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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
For so many fans, Munson is the Bulldogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
College football, in its moleskin and hightop-shoes days, grew up with those unseen heroes of the broadcast booth. Television was yet no more than a wisp of somebody’s imagination. Your team was identified with an old familiar voice. You turned on the old Philco or Atwater Kent and out came this familiar tone bringing to life in words the stars you knew otherwise only through headlines and blurry newsprint. You and your favorite broadcaster thereby became close kilocycle friends.
Once television came along, gradually moving through the “snowflake” stages to high definition, taking over your game room with huge, enveloping screens, the old broadcaster was sort of lost in the dust. Some, not all. Larry Munson not only held his place, but seemed to grow in the affection of the loyal Georgia Bulldogs follower. At least television never cut into his faithful populace. You identified Georgia football and Munson, Munson and Georgia football. You wondered how and why, since every game day the stadium was packed and rolling with woofing patrons decked out in some combination of the colors red and black.
Dramatic moments in Georgia football are etched in history by something Munson blurted out in one of his totally spontaneous verbal creations. It came across in a vinegary voice that cannot be imitated, hoarse and throaty and strictly Munson. You may have watched it by television, but chances are the televised voice was drowned out by a radio tuned to Munson.
My exposure to Munson has been limited. I was in some press box somewhere, trying to create something of my own. But I had time. Munson had no delete button on his voice. Once it was said, it was history. To this day, though, he has never found himself impounded by something carelessly thrown out across the air. The late, great Ted Husing once described a Harvard quarterback’s play as “putrid,” for which he was subsequently banned from Harvard games.
Well, time closes in, and Munson has decided to draw the curtain. Imagine, if you can, a Georgia football game broadcast without Munson presiding in his crackling description. (“The Dawgs line up at the Auburn 5, and …”) How all these men of broadcast have become as much a part of the game as the coach, many of them gone, but, oh, the sounds they left behind — John Fulton, Jim Fyffe, Al Ciraldo, Stan Torgerson, John Ferguson, and the pioneers, Ted Husing, Graham MacNamee, and — Georgians, hold your breath — Bill Munday.
Munday came first. Famed nationally, as one of “The Big Three” with Husing and MacNamee. He was the original Munson, with phrasing distinct only to himself. Brought down by booze, reduced to operating an elevator in city hall before he was rediscovered and brought back in the ’50s, dried out and infused with his passion. Munson will depart with a far broader reverence, when the time does come, and it would be this old crock’s expectation that Scott Howard steps into the breech.
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