If you asked the Spud to rattle off the best sportscasters of all-time, Charlie Jones would easily rank in the top five. He was as recognizable to fans of the old AFL as even Curt
Gowdy, calling the first-ever league game on ABC and then going on to 38 years as a pro football play-by-play announcer.
Jones, who died this week at 77, was there at the beginning when Roone Arledge created ABC Sports in 1960. When the AFL moved to NBC in 1965 in what was then a groundbreaking rights deal that solidified the league's future and led to its eventual merger with the NFL, Jones followed to become one of the peacock's leading sports personalities for more than three decades.
While at NBC, Jones called 28 different sports and was a fixture on its Olympics telecasts. But what the Spud will remember most about this great broadcaster was when he teamed with Pat Summerall as the original co-hosts of NFL Films' seminal "This Week in Pro Football." A forerunner of today's highlight shows, the syndicated weekly was unlike anything else on the air in the late 1960s and early '70s. The wonderfully grainy film, Sam Spence's timeless score and the always dramatic narration by two of TV's legendary voices were all things to behold. Hopefully, ESPN Classic will reopen the vault and put "This Week" back on in the fall.
Jim McKay, Tim Russert and Charlie Jones. It was not a good week.
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