Friends of Larry Munson, the players whose games he called and people who never met the man in person recalled the legendary radio broadcaster with tears and laughter Monday.
They shed tears because Munson died Sunday at the age of 89, and they laughed when they recalled the good times they’d shared with him in person or over the radio waves.
Munson was the play-by-play broadcaster for Georgia football for four decades, and tens of thousands of Georgia football fans grew up experiencing Georgia football through Munson’s voice.
He’d tell fans the weather conditions and invite them to imagine they were looking at the football field, left to right, recalled his longtime broadcast partner, Loran Smith.
“He made you feel like you were there. He was the ultimate radio guy. He had the sense for it, and he knew how to describe the action for the listener,” said Smith, who responded to Munson’s “Whaddaya got, Loran?” for more than 30 years as sideline reporter.
Even that simple little phrase demonstrates Munson’s verbal gifts, Smith said.
Today’s top-drawer play-by-play broadcasters are likely to say, “Let’s go to Julie on the sidelines.”
But with “Whaddaya got, Loran?” Munson made a bland, routine question into a beloved Bulldog mantra.
The right words
“He just had a gift for saying the right thing, the interesting thing,” Smith said.
“He made you feel like you were down there on the sideline sweating it out and gritting your teeth,” said lifelong Bulldog fan and UGA graduate Reed Holden of Athens.
“That’s how you related to Georgia football,” said another Munson fan, University of Georgia Foundation president Bill Young.
Dating from the first time a 6-year-old Holden sneaked a radio under the covers to listen to Georgia play Notre Dame for the national championship — past his bedtime — Munson was almost like another family member.
“I grew up in a family of Bulldog fans,” said Holden, owner of the Athens-based audiovisual systems company Aurora Systems. “It was a fact of life at any family function on a fall Saturday: We were watching TV and listening to Munson.”
Like countless other Bulldog families, they listened to Munson even if the game was televised, turning down the TV volume and turning on the radio.
Munson was a gifted painter with words who could make you feel like you could see what you were hearing, agreed C.B. “Scooter” Grubbs of Tifton, another lifelong Georgia fan.
“He had the ability to say exactly what he saw and what was happening on the field, and he gave you the ability to see it on the radio, as well,” Grubbs said. “He’d say, ‘He twisted and turned for two more yards,’ and you’d watch the replay and that’s exactly what he did. It just came naturally, phrases just rolled out of his mouth. It was just his personality, and we all hung on all of his words.”
“It was just as good as going to the game, almost,” said longtime UGA sports information director and tennis coach Dan Magill, who worked with Munson for more than 40 years. “There was nobody better. He’s one of the greatest, no doubt about it.”
‘Bigger than life’
Former Georgia kicker Allan Leavitt said he was glad he never got to hear Munson’s broadcasts during the games he played at Georgia from 1973 to 1976.
“He always made everything bigger than life,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt is probably best known for his end-of-the game field goal against Georgia Tech on a wet field in 1976, preserving a spot for 10-1 Georgia against top-ranked Pittsburgh in the Sugar Bowl.
“If I’d been listening to Munson, I’d have missed it,” said Leavitt, now retired from business and coaching high school football in Jacksonville, Fla.
Leavitt said Munson clearly rooted for Georgia, but at the same time, he showed respect for Georgia’s opponents.
“He was extremely positive to both the opponent and for our team,” Leavitt said. “It’s class and character.”
No one doubted that Munson rooted for the home team. He seemed to live and die with every pass or run of the ball during close Georgia games and conveyed that emotion not with volume but by changing the pitch of his voice.
“I think what made Munson so special. He became an unabashed homer, but it was not offensive,” Smith said. “And Munson became a great cheerleader.”
Nowadays, almost all of Georgia’s football games are televised. However, in the 1960s, ’70s and early 1980s before a lawsuit broke the NCAA TV monopoly, Georgia might only be on television once or twice a year, so Munson’s voice was the game for many in the Bulldog Nation, noted longtime UGA football coach Vince Dooley.
“He would reach into every crack and corner of the state that had a radio, and they became part of it through him,” Dooley said. “He was a real folk hero to the Bulldog Nation. Regardless of your background or ability to pay money, everybody had a 50-yard seat at their home following Georgia through Larry Munson.”
REGISTRY BOOK AT FOX & WEEKS
Fox & Weeks Funeral directors have put out a registry book for Larry Munson at the Fox & Weeks location on Hodgson Memorial Drive.
At the end of this week, Fox & Weeks will send the book to Larry Munson’s family.
The community is invited to visit the funeral home to sign the registry and offer well wishes, condolences and memories for Larry Munson’s family.
For more information, call 352-7200.
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