Whoa, Nellie!

At the end of the 1998 College Football season, Keith Jackson announced his retirement from college football, with his last broadcast to have been the 1999 Fiesta Bowl for the National Championship between Tennessee and Florida State. He rescinded this decision the following fall and began to do a more limited schedule of games, teamed with Dan Fouts, almost exclusively sticking to venues on the West Coast, closer to his current home in British Columbia.

Today, Jackson decided to retire for good on April 27th, 2006, with a phone call to the New York Times. "I'm finished with play-by-play forever," he stated. "This is the perfect time," Jackson told the newspaper. "I don't want to get back into the pressure cooker of play-by-play and worry about travel. I don't want to die in a stadium parking lot."

Jackson's retirement is big-time news. Keith Jackson is the frickin voice of College Football, for crap's sake! No more epic calls, no more west-coast bias, we've lost one of media's only Pac-10 boosters with this announcement. Keith... today the Lodge gives props to a legend in broadcasting. We tip our caps to you, Big Daddy.