Christmas 1985 saw the passing of one of the great sports announcers: Dave “The Zink” Zinkoff, of the Philadelphia 76ers.
It was that same year that Chuck Roberts, following in the footsteps of his role model, began his career of public address announcing, on the track to fulfilling his lifelong dream of announcing for The University of Memphis.
“My real interest in it started when I was a kid,” Roberts said. “I used to go to the basketball games at the Coliseum and the football games at the stadium, and listened to Bill Dooley and Fred Cook as they announced. I always thought ‘hey that would be really cool to do one day.’”
Although Dooley and Cook were great influences on Roberts growing up, “The Zink” was the announcer Roberts structured his announcing style after.
“As I watched Dr. J over the years, you would hear him being introduced and the man had a way with his voice of holding their name out and generating just a tremendous amount of enthusiasm out of the crowd.”
Roberts said he knew “The Zink” had a style he wanted to adopt as opposed to traditional ways of announcing.
“He is the one that I always look to and that I have somewhat adapted my style after,” Roberts said.
Roberts graduated high school from Memphis Prep, and the next fall volunteered to begin announcing the football games at his alma mater.
Although Roberts’ family has been U of M fans as long as he can remember, he went to Christian Brothers University, looking for the private school atmosphere he was used to. There, he received both an undergraduate degree in business and a master’s degree in finance.
In 1992, Memphis Prep closed, and Southern Baptist Educational Center (SBEC) called Roberts to be their public address announcer for football games.
“At that time, the school was three minutes from my house, so it was a pretty easy decision for me to make,” he said.
Then in 1995 Roberts got the call he had been waiting for. Lady Tiger’s head coach Joye Lee-McNelis had come to The U of M and was looking for an announcer.
“His dad was involved in our program, and he just mentioned that his son had been announcing high school football games,” Lee-McNelis said. “I asked around and then I just called him up and asked him to do it.”
At that time, Roberts was working on launching his company — Chuck Roberts Commercial Real Estate. Thinking he needed to devote all his time and energy to his business, he initially refused the offer.
As time passed, the Lady Tiger’s season began and they still had no announcer. Lee-McNelis asked Roberts to do the first game and he agreed.
“All during the game, I just kept thinking, ‘you gotta do this, you gotta do this,’” Roberts said.
After the game, Lee-McNelis asked him to reconsider and without thinking he said, “I would love to.”
The next season, he began announcing Tiger volleyball games. In 1998, Roberts took over for Tom Prestigiacomo, announcing men’s basketball and football.
In addition to announcing, Roberts works with the marketing departments for volleyball, football and women’s basketball on music played at the games.
So what does Roberts do to be worthy of being the voice of the Tigers?
“My general preparation before a game is to familiarize myself with the names and numbers, the roster, so to speak,” Roberts said.
Roberts spends three to six hours a week, depending on the sport, preparing for the games. He also arrives two to three hours before a game starts to prepare.
“One of our most important goals is obviously to create an atmosphere that is enthusiastic and positive that will translate energy to the team,” Roberts said.
In addition to his throat, there are other important aspects to effective announcing, especially in the big games he has been announcing recently with both the women and men’s seasons coming to a close.
“It’s kind of like an opera singer — it comes from your abdomen, your stomach area,” Roberts said. “I mean, you really have to be breathing right to generate the kind of power you need to do the different things.”
