The Voice of the Tarheels

It was with great surprise that I read of the retirement yesterday of the voice of the Tarheels, Woody Durham. I treated him about like I did Dean Smith. I figured he would last forever and never imagined the day when he would retire.

Woody Durham got me through most every Carolina football and basketball game in the mid-1970's before the days of ESPN and all of the other sports channels that televise every game. Even recently, I would turn down the volume of Dan Bonner and his anti-Carolina bias, Dick Vitale and his pro-Duke rantings even when Carolina wasn't playing Duke, and Billy Packer and his idiocy and turn up Woody Durham. My wife would always tell me that it was harder for her to follow the action in the game that way because radio and TV are broadcast differently. My reply was I would rather the game be harder to follow and listen to someone that knew what they were talking about than listen to those clowns. He was always worth listening to.

I always used to make sure that I caught the Dean Smith show with Woody Durham as the host every Sunday morning. WLOS-TV out of Asheville carried if for years. They always showed the highlights of the past weeks Tarheel games (with the radio call by Woody Durham) and it was the best thirty minutes on TV.

I had the privilege of meeting Woody Durham after he broadcast his 1,000th game for the Tarheels. It was a basketball game against Clemson in Chapel Hill (we all know how that turned out) and it was the first basketball game I had ever been to in the Dean Dome (or anywhere else for that matter) and Mr. Durham was walking through the stands after the game. I offered my congratulations on this milestone, he shook my hand, and he was very gracious even though I am sure he had other places he needed to be. He was not only the voice of the Tarheels, he was a class act as well.