Steve Jones turns 200 on Sept. 3.
We know what you’re thinking:
I get that the Penn State football and radio broadcaster has certainly been around for a long time.
He is, after all, a 1980 PSU grad and has been doing Nittany Lion football and basketball for a combined 60 seasons. (Thirty-five basketball and 25 football, for those of you scoring at home.)
But c’mon, he’s not that old.
OK, you’re right: It only seems that way.
Jones has hosted pre-game coaches shows with nine different Penn State head football and basketball coaches. He’s done radio play-by-play of 18 different Penn State varsity sports.
He emcees the weekly Penn State football Quarterback Club lunches and co-hosts the Penn State football and Penn State basketball radio shows from late August through mid-March. He also hosts sports talk programs weekdays from 1-3 p.m. on State College’s ESPN (1450 AM) and from 3-5 p.m. on Sunbury’s WKOK.
He has done Penn State basketball since 1982, having broadcast 1,007 Nittany Lion games. (No. 1,000 came on Feb. 13, 2016, at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb., a 70-54 Penn State loss to the Cornhuskers.)
Throw in all those State College Spikes games he’s broadcast since 2006, and you do get a sense that Jones is just about everywhere. In State College. On campus. And on the radio dial. All true.
Still, 200 is a big deal – it’s the number of consecutive Penn State football games Jones will have called come Sept. 3. Jones will hit that milestone in 11 weeks and a day, when the Nittany Lions host Kent State in the 2016 season opener in Beaver Stadium. The game kicks off his 17th season in that role, having been the broadcast’s No. 3 man for eight seasons prior to that.
Jones succeeded the late, great Fran Fisher as the radio network’s play-by-play man on Aug. 27, 2000, when the Nittany Lions played Southern Cal in the Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Jones, known for a encyclopedic memory built on the foundation of a work ethic fueled by hours of research, remembers that game like it was yesterday.
“29-5,” says Jones. “Two-and-a-half minutes in, USC blocked a punt to score a touchdown. Frank Strong was the one who blocked the punt. Carson Palmer was the quarterback and he was only a sophomore, and Troy Palomalu returned an interception back for a touchdown. Penn State had built a lot of its game plan around Eddie Drummond in the preseason and all of a sudden he tweaked a hamstring and he was barely used in the game.”
Jones’ partner that day was Penn State linebacking legend Jack Ham, a college and pro football Hall of Famer. And Ham will be alongside Jones in the Beaver Stadium press box when they call No. 200 as a team.
Jones credits a lot of his success to Ham as well as his basketball broadcast partner, Philadelphia sportswriter Dick Jerardi, and a very veteran support crew.
“Jack and Dick are so smart,” Jones said in an interview earlier this week. “Jack sees things that other people don’t see. Dick has a perspective that other people don’t have. Part of my job is to give them all the room in the world to operate and part of my job is to listen. Even when I’m doing a broadcast play-by-play – ‘OK, what personnel package is it, who’s coming in, down and distance’ – I’m listening to what Jack has to say. They both have the ability to take the broadcast in a direction that is best for the fan. If I’m not listening, I’ve ruined that.”
As an undergrad at Penn State, Jones worked for the campus radio station WDFM. He then spent myriad hours working in local State College radio, covering Penn State and high school sports, hosting sports talk shows from behind a big picture window as students walked by, and doing morning talk radio – sometimes just an hour or two after returning from a mid-week Penn State away basketball game.
He’s paid his dues. And he says it’s certainly been worth the price.
“There isn’t a game in Beaver Stadium that at some point, I don’t look out at the east and south stands – and I can still see part of Mount Nittany – and think how lucky I am to do this,” he said. “Every time I walk into the arena, I think how lucky I am. They point me toward a field or court and I get to talk about a game with friends. It’s something I always wanted to do, so I don’t take it for granted for a second.
“I appreciate the job now more than ever. And it’s not appreciating the job more each year; it’s appreciating the job more each game. A big part is the people. I couldn’t have two better partners than Jack and Dick. I also get to work with guys like Jeff Tarman and Roger Corey and Joe Putnam and before that, Loren Crispell. When you work with really good people who are smart and fun to be around, you enjoy your job.”
Jones does realize that it’s not always peaches and cream working with him. Tarman, head of broadcast operations for Penn State’s radio coverage of football and basketball, annually traverses thousands of miles as the two of them do all the broadcasts for Penn State football and basketball.
“I’ve worked all 199 football games and over 700 basketball games with Jeff,” said Jones, stretching out his words in dramatic broadcasting veteran fashion. “That poor…tortured…soul.”
Here are some of Jones’ thoughts on selected aspects of his career and profession:
PREPARATION
“As we sit here right now, I have every team prepared for football and basketball for the coming season. That doesn’t mean there won’t be changes along the way. But I take April and May and do all the basics and do the teams in chronological order for football, then alphabetical for basketball. I started with Kent State in football and finished up with Wisconsin in basketball. I do three deep at each position – height, weight, class, hometown, career highs. That way, when the season starts, every player is up to date.
“The week of the game, obviously there are changes. Guys get hurt, guys leave the team, someone moves up, someone is beaten out on the depth chart. Then you take all the seasons stats up to that point. So all that is done before I start. It’s all in the computer. I use Excel. And I back it up on a flash drive.”
“I’m at every practice; sometimes in basketball, they go short and I can’t get there. You go in and the first thing you want to see is injuries – then it’s a matter of who’s replacing who. Is there a change on the depth chart? What are they thinking game plan-wise? It all helps formulate what you want to do on Saturday. Then I’ll get ahold of Jack or Dick, so they’re prepared.”
PREPARATION PAY-OFF
“A lot of the preparation pays off on the pre-game show. Someone asks you a question and you can give them an answer. Now, they don’t always believe the answer. One time last year someone asked a question about recruiting and scholarships. Of course, under NCAA rules we can’t talk about specific recruits.
“I said, ‘Penn State has 20 available scholarships, when it’s all said and done. Things can obviously change, a fifth-year player leaves or someone opts for the draft.’
“The guy looks at me and says, ‘Where did you come up with that number?’
“I said, ‘Because Coach Franklin told me yesterday.’
“It had come up the day before in casual conversation. Turned out the fan asked the question. And I was thinking, ‘Excuse me, no offense, but I think my source was pretty good.’”
LIFE LESSONS
“My parents (Ronald and Barbara) taught four really great things. No. 1, have a great work ethic. No. 2, be loyal. No. 3, my father told me not to worry about things I couldn’t control. And No. 4 is, Don’t ever be afraid to work with someone who can make you better.”
THE STARS OF THE SHOW
“James Franklin and Patrick Chambers are the definitive word on what is going with their teams. I am not. I may supplement. It’s always important for me that I don’t speak out of turn.”
BEING POSITIVE
“Under the category that ‘I could really care less,’ people may say that I see everything through blue and white glasses. OK, if you’d like to sit in my chair for about a week, you may see some things my way, too.
“It’s not my job to sit there and start ripping people – ‘I can’t believe he dropped the ball. They need to get someone else in that there.’ That’s not my job. That’s the job of James Franklin and Josh Gattis – to get someone else in there. And when they do, it’s my job to say, ‘Look, they have someone else in there.’ Their job is to coach and it’s my job is to announce it.
“It’s a matter of being analytical and not making it personal. And that’s what makes Jack and Dick so good at it. Besides, when Pat and James are sitting down in their film rooms, trying to figure out what’s going on, they’re being exponentially more critical than anyone else.”
THE SANCTION ERA
“We’ve gone through a period of time here at Penn State that no other program has had to go through. I’ve called James Franklin’s first two years here the recovery phase of the program. The bowl game against Boston College, he had 41 scholarship players available – and they won the game. You’re trying to get things back to normal. This was not 1995 and we didn’t have 85 scholarships. But the other guy did.
“Now I feel like they are at the foundation phase of the program. Jack and I have tried to keep that perspective as to where they are in trying to build this back to normalcy. But you’re trying to do that build while playing games. For the fans each game is a report card, and justifiably so. Your emotions are week by week in football. The great thing about football is that you have six days until you get to the next one.
“There’s a sense of normalcy has returned. They’re now where they can really start to build what they want to do, they’re going to play a style of game that fits the personnel they recruited, and we’re going to start to see something that’s really exciting as time goes on. Of course, they also got stuck in the toughest division in America besides the SEC West.”
