Sharpe Enters 10th Season As "Voice Of Huskers"

Greg Sharpe won’t soon forget that bizarre Thursday phone call he received from David Witty, then general manager of the Husker Sports Network, wondering about Sharpe’s availability that very Saturday.

We’re not talking about asking someone to feed the dog or pick up the mail for a neighbor gone for the weekend, either.

In just two days, Witty needed a much bigger favor: Somebody to call play-by-play of a Nebraska football game on the radio.

Sharp was ready to jump at the opportunity, but before giving his response, he asked about the well-being of Jim Rose, the regular play-by-play announcer for Nebraska football on the Husker Sports Network.

Without getting into details, Witty said Rose simply had personal issues and would be unable to call Nebraska’s game that Saturday at Kansas.

So Sharpe did. In fact, he filled in for the final three games of the 2007 season, a stretch of Husker history as surreal as the radio situation itself.

“Really bizarre,” Sharpe said, “because you could feel it was the end of that era happening. The games were so bizarre, all three of them.”

The video-game like scores – 76-39, 73-31, 65-51 – indeed marked the end of the Bill Callahan coaching era.

It also marked the beginning of an era for Sharpe, who permanently filled the play-by-play role beginning in 2008.

“Wow, it’s gone by fast, just in a blink of an eye, a whole decade of football has come and gone,” said Sharpe, who begins his 10th full season as the “Voice of the Huskers” on Saturday night, when Nebraska opens the 2017 season against Arkansas State.

Over the last decade, fans have heard Sharpe describe thrilling moments, like Alex Henery nailing a record 57-yard field goal attempt to put the Huskers ahead of Colorado in the final minutes – and subsequently, Ndamukong Suh swatting away Cody Hawkins like a gnat after Suh intercepted the CU quarterback and scored a touchdown to stamp a 40-31 victory in Lincoln.

They’ll also remember this call, one of Sharpe’s favorites:

“Trips to the near side, Kellogg gets a shotgun snap, final play of the game … Ron waiting for the wideouts to get down field … launches a throw down toward the goal line .. going up .. ball tipped in the end … YES! CAUGHT! TOUCHDOWN! JORDAN WESTERKAMP! NEBRASKA WINS THE GAME ON THE FINAL PLAY OF THE CONEST! OOOH, BABY!”

Sharpe then sounded like a coach when he quickly recalled some cruel losses, too. The “one-second game” versus Texas; a road loss to Virginia Tech, when the Hokies, after completing a long pass to a wide-open defender in the final minute, scored the winning touchdown with 21 seconds left.

“There have been some really crushing defeats and thrilling endings in my tenure,” Sharpe said.

Sharpe served as the radio play-by-play voice for Kansas State football from 1996-2002, and began working televised Nebraska basketball games as part of a Fox Sports Midwest package. He also called some pay-per-view football games. That’s how his name landed atop Witty’s list when Witty was in a pinch.

Sharpe will again work with former Husker receiver Matt Davison, in his 11th season as a color analysist in the booth. Sharpe and Davison had worked the aforementioned basketball telecasts together, making the transition to the football radio booth a smooth one, especially for Sharpe.

“We slid right into a really comfortable pattern where the audience, I think, felt comfortable with all of us,” Sharpe said. “That’s a huge part of it, is can you fit in? Can you feel right? You kind of want it to be like an old slipper, where people slide right into it and go, ‘Oh, that feels perfect, that’s Husker football when I flip on and hear Greg and Matt call the games.”

Ben McLaughlin, who shares Nebraska baseball play-by-play duties with Sharpe on the Huskers Sports Network, begins his first season as a sideline reporter for football games. Also host of the weeknight Sports Nightly talk show, McLaughlin began at the network as an unpaid intern in 2008 and is thankful to have had Sharpe as a radio broadcasting role model.

“Greg is a pro’s pro,” McLaughlin said. “I always tell people when I first started, I didn’t know anything about radio. I didn’t even know radio talk show existed, I didn’t know anything about a broadcast.

“And then, of course, being around Greg and Lane Grindle (now with the Milwaukee Brewers) and Jeff Culhane (North Dakota State athletics), being around those guys all the time, it was apparent from the get-go that I just wasn’t at any place. You listen to Greg do football games and with his voice and his ability to captivate the entire experience … it was obvious not very many people could be like him in that area.”

McLaughlin will handle the nuts and bolts of any sideline reporter – injury updates, coin tosses, halftime interviews, etc. – but said his relationship with the players should help add to his part of the broadcast.

“I really pride myself on putting in the time to getting to know the players,” McLaughlin said. “That’s something I really can add to the sidelines this year. When Luke Gifford makes a big play, talk about how when he came here he started out at safety, had a really tough time with injuries, moved to linebacker … something like that to add a little substance to the players other than the name on the back of their jersey and the number they wear.”

As for Sharpe, asked whether he thought he’d still be the “Voice of the Huskers” more than 10 years after his hastily-arranged broadcast in Kansas, he didn’t hesitate in saying, yes, he could only hope so.

“I mean, you talk about one of the premier jobs in the country, this is it,” Sharpe said. “I had some family ties here, because my mom went to school at Nebraska, my brother-in-law was born in Lincoln, so there were some ties. I knew all about covering Big Eight football and Big 12 football all those years. I certainly knew about the passion of Nebraska.

“When you land a job like this, you don’t think about what’s next. You think, ‘Boy, I hope this lasts forever and ever.’ ”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.