Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Through the years, television sports anchors and reporters have come and gone in Northwest Arkansas.

Then there's Mike Irwin, who just turned 64 and has covered the Arkansas Razorbacks as a sportscaster — nearly without interruption — since 1975.

"I was planning to retire at age 66," Irwin said. "But I'm telling you right now, when I turn 66, if they want me to retire, they're going to have to come in and pitch me out the door. I'm having too much fun."

Irwin's employer, local NBC affiliate KNWA-TV, likely isn't in a hurry to give him the heave-ho. The station's signature product is its sportscast, branded the Razorback Nation.

If it's over-the-top reporting on University of Arkansas athletics you're looking for, KNWA has it. It puts more resources into covering the Razorbacks than any other television station in Arkansas, news director Brook Thomas said, and it's hard to argue.

Take, for example, the Hogs' trip to the College World Series in Nebraska. KNWA covered the team's weeklong stay with seven people from its sports department. That's why it isn't surprising to see Irwin on the KNWA payroll.

What is surprising is that he was available for hire earlier this year.

On May 1, KFSM-TV, Channel 5, announced it was letting Irwin go, 37 years after he opened the Fayetteville office as a bureau of the Fort Smith-based CBS affiliate. KFSM was the first television station to open an office in Fayetteville and, ultimately, cover the Razorbacks with a Fayetteville base of operations.

"I am still proud of that fact," Irwin said.

Sports director John Engleman was also let go — he had been with the station since 2009 — as the station said it was going in a different direction.

"Very surprising," said Rick Schaeffer, Arkansas' sports information director afrom 1979-2000 and a longtime friend of Irwin's. "As long as [Irwin] had been there and as effective as he had been, I think anybody would have been surprised."

The only direction KNWA needed was to the nearest telephone. Irwin said he was unemployed for about six hours before fielding a call from KNWA sports director Jason Carroll, who, coincidentally, was hired by Irwin 13 years earlier as a sports cameraman at KFSM.