[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 691-692]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO MAX FALKENSTIEN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DENNIS MOORE

                               of kansas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 1, 2006

  Mr. MOORE of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Max 
Falkenstien, the ``Voice of the Kansas Jayhawks'', who will be retiring 
at the conclusion of the 2005-2006 men's basketball season at the 
University of Kansas.
  The conclusion of the current season will mark Max Falkenstien's 60th 
season of broadcasting Kansas University sporting events. At age 81, he 
has been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, the 
College Football Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, and the 
KU Athletic Hall of Fame. He was the first inductee of the Lawrence 
High School Hall of Honor. Additionally, he has been awarded an 
honorary ``K'' by the Kansas Lettermen's Club. The Sporting News in 
2001 named Falkenstien ``the best college radio personality in the 
country'' and ESPN's Dick Vitale included KU's Bob Davis and 
Falkenstien in his ``Sweet 16'' of the best announcer teams in the 
United States.
  A true legend, Max Falkenstien has been synonymous with KU athletics 
for six decades. As KU basketball coach Bill Self recently said in the 
Lawrence Journal-World, ``Max has performed at the highest level over 
an extended period of time like very few in his profession.'' 
Falkenstien broadcast his first basketball game--an NCAA tournament 
game in Kansas City between KU and Oklahoma A&M--on March 18, 1946. His 
next broadcast was KU versus TCU in football on September 21, 1946. He 
was play-by-play voice of the Jayhawks for 39 years and then switched 
to a commentator's role in September 1984 when Bob Davis assumed play-
by-play duties. Falkenstien provided play-by-play for the Big Eight 
Conference basketball game of the week between 1968 and 1971, and for 
more than three decades hosted football and basketball coaches' TV 
programs, including those for Don Fambrough, Pepper Rogers, Mike 
Gottfried, Ted Owens, Larry Brown and Roy Williams.
  Mr. Speaker, I include with this statement a recent article from the 
Lawrence Journal-World summarizing Max Falkenstien's outstanding career 
and I join with all KU fans in wishing him well in his long overdue, 
richly deserved retirement as ``Voice of the Kansas Jayhawks.''

            [From the Lawrence Journal-World, Jan. 7, 2006]

                               To the Max

                            (By Dave Ranney)

       A few seconds after he'd worked his way past security and 
     into the Jayhawks' dressing room, veteran broadcaster Max 
     Falkenstien fielded a warm, friendly--but unexpected--
     greeting. ``Hey, Max, how're you doing?'' It was Michael Lee, 
     a popular reserve guard from last year's basketball team who 
     had recently signed with the Harlem Globetrotters. 
     Falkenstien smiled as they shook hands. There wasn't time to 
     chat. A crowd of well-wishers had gathered around Lee and 
     Kansas University had just trounced the Yale Bulldogs, 87-46, 
     so Falkenstien needed to get ready for his postgame interview 
     with coach Bill Self.
       Quickly, Lee explained he was in town for a checkup for an 
     irregular heartbeat. He wanted Falkenstien to know because 
     the ``Voice of the Jayhawks'' cares. Despite their 
     generational differences, Falkenstien, 81, and Lee, 22, are 
     friends. ``Max is cool,'' Lee said afterward. ``As soon as 
     you get here people start telling you, `That's Max 
     Falkenstien. He's been here forever.' So even before you meet 
     him, you respect him. And then when you meet him, he's always 
     nice. He always says hello. It's like you can't go wrong with 
     him.''
       Lee isn't alone. Falkenstien, it seems, has more friends 
     than Kansas has sunflowers. Some, like Wilt Chamberlain or 
     coach Phog Allen, have been famous. Most are not. ``I was 
     with Max at the (KU vs.) K-State football game this year,'' 
     said Jim Marchiony, KU associate athletics director. ``It 
     took us 20 minutes to get from the parking lot to the press 
     box because so many people stopped to talk to him--and these 
     were K-State fans! ``Whenever you're on the road with Max, 
     it's like you're with the mayor of whatever city you're in,'' 
     he said. ``It's amazing.''
       Late last summer, Falkenstien announced he would retire 
     after the 2005-06 men's basketball season. Sixty years behind 
     a microphone, he said, was enough. ``I'll miss it terribly,'' 
     Falkenstien told the Journal-World. ``But I think this is a 
     good place to stop. I don't want to overstay my welcome.'' 
     Though he underwent emergency intestinal surgery Sept. 7, 
     Falkenstien said he was in good health.
       ``My surgery was completely unexpected and had no 
     relationship to my decision to retire,'' he said. ``As far as 
     I know, I'm in good shape. Of course, something could happen 
     tomorrow. You never know.'' Falkenstien's exit will mark the 
     end of an era.
       ``I can remember my father listening to Max on a battery-
     powered radio out on the farm,'' said Dr. Earl Merkel, a 73-
     year-old KU Medical School alumnus from Russell. ``In Kansas, 
     everybody identifies with him,'' Merkel said. ``They may not 
     have met him, but they know his voice. They feel like they 
     know him.'' ``Max is an institution,'' said John Clarke, a 
     1979 KU graduate who lives in Hays. ``He is synonymous with 
     the Jayhawks. When you hear him, you think of KU.''
       Falkenstien and his play-by-play partner, Bob Davis, have a 
     one-of-a-kind relationship. ``I don't think we've ever argued 
     or had a disagreement,'' Falkenstien said. ``We've had a lot 
     of laughs in 22 years,'' Davis said. Both are native Kansans. 
     Falkenstien grew up in Lawrence, Davis in Hays. Neither is 
     young. Davis is 61.
       ``When you stand the test of time like they have for 22 
     years, you must be doing something right,'' said Tom Hedrick, 
     a veteran broadcaster who competed with Falkenstien from the 
     late 1940s into the early 1960s. ``It'll be difficult for 
     anyone else to do what Bob and Max have done because people 
     move around so much now,'' said Hedrick, who's semiretired 
     and lives in Lawrence. Falkenstien and Davis have stayed put. 
     Both have other jobs. Davis is play-by-play announcer for the 
     Kansas City Royals. Falkenstien was senior vice president of 
     marketing for Douglas County Bank for 25 years. He remains an 
     occasional consultant. ``I've led a charmed life, I know,'' 
     Falkenstien said.
       While a senior at Liberty Memorial High School (now Central 
     Junior High School, 1400 Mass.) Falkenstien heard that local 
     radio station WREN had a job opening. He'd been told he had a 
     good voice for radio, so he applied. ``Arden Booth, who a lot 
     of people will remember, had been called into the service,'' 
     Falkenstien said. ``I got the job, but it had nothing to do 
     with sportscasting. I was just a staff announcer.''
       Falkenstien graduated from LMHS in 1942, six months after 
     the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. After a semester at KU, he 
     enlisted in the Army Air Corps in hopes of becoming a 
     meteorologist. ``I put in 35 months, but I never went 
     overseas,'' he said. Falkenstien returned to Lawrence. He'd 
     been in town about a week when his former boss at WREN asked 
     him to broadcast a basketball game in Kansas City that pitted 
     KU against Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) in 
     the NCAA district finals.
       The fact he'd never done play-by-play didn't matter.
       ``Back then, it wasn't like it is now. People didn't expect 
     to hear a game on the radio. They'd read about it in the 
     newspaper,'' he said. ``What we were doing was new.'' 
     Falkenstien stayed at WREN until 1967, when he had a falling 
     out with the station's owner, former Kansas Gov. Alf Landon. 
     The Big Eight Conference wanted him to be the play-by-play 
     announcer for its televised ``Game of the Week.'' ``Back 
     then,'' Falkenstien said, ``there was only one game a week 
     that was televised. So this was a big deal for me.''
       But Landon refused to let his station manager, Falkenstien, 
     appear on television. ``I kept saying it would make me more 
     sellable--that would be good for business,'' Falkenstien 
     said. ``But he just didn't get the concept.'' Falkenstien 
     jumped to WIBW-TV,

[[Page 692]]

     where he continued to broadcast KU football and basketball 
     games.
       In 1984, KU decided to put the broadcast rights to its 
     basketball and football games up for bid. Before then, 
     Falkenstien and Hedrick broadcast the games for different 
     stations. Learfield Communications, a company based in 
     Jefferson City, Mo., won the bid in 1985. It brought in 
     Davis, who had been broadcasting Fort Hays State University 
     games for 16 years. Falkenstien was offered the sidekick 
     role. ``I had a lot of misgivings at first,'' Falkenstien 
     said. But Davis welcomed the chance to work with Falkenstien.
       ``I know this sounds a little corny, but when I was growing 
     up my heroes were sportscasters, and Max was one of the first 
     ones out there,'' Davis said. ``He was a pioneer.''
       Together, Davis and Falkenstien have mastered a low-key, 
     fishing-buddy delivery that's unpretentious, never 
     overbearing.
       ``Bob and I try to keep things in perspective,'' 
     Falkenstien said. ``Games are supposed to be fun. They're not 
     the end of the world.'' He added: ``It's like Dr. (Phog) 
     Allen used to tell his players. He'd say, `Remember, guys, 
     there are 300 million Chinese out there who don't even know 
     who we are.''' Falkenstien said he and Davis keep the game 
     simple, their delivery conversational. ``Too many color 
     commentators are too analytical,'' Falkenstien said. ``They 
     lose the average fan.''
       Neither Davis nor Falkenstien pretend to be experts. ``I 
     remember one time, I had to ask Roy Williams what a 
     `secondary break' was, so I'd look smart,'' Falkenstien said, 
     laughing. In the game programs, Falkenstien used to be listed 
     as color analyst. ``I had them drop the `analyst,''' he said. 
     ``I'm just `color.'''
       The broadcasts are not as laid-back as they appear. Davis 
     scrambles to keep track of fouls and points while Falkenstien 
     plucks statistics from a nearby monitor, lifts tidbits from 
     the day's sports pages and pulls trivia from packets provided 
     by the teams' athletic departments--all while the game is 
     going on, all without missing a beat.
       Contrary to popular opinion, their press-row seats across 
     from the KU bench are not the best in Allen Fieldhouse. They 
     cannot see the scoreboard without leaning back and looking 
     straight up. They are so cramped they cannot stand or cross 
     their legs. Many times, a referee blocks their view. During 
     the Yale game, Davis barked ``there's a turnover'' without 
     mentioning who had stolen the ball from whom. That's because 
     he couldn't see the play; referee Steve Welmer was standing 
     in front of him, less than an arm's length away.
       After the game, Falkenstien is the first--and only--member 
     of the media allowed to meet with Self in the coaches' 
     dressing room.
       When they finish, Self leaves for a meeting with the press 
     corps at-large. He uses a back door. Falkenstien leaves 
     through the front door, where hopeful fans wait for 
     autographs. He is an easy target. ``Max! Max! Over here!'' 
     said Genie Gnagi, standing behind her 6-year-old daughter, 
     Michaela, with a miniature plastic basketball. ``May we have 
     your autograph, please?''
       Without hesitation, a smiling Falkenstien complies. ``He is 
     a true KU legend,'' Gnagi said. ``He will be missed.''

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