52 seasons, 21 coaches: Memphis Tigers broadcaster Matt Dillon recalls plays like a 'historian'
The background notes supplied to the media before the University of Memphis men’s basketball game against Wichita State earlier this season included a deserving nod to those not appearing in the American Athletic Conference game.
The Wichita State notes package listed a collection of men’s college basketball announcers who have spent decades describing the sport. Wichita State’s play-by-play veteran Mike Kennedy is in his 44th season, the longest tenured voice in the AAC. Outside the AAC, there are several in their fifth decades, led by Duquesne’s Ray Goss, calling the action for a 56th consecutive season.
There was an omission. Call it a case of semantics that left a longtime U of M radio analyst off the list.
As the Tigers approach the season-ending American Athletic Conference tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, Matt Dillon will be putting the finishing vocal touches on his 52nd season with Tigers basketball. Since his roles have been multifaceted during those 50-plus seasons, he did not make Wichita State’s list of notable veterans, a compilation limited to radio play-by-play announcers and analysts.
Matt Dillon's diverse broadcasting career
Dillon’s work through the years has included handling the play-by-play on the televised replay of games – beginning in the early 1970s on WKNO, the local PBS station – and being part of the broadcast crew for live televised games on local stations. He’s also had roles as the host of coaches shows and as a sideline reporter for the Tigers’ football broadcasts. He remains a pregame and postgame host for U of M football and basketball broadcasts.
Yet his most visible, or audible, role is that of men’s basketball analyst with longtime play-by-play voice Dave Woloshin. The pairing began 22 seasons ago. Woloshin is in his 26th season behind the courtside mic.
“Obviously he’s got this great recall,” Woloshin said. “And he remembers things like any great historian does. He remembers almost all the plays.”
Passionate and excited
Dillon, in his early-70s, is as passionate and excited about the job today as he was starting this journey 50-plus years ago. By his estimation, he’s worked with 10 basketball coaches and 11 football coaches during his run.
“It’s commendable what he’s accomplished, what he’s seen,” said Todd Kucinski, general manager for Tiger Sports Properties, the multi-media rights holder for U of M athletics. “He’s that calming voice. He’s a coach/teacher at heart. He sees everything. He doesn’t get too high. He always makes you think about a different perspective on things. He’s just been one of those institutional voices. We’re lucky to have him.”
All the experiences, the highs and the lows, have been memorable for Dillon. All have been worth his time, of which he has shared with other occupations, including a lengthy stint at Northwest Airlines when it had a hub in Memphis. He also was a longtime Memphis-area high school assistant football coach, first at Overton then ECS.
“The best part of being a broadcaster? Just being able to experience the closeness of being there,” Dillon said. “You can get the emotion of the game when you are right there. I feel lucky to be a part of it. Every day I say to myself I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this.”
For Dillon, it began in the early 1970s when the late George Klein, Elvis Presley’s longtime friend, helped Dillon get a spot on the fledgling WKNO-TV replay broadcasts of home games. The replays usually started at 10:30 p.m., giving fans enough time to drive home from the Mid-South Coliseum and re-live what they had witnessed.
Before cable television, and before the advent of VCRs, the replays were must-see TV for Tigers fans. The replays were still popular in the mid-1980s.
“Everyone would rush home after the game to watch the delayed telecast,” Woloshin said. “I would too because those teams were so charismatic. Those were teams with Otis Jackson and Keith Lee and Doom Haynes and Andre Turner.”
Remembering the historical moment
Dillon’s first season was a historical one. He debuted on WKNO-TV’s broadcast team during the 1972-73 season, one in which the Tigers – led by Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson and Larry Kenon – reached their first NCAA championship game. Gene Bartow was in his third season as basketball coach, taking over a program that had struggled in the late-1960s to its pinnacle. The Tigers lost in the title game to UCLA. Dillon took over play-by-play duties during the following season.
“Coach Bartow took me under his wing,” Dillon said. “He was great. He got me started on the right foot.”
Dillon said the announcing crew for WKNO-TV was stationed in an area atop the Mid-South Coliseum when he began. Former WMC-TV Channel 5 sports director Jarvis Greer was one of the cameramen for the telecasts before he started his Channel 5 career.
In the mid-1980s, he joined legendary play-by-play announcer Jack Eaton on the WMC-AM 790 radio broadcast team. Dillon worked road games with Eaton and served as analyst on Eaton’s final Tigers basketball broadcast – the Metro Conference Championship game at the end of the 1986-87 season. The Tigers beat Louisville, in Louisville, for the title.
“I did road games, but not home games, because I was doing the WKNO telecasts,” Dillon said. “But Jack was great to me. That was the greatest experience of my life. I had been listening to him all my life, and I remember that first game I was kind of nervous.”
But Eaton quickly calmed Dillon’s nerves or possibly elevated them.
“He said `Matthew’ – he called me Matthew – `there’s something I want to show you,’” Dillon said. “It was a 3-by-5 index card with the opponents’ starting lineup. He said: `That’s my preparation. You do everything else.’”
An unobstructed view of program's history
Through the years, his seat has given him an unobstructed view to the program's history. He has watched the Finch/Robinson/Kenon-led Tigers make the 1973 NCAA final and a Lee-directed squad earn a Final Four trip in 1985. He’s seen Penny Hardaway, perhaps the most talented All-American to play for the Tigers, excel as a player and return as a coach. And he’s been part of countless games against Louisville, the U of M’s top rival when the two were in the same conference.
Dillon also was courtside when the Tigers had their best opportunity to win a national title. In the 2008 title game in San Antonio, the U of M led Kansas in the final seconds of regulation before losing in overtime.
“Sometimes Matt will make these predictions,” Woloshin said. “He’ll (preface it and) say 'Dandy Don (Meredith, the original NFL Monday Night Football analyst) is calling' to sing 'Turn Out The Lights, The Party's Over.' He’s been wrong a few times, like in 2008.”
Dillon said he turned to Woloshin during the final media timeout and, off the air, said 'Can you believe we’re about to win the national championship?' The Tigers led by nine points with 2:12 left, but were denied a first national title when Kansas’ Mario Chalmers sank a 3-pointer with two seconds left to send the game into overtime. Kansas won, 75-68. After that final media timeout Dillon said “everything went wrong.”
Despite the bitterness of that moment, there are far too many memorable ones to count. In addition to the relationships Dillon built through the years with Finch and Bartow, former coach Josh Pastner and players like Elliot Perry and Andre Turner, there are games like the comeback from seven points down with 18 seconds to go at Oral Roberts in 1987. Memphis won on a 3-pointer at the buzzer by John Wilfong.
Comfortable, information-laden style
Dillon’s comfortable, information-laden style is displayed during his pregame segments on the U of M’s opponents and his interview with a Tigers’ assistant.
“I have worked with Matt for 17 years,” said Dan O’Brien, producer of the broadcasts since 2007. “What amazes me is he can still talk with the (players) today like he did back in the 1980s.”
And, O’Brien said, even though the game has undergone myriad changes since Dillon began, he remains in step with the changes.
“When he was broadcasting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, college basketball (teams) had two big men at all times,” O’Brien said. “Now it’s one big man and you spread the floor out. Still, he knows all the plays. He knows it’s a UCLA (set). He knows it’s a back screen. He knows it’s a box set coming out of a timeout.”
Mike Kennedy, in his 44th season doing radio broadcasts for Wichita State, also an AAC member, shares some similarities with Dillon. Both are graduates of the school they call games for and both have spent decades with their respective programs because, as Kennedy said, they “continue to enjoy that association ... and all the relationships you build.”
“I’m sure Matt has done that being the guy he is,” Kennedy said. “That really keeps you going.”
At 43 years, Kennedy and analyst Dave Dahl are recognized as college basketball’s longest-tenured duo. Goss is the longest-tenured individual in Division 1 college basketball. He has called roughly 2,600 games, or more than half the ones played in the school’s 107-year history.
Kennedy and Dillon and other league broadcasters will reconvene at a local brew pub in Fort Worth, Texas, the night before the start of the AAC tournament for dinner, drinks and to share familiar stories in what has become a part of their annual ritual.
“That get-together has created a little bit of a brotherhood that everyone enjoys,” Kennedy said. “And for as long as Matt and I have been at it we can talk forever.”
As prepared for a broadcast as any analyst can be and blessed with an institutional knowledge of Tigers basketball, Dillon possesses another trait that impresses Woloshin above his sidekick’s other attributes. And it has nothing to do with basketball.
“Want to know the most amazing thing about Matt Dillon?” Woloshin said. “We can go to a city we haven’t been to in 12 years and he can give you every freaking direction. The man’s sense of direction is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. He’s my Google Maps. It’s unreal.”
Freelancer Phil Stukenborg is a former staff writer and deputy sports editor for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach him at philstukenborg@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: After 52 seasons, Matt Dillon's still telling the Memphis Tigers’ story
