keith jackson

Today, ABC college football announcer Keith Jackson told Richard Sandomir of The New York Times that he is retiring ... again. Sports fans will recall that the man with the classic Southern cadence and down-home sayings retired in 1998, only to return the next year to do a limited west coast schedule of games. Eventually he returned to being the network's #1 college football voice, doing games all over the country. Some retirement.

This time around, Jackson, 77, told Sandomir that he was given a schedule by ABC that included east coast games. Since he didn't think that would be good for his health, he decided to retire and "learn to be a senior citizen," despite a lucrative offer by ABC/ESPN to stay. Jackson, who also called baseball and other sports for ABC, was the original play-by-play voice for Monday Night Football when it premiered in 1970. Needless to say, he's been on our TVs for quite some time, and he'll be missed.

So I'm watching the game last night (quick segue, great great great game, and I'm so happy Texas won; I'm sick of USC, and freaking Vince Young was amazing), and since the Rose Bowl just happened to air on a channel where there are other shows, you just know they're going to get rammed down our throats ad nauseum. A litte after 11, right after USC had just kicked it off, a little bug came up on the screen for Emily's Reasons Why Not. Keith Jackson then muttered through the description of the show before mumbling "I don't care." He then did the same thing for Jake in Progress, pronouncing John Stamos' name Stah-mos instead of Stay-mos. Now I can come at this from both angles. On one hand, I agree with Jackson; I'm sick of seeing and hearing that crap during football, and does ABC really think that this is the audience they should be promoting these two romantic comedies to? Yea, I'm gonna watch Emily's Reasons Why Not, but I'm not in the majority here. On the other hand, it is their job to do so, and that was just unprofessional. Plus, who doesn't know how to pronounce Stamos? The man's been around forever -- perhaps you've heard of his ex-wife? The networks just need to stop forcing this cross-promotion into every aspect of every show; produce quality shows, the rest will take care of itself. Let me know what you think.