And yet another stilled voice

So apparently the good Lord isn't happy with the quality of sports broadcasting up there in the great beyond.

Apparently all those games he can get now on Direct-To-The-AfterlifeTV are sorely lacking in able chroniclers, and so he called home another one yesterday. Goodbye, Keith Jackson. No more rumblin'-fumblin'-stumblin' for you. No more praisin' the big uglies up front. You are off to the good place, where you will spend eternity calling Oklahoma-Nebraska '71, or maybe Texas-Arkansas '69, or maybe the last game you called, the epic Rose Bowl of '06, when Vince Young 'n' them knocked regal USC off its high horse.

Like every stellar voice of his generation -- like Dick Enberg, who just went to his reward last month -- Jackson commanded microphones in a lot of booths, but for those of us of a certain generation he will always be tied to one. Like Enberg was the voice of college buckets for a lot of us, Jackson was the voice of college football.

He and Chris Schenkel are always who you hear when you think about Saturday afternoons back in the day, when you only got a couple of college football games a weekend on national TV, and the games therefore seemed like occasions in a way they don't today. As fun as college football is now, it seemed even more fun then, and Jackson's folksy porch-swing cadence fit it almost organically. So tied to college football is it in your mind, in fact, that you almost forget his other notable gig.

Keith Jackson, after all, was Howard Cosell's and Don Meredith's original third partner in the booth on Monday Night Football.

Keith and Howard and Dandy only lasted that inaugural season, and maybe that was for the best. Jackson and college football, the man and the sport, simply fit one another too well. Whether or not he ever actually uttered his signature "Whoa, Nelly!", or whether he uttered it once and not the dozens of times we seem to remember hearing it, remains a matter for conjecture. And in the end, it doesn't really matter one way or the other.

He was, after all, a "Whoa, Nelly!" kind of guy.  It fit his style, and his style fit college football like no one else's has.

And so, have fun calling the classics forever, Keith. And may the big uglies keep you safe.