“The Voice of Bulldog Football”

On this page is an article I wrote about Russell Register beginning his 22nd season as the radio play by play announcer of Bulldog Football. You will note that he had three different color analysts in each of his first three years. As the third one, I joined him at the beginning of the 1991 season. For better or worse, he’s been stuck with me ever since. I calculated just how many Bulldog football broadcast he has done in the previous 21 seasons. Out of 249 broadcast, he has done 247 of them.

As a young child and teenager I used to listen to a lot of football on the radio. I listened to both high school and college football. Some of my earliest memories of listening to football on the radio was in the late 60’s. FSU played all their home games on Saturday night back then and my family attended those games on a regular basis. On the way back to Marianna my dad love to tune our AM radio to LSU football. They also played on Saturday nights but being on central time they were an hour behind the Seminoles. I can recall being young enough to lay in the front sit of our car with my head in my mother’s lap, listening to those strange sounding Cajun names and the roar of that rowdy Bengal crowd on a Baton Rouge Saturday night.

In 1990 I was living in Tallahassee but was home one weekend and made sure to tune the radio to Bulldog football. As the son of a former Bulldog football coach, the brother of two former Bulldog football players and having worn the purple and gold myself, I wanted to check up on the Bulldogs. I had also heard from my brother that Russell was doing the broadcast.

That was no surprise to me. I had known him growing up and could always recall he had a habit of “announcing” when we played pick up games of football and basketball. The minute I heard him broadcasting that game I knew that it was something that I would like to try. I am firmly convinced that the LORD made that opportunity happened a few months later. Twenty years later I am still tagging along.

Bulldog football fans are a faithful bunch. But like any group who gets used to something, they are capable to taking things for granted. Russell has been around for so long that I suspect some folks take him, and the quality of the broadcast, for granted. For the past 19 years I have listened to Russell’s voice come through my headset. He is the best high school football announcer I have ever heard. Simply Put, he is The Voice of Bulldog football and I hope that Bulldog football fans appreciate what he has done for our program over these past 22 years. From the Front Porch: Uncle Bob said his son has a military golf game…left, right, left, right.