Key Highlights
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- Even the “Granddaddy of Them All” has a dad. That’s the late and legendary ABC Sports announcer Keith Jackson, who coined that term for the Rose Bowl Game and it stuck.
- He clicked off his microphone for the last time precisely 20 years ago after Texas beat USC on this storied field. The game was a classic and so was Jackson, the Saturday evening soundtrack for generations of college football fans.
- His melodic baritone filled millions of households with tales of Southerners and soph-ah-mores, with praise for the “big uglies” and proclamations of “Hello, Heisman.”“I still hear his voice,” said his daughter, Melanie, standing Thursday in the office of the family home in Sherman Oaks, where Keith and Turi Ann raised their children Melanie, Lindsey and Christopher.
- “I come up here sometimes just to say hi to him.” Melanie Jackson, daughter of the late Keith Jackson, talks about some of her dad’s memorabilia.