Courtesy the Charleston Gazette

(December 6, 2010) Often in our state, we take some of our strengths for granted. I have written often about the legacy of coaches that have come from our state. We also have a legacy in sports broadcasting. A number of the outstanding broadcasters in the country have spent time in our state.

This is certainly not a complete list, but here are some of the outstanding broadcasters that are a part of our state's legacy.

# Tony Caridi - Caridi is a major-market, major-network talent who has chosen to work in our state as the radio voice of the Mountaineers. He has stayed because he has developed a great love for our state and its people. Replacing the legendary Jack Fleming was not easy, but Caridi has done it with a very quiet professionalism.

# Stan Cotton - A former radio voice of Marshall football and basketball in the early 1990s, Cotton has been the radio voice for the Wake Forest radio network since 1997.

# Wes Durham - Durham is one of the top play-by-play guys in the country. He served as the radio voice of Marshall athletics in the very early '90s. He then went to Vanderbilt and is now the popular radio voice of Georgia Tech and the Atlanta Falcons. His father, Woody, is a broadcasting legend in North Carolina as the long-time radio voice of the Tar Heels.

# Ken Jones - The state's forgotten sportscaster, Jones was the sports director of what was then WHTN-TN Channel 13 in 1970. He was the host of the Rick Tolley Show for Marshall football and was killed in the 1970 plane crash. The era that saw Bob Bowen at Channel 3, Wade Utay at Channel 8 and Jones at Channel 13 was a very good era of television sports in our region.

# Dave Pasch - If you watch college football and basketball on ESPN, chances are you have seen Dave Pasch doing play-by-play. He is talented and versatile and one of most visible and respected broadcasters in the country. He is also the radio voice of the Arizona Cardinals. Pasch started his career as a young broadcaster in Morgantown for the West Virginia Radio Corporation.

# Mike Patrick - A native of Clarksburg, Patrick has long been one of the most recognized play-by-play voices for ESPN. He has been a long-time broadcaster of college football and basketball and was the voice of Sunday Night Football until 2005.

# Jay Randolph - The son of former U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph, Jay started his career in Clarksburg in 1958. In a 50-year career, he worked games for the St. Louis Cardinals and did NFL football and major league baseball for NBC Sports. Randolph was a good amateur golfer and one of the top network golf announcers in the nation.

# Bill Roth - One of the more talented broadcasters to come through our state, Roth was the voice of Marshall football when George Chaump took the Thundering Herd to the I-AA national title game in 1987. He then moved to the Virginia Tech network, where he has settled in as a popular voice of the Hokies since 1988.

# Jim Thacker - Thacker may be the best basketball play-by-play announcer to ever come through our state. In the 1950s and '60s, he was the sports director of WSAZ-TV and also did Marshall's radio play-by-play. In the mid-'60s, he moved to Charlotte and became the television play-by-play voice for ACC basketball. When ESPN first began doing tape-delayed college football in the early 1980s, Thacker was one of its top announcers.

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