowl games. In 1995, West Virginia awarded him the "Order of Vandalia", WVU's highest alumni honor. In 1996, he was the recipient of the Gene Morehouse Award for distinguished service in West Virginia. Besides his work for WVU, he also served as the voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers, broadcasting the "Immaculate Reception Game" and four Steelers' Super Bowl victories.

Fleming becomes the fourth recipient of the award. Chris Schenkel received the inaugural award in 1996, Jack Cristil in 1997, and Max Falkenstein was honored in 1998.

MSN Insider

Jack's final MSN Insider Internet column

Tuesday is normally the day Jack Fleming provides us with his Internet commentary on West Virginia University athletics, his personal experiences as a broadcaster, or whatever is on his mind.

Because of the holiday we pushed this latest effort back to today.

I'm finishing what he started.

I talked to Jack briefly Wednesday morning and we discussed different ideas for today's column.

He had Florida State coach Bobby Bowden on his mind.

Jack recalled how they once conducted their interviews in the bowl end of the stadium at old Mountaineer Field. They would climb up the stairs and sit on the wooden bleachers near the top -- away from the commotion on the field.

Jack remembered Bobby's first year coaching in 1970 following the departure of Jim Carlen. During one particular game, Bowden's punter kicked one from inside the Duke 35 that sailed out of the end zone.

"When I saw that punt go flying halfway up into the stands I'm thinking, 'We're in trouble with Bowden coaching us,'" Fleming recalled Wednesday morning. "Boy how I was wrong!"

That morning he also planned to write about his first and only football recruiting trip. Rick Trickett, a member of Frank Cignetti's staff from 1976-79 who recently rejoined the Mountaineer staff for his second tour of duty, asked Jack to help him land a prep prospect from Pittsburgh.

That player wound up being Dave Johnson, a four-year WVU letterman who is now an assistant coach at Marshall.

Jack always had a story in his hip pocket and I was always eager for him to fish one out.

Over the course of the last three years, our twice-weekly telephone conversations often drifted away from the business at hand toward a distant West Virginia game or an interesting event that happened in his life.

Like the time he got into a shouting match with Red Auerbach during a regular season Chicago Bulls-Boston Celtics game.

Auerbach was really giving the officials the business that night and Fleming, never shy of critiquing the zebras on air, finally had enough. In a voice loud enough to be heard at both ends of the bench, Fleming complained that the officials were letting Auerbach get away with murder.

Fleming's stance earned him a legion of fans in Chicago as well as Milwaukee, where WIND's strong signal reached on cold winter nights.

"I still get notes from people from Milwaukee over that," Jack once marveled.

Fleming also enjoyed his days working in Pittsburgh -- particularly his role describing the magnificent Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the 1970s.

Quarterback Terry Bradshaw was one of his favorites. He recalled the time he needed to talk to Bradshaw for his pre-game radio show, but could never quite pin down the superstar. Fleming finally cornered the elusive quarterback near owner Art Rooney's office.

"OK, let's talk in Mr. Rooney's office," Bradshaw said.

Amazingly, Bradshaw sat in Rooney's chair, put his feet up on the desk and lit one of his cigars.

"Unbelievable," said Fleming.

Jack spoke highly of defensive back Donnie Shell, and was pleased to run into him at the Steelers final home game at Three Rivers Stadium in mid-December. Jack battled the cold weather that day to see many of his old friends, perhaps realizing that all of those hellos he said that day were also good-byes.

Yet as much as Jack loved the Steelers, broadcasting their games from 1958 to 1993, his real passion was the West Virginia Mountaineers. It was something he made no bones about.

Jack was a big fan of coach Gale Catlett and treasured their friendship -- which blossomed and grew over the years. He always marveled at how Catlett could rejuvenate himself after each basketball season.

Jack also loved to talk about his favorite West Virginia players -- Jerry West, Bruce Bosely, Fred Wyant, Sam Huff, and Hot Rod Hundley just to name a few.

He always referred to Hundley as "Hots."

When Jack lived in Chicago in the early 1970s, Hundley often called Fleming as soon has he got in to town to meet up for a night out. During that time, Hundley was always working on Fleming to improve his wardrobe.

"He would talk me into these ridiculous outfits," Fleming grinned. "And I bought them."

By his own admission, Jack wasn't a great athlete. His father persuaded him to go out for the football team at Morgantown High but his athletic career was abrupt.

Later in the 1950s when he became an established broadcaster, Fleming was once asked to play tennis with basketball coach Fred Schaus, athletic director Red Brown and the school's physical education dean, Ray Duncan.

Fleming was paired with Schaus and the two proved no match for their athletic counterparts. Each time Jack missed a volley or his shot landed well outside the line, Schaus, a fierce competitor, grimaced and barked, "Concentrate Fleming, Concentrate!"

I could always draw a laugh out of Jack when I would tell him to "concentrate!"

At any rate (Jack's favorite transitional device), he developed a love for sports through broadcasting and writing. To this day many don't know what a fabulous writer Jack was and his knack for always finding the right adjective to describe the moment at hand.

His scene-setters for football and basketball games will never be duplicated.

"… So light up your pumpkins, put on your scariest Halloween masks and keep that radio close by as the hills resound with the sounds of gold and blue football; the West Virginia University Mountaineers are on the air!"

That was his setup for West Virginia's Halloween meeting against No. 2-ranked Penn State in 1986. How could you not listen to the game after hearing that?

***

One of the things Jack truly enjoyed was receiving mail from West Virginia fans all over the country. He was absolutely amazed by the e-mails that came in, many detailing his prominent place in their lives.

"Make sure they have a place to list where they are writing from," were always his instructions.

Jack never really got accustomed to the Internet and e-mail, instead writing out his columns long-hand on legal pads before dictating them to me on the telephone. Those dictation sessions were more like news reports or radio voiceovers, Fleming actually using inflection as if he were reading it to an audience of thousands. I enjoyed every single one of them. He was always interested to learn more about this new thing called the Internet, testing his teenaged daughter's patience to the limit.

Invariably, our conversations almost always wound up with a few words about our families. Jack was intrigued with my brother's military background, himself having served in the Air Corps during World War II as a navigator on a B-17 bomber.

Jack also never failed to ask about my five-month-old daughter, Sydney; he often provided words of encouragement for this new daddy.

Those are the things that came to my mind when I learned Jack Fleming had passed away Wednesday afternoon.

And those are the things I take from him.

Jack, I'm going to miss you.

Local Bridge Named in Memory of Fleming

For decades, Jack Fleming’s voice was the bridge that carried West Virginia University athletic events to distant places. Now people can drive across a bridge named after the late WVU broadcaster.

On Wednesday, the state Senate passed a resolution requesting the Division of Highways name a bridge on I-68 after him. The newly named “Jack Fleming Memorial Bridge” is located just outside Sabraton at the 3.2 mile-marker.

“It’s something I wanted to do,” Sen. Michael Oliverio told the Dominion Post. Oliverio is one of eight senators who introduced the resolution. “We’ve honored Don Knotts and Jerry West. Jack is a guy who had a tremendous impact on West Virginians for decades.”

Oliverio said the decision to name the bridge near Sabraton in Fleming’s honor was a logical choice because many fans travel to Milan Puskar Stadium from that direction.

Jack Fleming was born in Morgantown and attended Morgantown High School and West Virginia University. Fleming joined the Air Corps during World War II and flew 23 missions before a B-17 he was in was shot down over France. During his convalescence Fleming took up broadcasting at the Greenbrier Resort and he became the voice of the Mountaineers in 1947. He was an employee of the Mountaineer Sports from 1947-96 with the exception of a two-year interruption in the early 1960s and a four-year stint as the radio play-by-play voice of the Chicago Bulls in the early 1970s.

Fleming also broadcasted Pittsburgh Steelers games from 1958 until 1993. In 1999 Fleming was the recipient of the Chris Schenkel Award from the College Football Hall of Fame for his lifetime contributions to the profession and the sport.

Two years later Fleming was inducted into the West Virginia University Hall of Fame. He died in January, 2001.