MUMBLESHED MOMENTS: Jimmy Dykes Was Determined To Be More Than Fill-in

One of the most rewarding and potentially one of the most terrifying moments in my life came at the PGA National Championship at Inverness Country Club in Ohio. (It was the 1986 tournament where Bob Tway holed a bunker shot to beat Greg Norman on the 18th hole)

I received an invitation to perform a pre-tournament clinic with Ken Venturi, Byron Nelson and a Hall of Fame ABC broadcaster Chris Schenkel. Obviously, it was a huge honor for me and our clinic went perfect. Afterwards, we attended a 600-person VIP dinner that I learned five minutes before that I was to speak for 20 minutes.

Chris Schenkel, who I had just met, said, “Don’t worry about a thing, We’ll talk golf and everything will be fine.” That’s exactly what happened. It was a perfect evening capping off a perfect day.

The reason for the story was to introduce my Mumbleshed interview with ESPN’s Jimmy Dykes. Jimmy, who grew up in Fayetteville and walked on the Arkansas basketball team, is a true professional. He is always prepared, has a unique confident voice, loves his job, loves the Lord, and he reminds me of Chris Schenkel.

Just like my golfing day with Chris Schenkel, Byron Nelson and Ken Venturi, I had a great Mumbleshed Moment interview with Jimmy Dykes, who’s in his 16th season as an ESPN basketball analyst. Here in Jimmy’s own words is his Mumbleshed Moment:

About 15 years ago I was trying to get into the basketball business as a TV commentator. I had just come off a year when I was scouting for the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics. I met a guy that year who worked for ESPN. He asked me if I ever considered doing basketball games on TV as an announcer. I told him, “No, never even thought about it,” and he said, “Well, here’s my card. If you’d ever like to get into the business, give me a call.”

One thing led to another and I gave him a call.ESPN hired me to do five games that first year. I thought I did a good job. All my buddies said, “Man, you did great.” They didn’t care, I was just on TV. At the end of that first year, I set up a meeting with one of the big bosses at ESPN who was in charge of college basketball. I paid my own way up to Bristol [Conn.]. I just wanted to go up there and meet with him face to face. I had decided after doing five games for ESPN, this was going to be my career. I was going to be the next Dick Vitale. I set the meeting, traveled to ESPN, felt confident and prepared for my presentation.

The meeting lasted about 10 minutes. Nine of the minutes were spent with me explaining to him how much I loved doing the job and how I learned the game under Eddie Sutton. After my third or fourth game I felt really comfortable and felt I could make an impact as an announcer. I really tried to sell him on the job that I had done and why I felt like they should hire me as one of their full-time announcers.

After I got done with my spiel, he looked at me and said, “You know, you did a good job on those games we had you do this year. You only did five games. Our full-time announcers are doing anywhere between 50 and 60 games. At this point, you’re just going to be used as a fill-in guy, and I appreciate your coming up here. I see your passion for this job and all that, but I’m just telling you, you’ll probably never be one of our main guys because we’re always looking for an ex-NBA player, an ex-NBA head coach, or a very successful college head coach, or a former All American, and you aren’t any of those.”