HE WAS KING --
Cawood Ledford was the voice of Kentucky Basketball
by Kyle
Macy
On a few short weeks we will all tip off another season of
college basketball. Radio play-by-play announcers will once
again paint pictures for countless listeners across the country.
They will do their best to bring the action to fans as if they
were there watching the game. Nobody was better at using the
microphone as an artistic brush than the late, great Cawood
Ledford.
On Sept. 5 the broadcasting world lost one of the legendary
voices of the game, with the passing of Cawood who called
Kentucky basketball games for 39 years. And you won't find a
Wildcats' fan that didn't love him.
Kentucky fans would trek to the top of the mountains just so
that they could pick up his broadcasts. As Cawood use to say,
"the Wildcats will be moving left to right on your radio dial."
As a youngster, Bobby Knight would tune in to hear Cawood.
Following Duke's overtime win, over Kentucky, in the 1992 East
Regional Finals, Mike Krzyzewski bypassed all the other
interviewers and spoke on the air with Cawood, first. Coach K
was another big fan. Everybody loved the man.
But what made him so special was not the way he brought the game
to fans, but how he was as a person.
When I went to play my collegiate basketball at Kentucky I had
heard about his legendary presence and was a little intimidated
at the idea of being interviewed by him.
As is still done today, broadcasters like to sit down,
one-on-one, with the players before each game. I remember
vividly the first time I went into to speak with Cawood. I
walked in a little nervous and walked out with a friend.
Cawood was such a down to earth, sincere guy. Talking with him
was like talking to your own brother or your best friend. And
Cawood Ledford had a lot of friends.
It was the first time I have ever been to a funeral where you
needed a parking pass and a credential in order to get in. The
out poor of family and friends was unbelievable and only fitting
for such a great individual whose career spanned five decades.
As a broadcaster, he called it like it was. He was not your
typical radio voice in that he was not a 'homer.'
As the story goes, Adolf Rupp approached Cawood following a
Kentucky loss, a loss in which the Wildcats did not play well at
all. Rupp asked him how he called the game and Cawood told him I
called it just like I saw it. Rupp looked at him, smiled, and
told him to keep on calling them that way.
Joe B. Hall, Eddie Sutton and Rick Pitino all worked closely
with him, but Cawood wasn't just the radio voice of UK
basketball. He also brought Wildcats football into homes in the
Bluegrass State.
His voice was also familiar to fans of the Kentucky Derby as he
called the 'Run for the Roses' for 22 years. Three times he won
the racing industry's highest honor, the prestigious Eclipse
Award. Two times he won the 'Englehard Award' for excellence in
his coverage of horse racing. He also has received the 'Silver
Horseshoe' honor from the Kentucky Derby Festival for his
contributions to racing and the 'Dean Eagle Award' for his
Kentucky Derby coverage.
Cawood was voted as the state of Kentucky's 'Sportscaster of the
Year' 22 times and four times was named the top college
basketball announcer in the nation. He broadcasted the NCAA
Final Four on a national radio network for 18 years, the most of
any announcer in history.
Recently a good friend of mine told me that Cawood was asked in
an interview who is all-time favorite Kentucky Wildcat was. He
said it was Kyle Macy.
Whether or not that is true is not important, but it is
important to me that I was blessed with the opportunity to have
had my college games broadcasted by Cawood Ledford.
He turned the microphone on for the first time on WHLN Radio in
Harlan, Kentucky in 1951 and while he may have left us this
radio phrase will live on with all of us -- "Hello everybody,
this is Cawood Ledford."
This column
originally appeared on CollegeInsider.com |
