Sportscaster Johnny Holiday comes to the University of Maryland’s Knight Hall to speak to students at an SPJ event on February 17, 2014.
The voice of the Terrapins took a break from his duties last night to speak in a different voice: his own.
Johnny Holliday, who has served 35 years as a play-by-play announcer for the Terps men’s basketball and football teams, spoke to a crowd of about 20 in Knight Hall, detailing the ups and downs of his career as a sportscaster.
“My best advice to anyone who wants to get into this business is if you honestly think you can do it, you can,” Holliday said. “And I’m the perfect example.”
At 18, Holiday was working four jobs in his hometown of Miami with little direction. Holliday’s career in radio and broadcast began as a disk jockey on a radio station in Perry, Georgia.
“I knew nothing about radio,” Holliday said. “I knew nothing about broadcast.”
But that didn’t stop him.
The common theme threaded through Holliday’s speech was never to let go of an opportunity.
“If I said no, somebody else gets that job,” Holliday said. “I never said no to an assignment.”
From there, he found success as a radio DJ in Georgia, back home in Miami and then in Rochester, N.Y.
He then moved to Cleveland, where he branched out into sports, theater and commercials. And after he made his name as the public address announcer for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, Holliday hosted musical variety shows on NBC such as Shindig! and Hullabaloo.
“There are so many different things you can do just from that face you have at broadcasting,” Holliday said. “If you have a home base, you can expand all sorts of ways.”
Holliday became the voice of the Terps in 1979, taking over that post at Washington’s WMAL, and he was honored in October at Byrd Stadium for his 35 years and counting of service to the university’s sports.
During his career of broadcast, Holliday delved into different avenues, including news. He also wrote a book, From Rock to Jock, and starred in musicals, including the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s first musical, The Music Man.
“The main thing that stuck out to me that he said was not to turn down any assignment,” said Rob Dawson, a university alumnus and a current CBS radio sports anchor and news reporter. “Sometimes I feel the same way — you never know what will happen.”
Samantha Medney, senior journalism major, said she found Holliday’s story inspiring as she seeks to become a sports broadcast journalist.
“A lot of sports journalism can be scary at first and he makes it all so relatable,” Medney said. “He has so much fun with it, and I am so excited to continue learning and go into the field.”
Holliday once covered women’s gymnastics at the 1984 Olympics, alongside famous coaches and with little knowledge of the sport. After the show, which he said went OK, he got a call from Home Team Sports, the network now known as Comcast SportsNet, to cover more gymnastics competitions.
“They can tell in 20 seconds I don’t know anything about gymnastics,” Holliday said. “But I’m not going to let them know that. That was probably the best thing I pulled off.”
Holliday was asked back for eight years. “By the eighth year, I was an expert,” Holliday joked.
The Society of Professional Journalists, along with the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, hosted the event.
“I was at the football game in October where Johnny Holliday was honored, and I thought, we have such a valuable resource and amazing broadcaster right here, and we need to get him,” said Brett Hall, this university’s SPJ chapter president. “Not only is he a big part of this school, but he is one heck of a broadcaster.”
