Mike Patrick, the longtime sports activities broadcaster whose assorted profession included calling the primary regular-season NFL recreation ever broadcast on ESPN, died on Sunday, in keeping with a report by ESPN. He was 80.
Patrick died of pure causes in his Fairfax, Va., house, an area funeral house advised ESPN. Patrick, who spent greater than 36 years with ESPN, bought his begin with the community as a play-by-play broadcaster in 1982. Over the many years, he was heard calling a variety of sports activities, together with the NFL, school soccer, basketball and baseball, and occasions like the ladies’s Closing 4 and the Faculty World Sequence.
His most distinguished task started in 1987, when ESPN first began broadcasting NFL regular-season video games on Sunday night time. Patrick would stay the voice of “Sunday Night time Soccer” till 2005, sharing the sales space for years with Paul Maguire and Joe Theismann. He was additionally a well-recognized voice on distinguished ESPN and ABC school soccer and basketball broadcasts.
One in all Patrick’s most memorable moments got here in extra time of an Alabama-Georgia school soccer recreation in 2007. With Georgia trailing 23-20 and on the brink of snap the ball on the Alabama 25-yard line, Patrick requested his sales space companion, Todd Blackledge, “What’s Britney doing along with her life?”
“What? Britney who?” a baffled Blackledge replied. (Patrick was referring to Britney Spears, although he by no means equipped Blackledge or viewers with a transparent clarification for why he introduced her up.)
ESPN stated that Patrick referred to as greater than 30 ACC basketball championships for the community and was the voice of its ladies’s Closing 4 protection from 1996 to 2009.
“I’m so sorry to study concerning the passing of Mike Patrick,” Dick Vitale, who typically teamed with Patrick on school basketball broadcasts, stated in an announcement. “I referred to as him Mr. ACC as he had a fantastic love for doing the massive ACC video games. Mike had nice vitality and a eager data of ACC basketball, and I really loved sitting subsequent to him calling so many particular video games through the years.”
A local of Clarksburg, W.Va., Patrick started his broadcasting profession in Somerset, Pa. He was quickly named sports activities director at a tv station in Jacksonville, Fla., the place he referred to as Jacksonville Sharks’ World Soccer League video games for one season. He additionally referred to as Jacksonville College basketball video games for radio and tv.
Patrick was later inducted into the college’s Corridor of Fame.
A graduate of George Washington College, Patrick was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the USA Air Pressure. He moved to the Washington, D.C. space in 1975, serving as a reporter and weekend anchor for WJLA-TV in Arlington, Va. Patrick additionally referred to as play-by-play for Maryland soccer and basketball (1975-78) and NFL preseason video games for Washington from 1975 to 1982.
(Picture: Hunter Martin / Getty Photos)
