IU athletics radio man Joe Smith: It 'means the world to me' to do one more year in booth

Joe Smith decided sometime during last football season he was reaching the point he could no longer travel for games.

Smith, 74, has been part of Indiana football and basketball radio broadcasts on a constant basis since 1983, handling pre-game, halftime and post-game duties and also serving as sound engineer alongside play-by-play man Don Fischer. But the job has been significantly harder since May 4, 2017 when he fell down 12 stairs at his apartment complex and fractured two vertebrae. Emergency surgery saved his life and has allowed him to walk, but not very swiftly. He wasn't even going to basketball games at home or on the road, instead doing his duties from the WGCL studio, and the football travel was wearing on him.

"There were some long nights and it was starting to get exhaustive," Smith said. "I can remember when I did come back, I was walking with a cane and I wasn't getting around well. I didn't want to be the reason for missing the plane or what have you."

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But Smith decided it was important to be part of one more football season. It will be his 40th in the booth, but just as importantly, it will be Fischer's 50th. So IU announced Wednesday that Smith will be taking part in his final season in the booth, but also begin doing a post-game call-in show with Ken Bikoff. He is also maintaining his job as the sports director at WGCL-AM 1370 in Bloomington.

"Being in the booth for Don Fischer's 50th year, starting with that night game against Illinois, means the world to me," Smith said. "Means the world to me."

It does, because the connection between the two actually goes back well over 40 years, Smith owes Fischer for the biggest breaks in his career, but Fischer's hall-of-fame career has also been enhanced by working with Smith.

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without Don Fischer," Smith said.

Smith began his media career working for the Chicago Sun-Times in the back issues department, and then worked his way up to take charge of giving tours of the Sun-Times' building. While he was there, he made friends with disc jockeys at Chicago's WLS and WCFL and he got to spend time with them at the station. In 1969, he got his first radio job at WAIK Radio in Galesburg, Ill. as a news broadcaster.

Soon after, Smith saw a news opening at WTTS in Bloomington and jumped on it. He took over the sports department in 1970 and started covering high school games around the same time University High School closed and Bloomington North and South came into existence. He worked that into a gig spotting and keeping stats for IU broadcasts, even though he wasn't officially part of the team and was also doing work for the radio station.

"The opportunity came to take over and keep stats," Smith said. "Fisch would give me that extra ticket. I wasn't getting paid, but he would give me that extra ticket and allow me to sit there and do my thing and kill two birds with one stone. It flourished from there."

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That led to more and more opportunities. In 1978, the Indiana basketball team was playing in Anchorage, Alaska in what became known as the Great Alaska Shootout and was then known as the Sea Wolf Classic in the same weekend as the football team was playing Purdue in the Old Oaken Bucket game. Fischer decided to stay in-state with football and selected Smith to take over play-by-play duties for basketball for the tournament.

"I promptly got us off to an 0-2 start thanks to Ricardo Brown of Pepperdine and Shelby Metcalf of Texas A&M," Smith said. "I'm walking the streets of Anchorage knowing that I had to do the Bob Knight Pregame Show while standing 0-2. I knew Bob was on my side. I walked in his office and my hand was shaking as I was holding my microphone, but we got it done."

The opportunities increased until Smith formally became part of the team in 1983. He did on-floor interviews after Keith Smart's shot beat Syracuse for the 1987 national title, and it was his job to interview Bill Mallory for his radio show in 1996 after it had been determined that Mallory would not remain part of the program after that season.

"It's etched in my mind, Oct. 31, 1996," Smith said. "I'll never ever forget that date. I did all of the Mallory TV shows. We had decided to do the Bill Mallory Show from the Mellencamp Pavilion, which wasn't done yet. Toughest thing I ever had to do in my life, only hours after he was fired. How did he handle it? First class."

While taking stats and spotting, Smith was also charged with engineering the broadcasts, which meant making sure the sound levels were right, turning the knobs on the sound board ever so slightly during games to make adjustments. He's still proud of his work on Dec. 10, 2011 when Fischer's call of Christian Watford's buzzer-beating 3-pointer to beat Kentucky came through exactly as he wanted it to.

"We both were old radio guys," Smith said. "We knew what sound was all about. We knew about crowd noise. I know his inflection, what he's going to say. I always kidded him over the years that I was the guy that made him sound good on all of his calls. Not that I knew we were going to beat Kentucky that day, but you started to get those goosebumps, and I knew exactly where to put that dial. When he made that call on the Wat Shot, he made a lot of calls, but that may have been his best ever. I remember thinking not to overmodulate it, but 'Just get it right, Joe.' That's going to be played long after Don and I are gone."

Even after Smith's accident, Fischer made sure Smith's seat was only filled on an interim basis and there for him when he returned to action after a year away.

Smith is still in constant rehab and the job required enough work that it still took a toll, and he came to realize he couldn't do it the same way he used to.

"I'm not the same guy I was before the accident," Smith said. "I'm just not."

The call-in show, however, allows him to stay in the game and stay part of the broadcast and he'll do that as long as his body will let him.

"It gives me the opportunity to keep my voice on the air," Smith said. "That will continue. We'll just play it one game at a time."

Follow Herald-Times IU Insider Dustin Dopirak on Twitter at @DustinDopirak or email him at DDopirak@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: IU radio man Joe Smith prepares for one final football season in booth