STARKVILLE — One day after the “Voice of Mississippi State” passed away, friends, colleagues, and the MSU family on Monday remembered the life of Jack Cristil.
Cristil, who died Sunday at the age of 88, spent 58 years in the broadcast booth calling MSU football and basketball games. He worked more than 1,500 games in his career. Color analyst Jim Ellis and sideline reporter John Correro joined him for more than half of those games.
“He was, by far, the greatest ambassador this university has ever had,” said Correro, who worked with Cristil in the booth for 12 years before moving to the sideline in 1991. “He was phenomenal. To watch him in the radio booth, broadcasting, he was the ultimate professional. He always gave a great description of what was going on. He was the best at letting the listener know what was happening.”
Funeral arrangement were announced for Cristil on Monday. There will be a visitation from 4-8 tonight and from 9-11 a.m. Wednesday, and a funeral at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Holland Funeral Directors in Tupelo. Interment will follow at Lee Memorial Park in Verona.
On Wednesday in Tupelo, MSU President Mark E. Keenum will deliver a welcome. Former MSU Athletic Director Larry Templeton will deliver the eulogy. Marc Perler, of Temple B’Nai Israel in Tupelo, will officiate.
There will be a public memorial service at 6 p.m. Thursday at MSU’s Humphrey Coliseum.
Cristil, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, passed away at Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo following an extended illness.
From 1953 until 2011, Cristil was the radio voice of MSU. In his early years at the school, he served in advertising sales at WELO Radio and later WTVA-TV in Tupelo, where he lived since 1955.
Cristil was a veteran of World War II. He served as an aircraft engine mechanic in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Cristil studied broadcast journalism at the University of Minnesota, then worked his way through a number of radio postings. While working in Clarksdale, he sent audition tapes to then-MSU Athletics Director C.R. “Dudy” Noble, who hired him in time to start the 1953 football season with MSU’s victory against Memphis State.
Like Correro, Ellis was by Cristil’s side for more than two decades. And like Correro, Ellis shared fond memories of Cristil’s professionalism and his love for MSU.
“He loved the university and he loved being the voice of Mississippi State. That was his identity,” said Ellis, who succeeded Cristil and MSU’s play-by-play announcer for football and basketball in 2011. “But even though he loved Mississippi State more than anyone, first and foremost to Jack was the broadcast. He wanted that broadcast to be perfect and right down the middle. He was a consummate professional in the booth.”
Cristil was named Mississippi Sportscaster of the Year 21 times, and is a member of the Mississippi Sports and Mississippi State Sports Hall of Fame.
Prior to speaking about South Alabama, the MSU football team’s next opponent, MSU coach Dan Mullen talked about Cristil.
“Part of college football, to me, and sports that brings people together is the generational gaps that it brings together from one to the next,” Mullen said. “When you have someone that says, ‘When I was a kid I listened to Jack Cristil call the games, and when I had my kids I listened and I listen with my grandkids.’ That’s something that pulls people together and is a pretty special thing.
“He was an institution at this university.”
Cristil was on the microphone for nearly 60 percent of all MSU football games played, and more than 50 percent of all basketball games. He endured plenty of lean years, particularly before the football and basketball teams enjoyed a run of success in the 1990s. Ellis said that time period stood out for Cristil.
“I think he really enjoyed when Jackie Sherrill came in as coach in 1991 and turned the program around football-wise,” Ellis said. “Jack had been through some tough seasons, and when we had seven or eight good seasons under Sherrill, I think Jack really had fun. I know the 1996 run to the Final Four in basketball was extremely special to him.”
Wire reports were included in this story.
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