Marcroft making final calls

A broadcasting career that began in Africa more than 50 years ago will come to an end later this year, or perhaps early next year if everything goes right for the Utah football team.

Bill Marcroft, the "Voice of the Utes" for the past 37 years, is retiring at the end of the football season, although "retire" may not be the best word to use.

If he could, the 73-year-old Marcroft would broadcast Ute games as long as possible, perhaps into his 80s as broadcasters such as Chick Hearn and Johnny Most did.

However, Marcroft didn't have a choice in the matter when KALL Radio's owners changed the station to Hot Ticket 700 and made wholesale changes in personnel. So his final Ute game will be a bowl game, which he hopes is in January.

Marcroft, the only broadcaster many Ute fans have ever known, has called approximately 1,500 games since the late 1960s on KALL Radio. He's never missed a Utah football game since 1969 and has missed fewer than 10 basketball games due to conflicts with football games or illness.

During his 37 years, Marcroft has worked closely with seven football coaches and five basketball coaches along with hundreds of athletes.

He has his favorites and not-so-favorites but for the most part has loved the whole experience covering the Utes for a generation.

"It's what's kept me young and active and healthy," he said. "It wasn't just a job for me, it was a passion."

Marcroft grew up in Salt Lake and graduated from South High School in 1948. He admits he wasn't much of an athlete as the extent of his athletic career was playing "church ball."

After graduating from the U. in 1952 as a theater major, he went directly into the service and ended up in Tripoli, Africa.

There were no jobs for a theater major, so he sought out a job with the radio station and soon after called his first sporting event, a football game among military men called the Air Force Championship. As Marcroft remembers, it was a disaster.

"I tried to do it out of a program with no spotters, from ground level," he said. "I did everything wrong. It was horrible. I felt I could never do play-by-play."

Later he covered a golf tournament, of all things, on the radio, featuring military officers. To find out how players were doing out on the course, Marcroft had men reporting back to him using walkie-talkies.