R.I.P. Larry Munson

[jeffcrom]

It's a sad night in Georgia. Word has just come that Larry Munson, the longtime football play-by-play broadcaster for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, has died at the age of 89. Munson (who gigged on piano with Tommy Dorsey as a high school senior) called the games for 40 years (he retired in 2008), and made no pretense of being objective - he loved the Bulldogs, and got incredibly excited when they won. He was famous for his pessimism - if the Dogs took the lead with only 45 seconds to go, Larry would say, "There's an eternity left on the clock!"

My first wife was such an intense Bulldogs fan that I had to leave the house when the Dogs fell behind in the 1980 Georgia-Florida game - she was just too unpleasant to be around. So I was driving around in my car, listening to the game, and got to hear Munson's most famous call ever when receiver Lindsay Scott outran the Florida defense and ran most of the length of the field for the winning touchdown: "Run, Lindsay! Lindsay Scott! Lindsay Scott!" Later, when he had calmed down a little, he revealed that he had broken his chair ("It was a metal, steel chair.") and explained his lack of objectivity: "I didn't mean to beg Lindsay to run, but I had to."

Listening to Georgia football has not been as fun and idiosyncratic for the past couple of years, and now it will never be the same. So long, Munson.

Edited November 21, 2011 by jeffcrom

[GA Russell]

I remember seeing on Atlanta television ca. 1990 a news report of a contest UGA students had doing impersonations of Larry. One guy was very good.