Mike Patrick, Voice of Sunday Night N.F.L. Games on ESPN, Dies at 80

[ad_1] Mike Patrick, a flexible sportscaster for ESPN who known as Nationwide Soccer League video games on Sunday nights for 18 years, died on Sunday in Fairfax, Va. He was 80.

His dying, in a hospital, was confirmed by his doctor, Dr. Mark Vasiliadis. Kevin Kiley, a buddy and former colleague at ESPN, stated Mr. Patrick had been handled for coronary heart and kidney sicknesses.

Mr. Patrick was one in all ESPN’s best-known announcers, calling faculty basketball, soccer and baseball, along with N.F.L. video games. He introduced a commanding voice and an unobtrusive model that made it straightforward for analysts to work with him.

“He was most likely as egoless an announcer as I’ve ever labored with,” Fred Gaudelli, the producer of ESPN’s “Sunday Evening Soccer” video games for 11 years, stated in an interview. “He had a really pure manner of saying, not as a carnival barker or a screamer.”

Paul Maguire, who labored with Mr. Patrick and Joe Theismann on the Sunday night time video games, stated: “One factor about Mike is that he made the three-man sales space work. He was the chief. Joe and I had been followers when he took the reins.”

ESPN, which launched in 1979, didn't get the rights to televise N.F.L. video games till eight years later. It was a coup for the cable community, even when the package deal was for video games performed solely within the second half of the season. Mr. Patrick virtually didn't get the job.

“I attempted to show it down!” he stated in a convention name with reporters in 2003. He recounted how he advised Steve Bornstein, then a senior vice chairman of ESPN, that he most popular to name faculty sports activities: “He stated, ‘Are you an fool? That is the largest factor we’ll have.’ I thought of it for a day and stated sure. In any case, he is aware of higher than I do.”

In 1998, ESPN purchased the rights to the complete season of “Sunday Evening Soccer,” and Mr. Patrick continued to name the video games by means of the 2005 season, when NBC took management of the package deal.

Regardless of his tv prominence, Mr. Patrick maintained a low profile in contrast with contemporaries like Al Michaels and Pat Summerall.

“The day he walked right into a broadcast sales space, that was the large factor for him, not recognition,” Mr. Kiley stated. “He was naturally deferential.”

Mr. Patrick was born Michael Carduff on Sept. 9, 1944, in Clarksburg, W.Va. After he was adopted by his stepfather, Robert Frankhouser, he was often known as Michael Patrick Frankhouser, Mr. Kiley stated. His mom was Eleanor (Freeman) Frankhouser.

Mike acquired a style {of professional} sportscasting in highschool by holding up playing cards to inform Jay Randolph, a future community announcer who was then calling video games on an area radio station, the place the soccer was.

“Jay was searching for somebody to assist him as a result of when the ball will get contained in the 1-yard line, he couldn’t inform precisely the place it was,” Mr. Patrick advised the sports activities web site of West Virginia College in 2018.

He graduated from the George Washington College in 1966 with a bachelor’s diploma in speech and began his profession at WVSC Radio, in Somerset, Pa. In 1970, he left for WJXT, a tv station in Jacksonville, Fla., the place he was the sports activities director. He was additionally the play-by-play announcer for the Jacksonville Sharks of the short-lived World Soccer League and the voice of Jacksonville College’s basketball video games. He was elected to the college’s athletic corridor of fame in 2009.

Mr. Patrick moved on to WJLA, a TV station in Arlington, Va., the place he was a sports activities reporter and a weekend anchor whereas additionally calling basketball and soccer video games for the College of Maryland. Mr. Kiley recalled becoming a member of WJLA as a fill-in sports activities anchor on Saturdays, figuring out little about the right way to be one.

“I got here in on Saturday morning for a 6 p.m. present, and rapidly Mike walked in, from his trip,” Mr. Kiley stated in a cellphone interview. “He spent the day with me, and I did a adequate job that they employed me.”

Mr. Patrick joined ESPN in 1982, starting greater than 30 years of calling Atlantic Coast Convention basketball video games, together with matchups between Duke College and the College of North Carolina, many with Dick Vitale as his accomplice; the ladies’s basketball Ultimate 4, from 1996 to 2009; the Faculty World Collection; and faculty soccer bowl video games.

His final task was the 2017 AutoZone Liberty Bowl between Iowa State College and the College of Memphis.

His survivors embody his spouse, Janet (Bishop) Patrick.

Within the first yr of “Sunday Evening Soccer,” Mr. Patrick’s analyst within the sales space was Roy Firestone, who was higher recognized for his interview present on ESPN and his celeb impressions; they had been joined by a distinct former participant each week showing as a visitor analyst. It didn't work out nicely.

“Roy was attempting to get off jokes, and so they’d have Dick Butkus one week, O.J. one other and Jim Brown one other,” Mr. Gaudelli stated. “One week, Ed Marinaro confirmed up and stated, ‘I’m pleased to be right here, however I haven’t watched a recreation in a yr.’