Iowa Hawkeye Fans Mourn Death of Broadcasting Great Jim Zabel

Hawkeyenation is in mourning today as one of its greatest broadcasting legends has gone on to that great Kinnick Stadium in the sky.

Jim Zabel, 91, whose voice was associated with many of the great moments in the modern era of University of Iowa Hawkeye sports, died on Thursday at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. 

Jim Zabel, Iowa broadcasting legend, dies at 91 (Press-Citizen via Des Moines Register)

A moment of silence, please, for a voice that was rarely still: Jim Zabel, the broadcasting legend whose hyperbolic descriptions of University of Iowa sports teams entertained radio listeners for more than half a centur, died Thursday at his Scottsdale, Ariz., home. He was 91.

His wife, Jill, confirmed the news.

“He loved everybody, and his world was Iowa and the Iowa Hawkeyes,” she told the Register.

The emotional tributes to Zabel have already begun by local sportswriters and will likely continue throughout the day. Here are a few that I've seen.

The state knew him, though, from broadcasting Hawkeye football and basketball games. He called Iowa football games for 49 years. He was an unabashed homer, he could play fast and loose with details of the game, and it didn’t really matter. He made mundane games sound fun, he made big games sound enormous, and none of it was faked. He loved it, he loved it, he loved it.

It’s late Thursday night morphing into Friday morning, and if I were to call everyone I know who knew Zabel better than I did and had fabulous stories to tell about him, I’d be on the phone until July. But I do have personal memories that I’ll happily share now.

Miller: Zabel Passing Marks the End of an Era (Hawkeyenation.com)

While WHO was a successful entity prior to Zabel’s arrival, Zabel came on board in the 1940′s and before the Iowa Hawkeyes successful run under Forest Evashevski in the 1950′s which attracted the multitudes to the WHO signal on Saturday afternoon to take in the Iowa football broadcasts.

Zabel called those Rose Bowl games in the 1950′s and times were great.  Then came the 19 years without a winning season, which is when Zabel honed his creative word smithing.  Though I didn’t listen during the 1960′s as I was not yet born, I have had people tell me that Zabel was unmatched as it related to making a one-yard run sound like something special.

Those lean years likely added to Zabel’s enthusiasm when Hayden Fry turned things around in 1981 and Iowa made it back to the Rose Bowl.  That began a great run for Iowa, which meant a great run for Zabel.  The entire decade of the 1980′s where the Iowa football and men’s basketball teams had arguably their most successful decades and Zabel’s voice and his enthusiastic broadcasts were the perfect soundtrack.

Jim Zabel Goes To Heaven (Black Heart Gold Pants)