Remembering Dan Hicks, a Tucson kid who became a broadcasting legend | Opinion

Before he became one of the nation’s top sports broadcasters, Dan Hicks would entertain our fourth-grade class at Tucson’s Lizzie Brown Elementary with his spot-on impersonation of “Monday Night Football” and boxing commentator Howard Cosell.

As a teen, Dan would sit up in the Hi Corbett Field stands at Tucson Toros baseball games and practice his play-by-play with a tape recorder. And at the University of Arizona, where he and I earned our journalism degrees together in 1984, he landed his first broadcast gig as the women’s basketball public address announcer for $25 a game.

Hicks, 64, who died way too young of a sudden illness on Nov. 11, made the most of every opportunity during and after college. He worked as a Tucson radio reporter and as a weekend sports anchor at KVOA-TV, then landed a sports anchor job at CNN in Atlanta before starting his stellar career at NBC Sports in 1992.

“It just goes to show you, that you can make anything happen if you practice at it and love sports,” he told students during homecoming weekend five years ago, when I invited him to speak to a class at the UA School of Journalism.

As Dan became more famous, all of us who knew him cheered on his success. Not only did he serve as NBC’s lead golf announcer and Olympics broadcaster in swimming and skiing, but he also did play-by-play for Notre Dame football, NFL and NBA games. “It helps when you start chronicling the careers of Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods, who became the soundtrack of what I did for so many years,” he said.

Listening to that soundtrack was one of my favorite weekend pastimes. I could sit for hours in front of the TV, marveling at Hicks’ storytelling and ability to set up his fellow analysts. He called 20 U.S. Opens, including 2008 at Torrey Pines in San Diego, when Woods outdueled Rocco Mediate for the win. After Woods holed a dramatic putt to force a playoff, Dan delivered the memorable line, “Expect anything different?” and then stopped talking, letting the cameras and crowd noise tell the story.

“The worst thing we can do is trample all over history,” Hicks said.

Dan and I attended the same K-8 schools. Sometimes during his broadcasts, I would think back to our kindergarten days at Christ Church United Methodist on Craycroft Road — our teacher made us take naps on a rug! — or our playground battles at Brown Elementary (now Dodge Middle School) and Townsend Junior High (now a medical park).

In addition to having a smooth voice, Dan was a gifted athlete. He quarterbacked our Fort Lowell Falcons youth football teams and played shortstop and pitcher in Palo Verde Little League, where he struck out a lot of hitters — me included — with a nasty curveball. He went on to star in baseball and basketball at Sabino High School and led the football team to the playoffs as a senior receiver for coach Ollie Mayfield. That fall, Sabino beat my team at Catalina High, 63-0!

Injuries kept Hicks from playing at the next level. “When I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to play shortstop as a livelihood for the Detroit Tigers or the New York Yankees, I figured I needed a backup plan,” he said.

Journalism was his backup, and he worked his way up the media ladder to the Arizona Daily Wildcat his junior year.

“He was a real pro, even back then,” said Greg Waters, his former sports editor at the Wildcat. Dan also wrote for the Tombstone Epitaph with me and was a high school football stringer for the Tucson Citizen, where I worked and later became sports editor.

He developed his witty style as the public address announcer at UA baseball, softball, volleyball and women’s basketball games. He cracked up the baseball press box and crowd when he blurted, “Chip” (long pause) “Hale,” each time the infielder came to bat. It helped make Hale, now the current UA baseball coach, a fan favorite at Sancet Field.

When Hicks broke through at NBC, the rest of the nation discovered his signature enthusiasm and humor — and how it made the games he called more enjoyable.

“My job as play-by-play announcer is to make you care about the people you are watching,” he said. “It’s a real fundamental piece of journalism — and I still fall back on my journalism degree big time — because we’re basically telling stories about people.”

That degree meant a lot to Dan. When he was inducted into the UA Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022, he gave a funny, warm speech at the Center for Creative Photography as I helped direct the ceremony nearby. He credited the J-school for molding his ethics and career. “When I come on the air, I think back to my (studies): Perspective. Who, what, when, where, why and how. Tell the picture. Be simple,” he said. “You don't need to go overboard.”

Hicks was humble and poked fun at himself, recalling how he kept his radio job despite accidentally using the F-word on air, and how he bombed in his KVOA-TV debut because of a teleprompter snafu and no makeup. He praised his dad and two sisters in the audience — and his late mother — for making him “believe I could do anything.” He beamed about his three daughters and his wife, sports broadcaster Hannah Storm. And near the end, he got a bit emotional as he described a typical NBC meeting with his producer, UA alum Tommy Roy.

“What gives me the most pride of anything is we’ll be discussing a topic of that day, and he will say, ‘Danny, what do you think? You're the journalist here.’ And I think to myself, with the media business changing, boy are those words great to hear,” Hicks said. “So, yeah, I’m trying to do my part. I’m trying to keep this whole thing going in the right direction, even though we’re in strange, difficult and different times.”

Dan congratulated the other Hall of Fame inductees and shook my hand. I’ll never forget that 12-minute speech — or how well he did his part in over 40 years of calling sports.