Cal Football: Joe Starkey Knows His Final Big Game Will Be Emotional
Joe Starkey knows exactly how he will react Saturday when he sits down behind the mic to call his final Big Game on the radio for Cal fans.
“Oh, it’s going to be awful. I’m an Irishman and I cry,” Starkey said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt it will be hugely emotional for me.”
Starkey, 80, will have just one Cal game after Saturday’s matchup against rival Stanford at Memorial Stadium. He will end his 48-year career the day after Thanksgiving when the Bears face UCLA in Berkeley.
That will bring his total to 550 Cal football games since he became the voice of the Bears back in 1975, when Mike White was coach, Chuck Muncie finished second in the Heisman Trophy race and almost no one knew junior quarterback Joe Roth had barely a year left before he died of cancer.
Joe Starkey
Starkey has called Cal games in 32 states plus Tokyo.
“That’s the great thing about college football — we get to go to so many places that are so wonderful,” Starkey said. “We went to Georgia in the Herschel Walker era — I’m not cheering for him for Congress, either.”
This is, of course, the 40th anniversary of The Play, which Cal is commemorating outside Memorial Stadium with a statue of Kevin Moen, who took the last of five laterals on the last-second kickoff return, dashed into the end zone and plowed over Stanford trombone player Gary Tyrrell to secure a 25-20 victory.
Just as big an enduring part of The Play is Starkey’s radio call, which is consistently the sound track dubbed over video of what is considered one of the most remarkable moments in college football history.
We are all now used to Starkey’s words, including him screaming, “The band is on the field,” a phrase probably never before uttered during a football broadcast.
But for many years, Starkey agonized over the concern that he had blown the call. The fact is, other than Richard Rodgers — who handled the ball twice on the return — Starkey didn’t mention the names of any other players.
Asked this week what he recalls thinking as The Play unfolded in real time, Starkey seemed relieved to unload his burden.
“Mostly terrified,” he said. "I always had a sense of when a broadcaster had a really big moment, how important it was that he got it right. So I was terrified that I got it wrong.”
Starkey wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what had happened in those crazy four seconds. Everyone at Memorial Stadium was stunned by The Play, and virtually none of them knew exactly what took place.
There was no replay available, no satellite coverage, no internet. He was on his own.
If anything, Starkey’s frantic attempt at describing the scene fits perfectly with The Play itself.
Former Cal quarterback Mike Pawlawski, who has worked alongside Starkey in the radio booth for 27 seasons, was a middle-schooler when Moen-to-Rodgers-to-Garner-to-Rodgers-to-Ford-to-Moen became part of college football lore.
“The call of The Play is awesome,” Pawlawski said. “With Joe’s professionalism on top of it all, he’s trying to hold it together but you can also hear the passion in his voice.”
Moen has done dozens of appearances alongside Starkey over the past four decades, and he says the subject of what Starkey didn’t say all those years ago occasionally comes up in conversation.
“He’s always mentioned that was kind of his faux pas during his call,” Moen said. “To me, that all adds to the magic of the moment. You know, it was chaos. No one knew what was going on. That just makes the call that much better.”
Starkey eventually found peace with his frenetic description of The Play.
“It wasn’t until quite a while later when I began to watch it over and over and over again, I finally got comfortable with it when I realized, you know, there’s no reason to feel guilty — I couldn’t see ‘em,” he said. “There were just too many people on the field. Too many band members. So the fact that I didn’t call the names doesn’t bother me anymore.”
It also took a while for Starkey to put together a remarkable coincidence involving The Play.
Kevin Moen, is turns out, is the son of Don Moen, for whom Starkey worked at Union Bank in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. “I think that’s one of the most amazing side stories of this whole thing,” Starkey said.
Starkey began his broadcasting career just a few years later and since 1975 has missed only a handful of Cal football games during a tenure that spans the terms of nine U.S. presidents.
Cal honored him several years, naming the radio booth at Memorial Stadium in Starkey’s honor. All through the Cal football offices are reminders of The Play and Starkey’s call.
“You walk down the halls or go into our team room and you see the quotes,” coach Justin Wilcox said. “It’ll stand forever. When they do the greatest moments of sports and college football, that’s going to be a part it for the remainder of time.
“It’s pretty neat to know the guy who made the call.”
Pawlawski, who played for the Bears 30 years ago, said Starkey was on the recruiting tape Cal sent him as a high school quarterback.
“He is the voice of Cal football in my head,” Pawlawski said. “For me, he’s going to be that voice forever.”
Cover photo of (L-R) Jackson Sirmon, Joe Starkey, Kevin Moen, Gary Tyrrell, J.Michael Sturdivant and Jack Plummer by Bita Ryan, NBC News
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
