Lafayette College's Hard-Working Sports PA Announcer Heading For Retirement
By Ian Bush
EASTON, Pa. (CBS) -- College football's most-played rivalry happens this afternoon at 3:30pm: it's the 150th meeting between Lafayette College and Lehigh, this one being played at a sold-out Yankee Stadium.
And this game is the last for one of the longest-tenured public address announcers in the business.
Jim Finnen has a voice that could part the Red Sea. For 50 years, he's been the golden voice in the booth for Lafayette College.
"At one time or another, I've done most of the 23 major sports at Lafayette," he said recently.
His main assignments have been football and basketball, with an enviable absentee rate.
"My personal attendance record? I've missed three football games during fifty years," he tells KYW Newsradio.
Finnen remembers calling one particular contest in 1988 between the Lafayette Leopards and Notre Dame, coached at that time by Digger Phelps.
"I think every Irish Catholic within 75 miles came to see the Fighting Irish," Finnen recalls. "And when they left, they had seen the Fighting Irish soundly defeated by Lafayette by 15 points, 83-68. Otis Ellis from Germantown Academy had 35 points that night, and they throughly trounced them. And I think Digger vowed that night he would not return to Lafayette in the future."
While he wears the Leopards' maroon-and-white, he doesn't let it color his announcing. Except that one time...
"Lafayette, in the early '60s, was playing Penn, and that was in Philadelphia, at Franklin Field," he remembers. "On one occasion we had a field-goal kicker kicking soccer style. And as he kicked the ball toward the uprights, I found myself saying, 'Get legs!' "
His booming voice, he says, is a natural gift. But he thinks he owes his career longevity to something else:
"Number one, preparation. Number two, punctuality."
Now, Finnen and his wife, both 82, are looking forward to vacationing during sports seasons.
