“The football is equidistant from the sideline stripes”
“…breaks into the secondary!”
“Six tall and 195”
“He cannot go”
“Bulldogs recover! Bulldogs recover! Bulldogs recover!”
A pleasant Southland breeze brought the unique and imperishable radio calls to Verona’s Lee Memorial Cemetery on Wednesday. There, under a maroon-and-white burial-vault cover, Mississippi State radioman Jack Cristil was buried. The service lasted about 20 minutes after the hearse arrived flying a State flag.
Over in Starkville, in the Scott Field pressbox, is a plaque honoring sports information man Bob Hartley, everyone’s friend. Assessing the six decades when Cristil called 636 State football games suggests the words for another plaque over by Jack’s microphone. They come from Hamlet as Ophelia assesses the prince at about halftime: “0 woe is me/ T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
The oddities/ heartbreaks that Jack sent out over those 636 games make up their own book of gridiron shocks and trials, especially when the opponent was archrival Ole Miss. Here are a few he transmitted, just since 1981– and he had broadcast 28 seasons before that one. Consider:
*1981: pass interference on an endzone interception at 00:06 leads to the Rebel’s winning score with 00:00 to play;
*1983: Artie Cosby’s game-winning field-goal drives straight for the middle of the uprights, but a sharp wind drops the ball into the endzone before it reaches the goal-posts;
*1992: Jack calls 11 MSU snaps inside the Ole Miss 10. None yields a point.
* 1997: Rebel quarterback Stewart Patridge, facing second-and-23 from his 34 with 61 seconds left, drives his team 66 yards for a touchdown, then passes for a two-point conversion and a 15-14 win.
A lamentable catalogue it is, though later success-1999 (“super-miraculous” came over the radio), 2007 and Cristil’s last Egg Bowl in 2010 — balanced some of those low points and allowed Jack his fairly recent signal: “Wrap it in Maroon and White!”
It seemed to this fan that only in the last I 0 years of his football work did the weight of what he had seen crack through Jack’s focus and objectivity. For he said:
*2008 against Louisiana Tech: “This third period has been nothing but a parade of mistakes by Mississippi State in just about every area of the game.”
*Against South Carolina in 1995: “Mississippi State is being penalized for having too many men on the football field. That’s too bad because we could use them.” South Carolina scored 65 points that October night.
*Maybe it was after that game that Jack delivered his tart choice of “the Sonic Drive of the Game.” His pick: “As far as I’m concerned, the Drive of the Game may be my drive home from Starkville to Tupelo …. ”
Sid Salter’s book, Voice of the Bulldogs, has a CD with this and 43 other big moments, including that 1999 finish. Of that ending, we hear him say: “Never … in the 47 years that I’ve been involved in it have I seen a fourth-quarter comeback like this.”
After State beat Alabama in 2007, I asked Cristil if he were feeling the weight of the catalogue. If he was, he wouldn’t admit it to a distant acquaintance and gave an answer completely loyal to his school.
What Jack saw and reported endeared him to every State football fan as a fellow agonizer. His loyalty, fairness (‘just an outstanding play by the youngster” on the other team, he would say) and his good humor set an example useful on other, more serious fields.
Hazard, a former city editor of The Dispatch, is an occasional contributor.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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