Published: May 16, 2008 01:24 am            

Jay Randolph in 50th year as sportscaster

MORGANTOWN — Jay Randolph, who grew up in West Virginia, is in his 50th year as a nationally known sportscaster and still going strong in St. Louis.

Old-timers will recall that he started his career in 1958 as sports director of WHAR radio in Clarksburg. He broadcast high school football and basketball games in the Monongahela Valley before getting his first big break in 1960.

That’s when his station outbid Morgantown WAJR for exclusive rights to the broadcasts of West Virginia University football and basketball. Two years later, WAJR regained rights to the network.

But Randolph really didn’t mind, because via Wheeling WWVA he got nationwide exposure, and that gave his budding career a major boost. So much so, he looks back on that modest beginning as the key to his highly successful career.

“I absolutely enjoyed those two years doing Mountaineer games,” Randolph said from his St. Louis home. “It was the first real national exposure I could get because the WVU games were on that powerful radio station (WWVA).”

He remembers that a lot of Mountaineer fans blamed him for WVU’s 0-8-2 football season in 1960 because he had taken Jack Fleming’s job.

“I also remember that the following season, Mike Ditka’s last year as a player at Pitt, we beat Pitt at Pittsburgh,” he continued.

“But the thing that made me proud about that experience was we were able to outbid the Morgantown station for the two-year contract and the university wasn’t getting much of anything for the football and basketball rights.

“When WAJR bid again and won back the rights, they paid an amount up there where the money should have been.”

The university now owns the rights but retained WAJR as the flagship station for the network.

Randolph always will be grateful for getting the two-year opportunity.

“That enabled me to make a lot of contacts, and later I got to do some basketball games on TV that were very helpful to my career,” he recalled.

WVU athletic director Robert N. “Red” Brown and C.D. Chesley, a pioneer in early sports TV, were friends and helped him further his career.

Those two arranged for Randolph to broadcast a WVU-Pitt basketball game back to the Civic Center in Charleston on closed circuit TV. Chesley eventually gave him more work as his career skyrocketed over the years.

After play-by-play stints with the Dallas Cowboys and Southern Methodist University in the early-to-mid 1960s, Randolph went to St. Louis and joined KMOX radio as a staff announcer in 1966. Then from 1967-1988 he was an announcer and sports director for KSD (later KSDK) television.

During that span, he anchored sports coverage for the station’s newscasts and called TV baseball play-by-play for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Randolph, who turns 74 in September, also worked for NBC in the 1970s and 80s, announcing a wide variety of events. Those included the National Football League, Major League Baseball, college football and basketball, PGA Tour and LPGA golf, the Professional Bowlers Association, three Olympic Games and the Breeders’ Cup.

More recently, he was the first play-by-play man for baseball’s Florida Marlins from 1993-96 and hosted their TV pre-game from 1997-2000. He continues to broadcast golf events for CNBC and the Golf Channel, and in 2007 he returned to calling St. Louis Cardinals games on KSDK television.

He is doing 22 such games this season, mostly on weekends. He also does a show at the Fairmount Race Track during the season.

A 1958 graduate of George Washington University, Randolph was an outstanding young golfer. He won the Egyptian Amateur championship in Cairo in 1956, the Collegiate Southern Golf Conference championship in ’57, and the Washington D.C., Amateur in ’58.

He also played in four U.S., two British and two Canadian amateur championships.

“I still play a little golf, but not very well,” he said.

Randolph remains one of the most knowledgeable and most respected sports reporters and announcers in the country. He was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in January 2005 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in February 2008.

His son, Jay Jr., 38, broadcasts golf events for the PGA Tour Network on XM Satellite Radio. He also works for an all-sports station in St. Louis.

Randolph and his wife also have another son, Brian, and a daughter, Becky Self, both of whom live in Florida. He is the son of the late Jennings Randolph, a U.S. senator from West Virginia for several years.

        

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