Originally published January 16, 2012 at 6:42 PM | Page modified January 19, 2012 at 1:41 PM
Bob Robertson named winner of Keith Jackson Award | 77th Sports Star of Year awards
Washington State football announcer for 45 years, Bob Robertson also broadcasts Pacific Lutheran basketball and minor-league baseball.
Seattle Times staff reporter
Sports Star of the Year
The 77th annual Sports Star of the Year banquet is Wednesday, Jan. 25, honoring the best athletes, teams and stories from the past year.
Where: Benaroya Hall, 200 University St. in downtown Seattle.
Tickets: Tickets to the awards show are $35; tickets for the awards show and the pre-show reception are $75.
More information: Visit www.sportsstaroftheyear.org
Other Sports Star of the Year stories
Bob Robertson has broadcast just about everything and seems to know everybody, so it's not surprising that he once worked close to Keith Jackson, whose name adorns the award Robertson will receive Jan. 25 at the Seattle Sports Star of the Year banquet.
"I do know Keith," Robertson said the other day from his University Place home, recalling a time in the early 1960s. "I was at Channel 11 doing the Seattle Rainiers on television and he was doing it on radio."
The 2012 winner of the Keith Jackson Award is nearing 83, but still busy. He has done Washington State football for 45 years, and early in the 2011 season, logged his 500th game behind the microphone with the Cougars.
That doesn't include a few years with the Washington Huskies some four decades ago when Sonny Sixkiller was quarterback, nor a brief TV stint doing Notre Dame in the 1950s.
The man likes to work. He does Pacific Lutheran's Northwest Conference basketball games. This week, for instance, that means a bus trip on Friday, game day, down to George Fox in Oregon, over to Pacific University for a Saturday-night game, and back on the bus afterward for a late-night ride home.
In the summers, he still does 30 to 35 baseball games of the Class A Spokane Indians and AAA Tacoma Rainiers.
Of the notion of cutting back, Robertson says, "I've tried not to. At my age, if you cut back too much, it's pretty hard to get your wheels turning again."
Leisure time? "Right now," Robertson says, "I've got more than I want."
In 2004, Robertson won the Chris Schenkel Award — named after the longtime ABC voice of college football — and is recognized in the College Football Hall of Fame. The award goes to an announcer with a long, distinguished career doing the games of one university.
Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com
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