Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to the Forward Together podcast. I'm Rick Newma, president of Wichita State University.
Once you hear my guest's voice, you'll have no doubt who he is. Mike Kennedy has been the legendary and beloved voice of the Shockers for 46 years.
We celebrated Mike at the recent Temple versus Wichita State basketball game, where we honored Mike with a banner and permanent emblem on the court. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.
Mike, it's so good to see you. Thanks for stopping by the podcast. How are things going for you today?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Really well, I'm still kind of basking in the glow of Saturday nights.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you. I want to talk about that. Let's just get right into that. You announced your retirement last November, and you might want to just talk a little bit about how you got into this business.
But what did that mean to you? What happened at the game with Temple over the weekend?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Well, I knew they were going to do something. The details were pretty much a secret, all of it. And so there was so much that was a surprise. It was at a scope at a level that was just totally unexpected and very, very gratifying. I mean, I'm very, very grateful for was done. And, I mean, I don't know. I don't like to think of myself being in the spotlight that much, and it was a little uncomfortable at times almost. But like I say, very gratifying to receive that kind of recognition.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And Kevin Soller, athletic director, who I know you know well, he showed you, I think, the decal that's on the floor, and you thought it was just gonna be like a temporary kind of
[00:01:54] Speaker B: a thing, but Debbie did. She was, can I peel this up after the thing's over? She was, no, this is here forever.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: This is permanent. I think that's great. And then, of course, the banner that's going to fly up on the ceiling.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Well, see, that was the biggest surprise, because secretly, I've never told anybody this, but I had seen that done in a couple of other arenas that we've been to for longtime broadcasters at that school. And I thought, that's a really cool thing to do. I would love to have that at Wichita State. But then I saw the decal, and I thought, well, this is great. This is a permanent thing. This is really cool. So then when they dropped the banner, too, that was a total surprise.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure. So maybe a little bit more context. I know a lot of people know you. I don't know everybody who watches or listens to this podcast knows you, but maybe trace your Life back when you got started and I know before you were in tv, but maybe talk a little bit about how you got to this point and why you have been so interested and continue to do this work all these 46 years as the voice of the Shockers.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Well, without trying to make it too long a story, I always had, I felt a connection from a very young age between sports on the radio and being on the radio.
And then growing up in Wichita, I was a Shocker fan pretty much all my.
And when I was in school here at Wichita State, I ended up deciding to see if this was something I might be able to do, might want to do. I went over to kmuw, the campus station. And back then it was a small power signal. They didn't have the grants from National Public Radio and so forth yet. So the students got to do a lot of stuff on air. And I did some sports casts from the first one. I was hooked. I was just totally convinced that I knew this was what I wanted to do. And we were also allowed to do the home football and basketball games and freshman games. And that particular year, by the time I started, we were kind of out of basketball. So we did a few baseball games. The very first broadcast I ever did was a Wichita State Creighton baseball game at McAdams park in the spring of 1970. So I continued to do that until I graduated, looked for a job, found my first job in Chanute, Kansas and then moved from there to Pittsburgh. And it just happened that the next job was back here in Wichita. I went to work for the AAA baseball team, the Wichita Arrows. And that summer Cake took over the contract. Cake TV and radio for Wichita State. And they asked me to come to work for them for four years. I did weekend tv, I did play by play of the games on radio that were televised. And then the stations got sold and the new owners of the radio station asked me to come with them and become the full time play by play broadcaster on RAD was 1980. So that was really the start of this current 46 year run.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you're so meaningful to so many people. You know, they. When. You know, a lot has led up to this announcement over the weekend where we. You were honored at the. At the basketball game that we played against Temple.
But they always say over and over again or people that talk about you is that people do really feel like when they're listening to you on the radio that they're there in the arena, wherever you are, either at home or away, so you can talk A little bit about that, how those skills come about. I mean it's just amazing that you're able to do this play by play really seamlessly. I was listening to it. I was at the game and had another event. So I was at the first half and then I stayed for the festivities at halftime and then immediately got in the car and turned on the radio to continue listening to the game until I got to my next event.
So what is your recipe or what's the secret sauce there?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Well, the era I grew up in, I mean that was just an understanding that if you were going to do radio, that was your job to paint a visual picture that people could see for themselves and so try to describe it with as much detail as you can. And I listened to other broadcasters, you know, established professional broadcasters that were really good and got an idea of what that sounded like and how to do that.
And then I've just continued to this day. But that's really where it came from. Was just sort of a standard in the industry of how you went about things.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: One of the things that you say often when I'm listening to you, you say things like, oh no, he's running into traffic and everybody knows what that means.
There's just things like that that you say that.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: I guess that's, you know, you try to develop descri like that people have a visual picture and on radio descriptions that are not too lengthy so that people. You can get through it and move on to the next thing.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that you've seen happen in chakra athletics over your career and before.
What if there are three things and probably many more, but three things that you could point to are just really critical events that happen in Shocker athletics. What would those be?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: I saw this question in advance. It's hard to narrow it down to just three after this many years. Actually the first one is sort of two. I've always seen the back to back basketball wins over Iowa and Kansas in 1981, my very first year, as sort of one event. They were back to back incredible games. Got the Shockers to the elite eight in the NCAA tournament. So certainly that is one. 1989, winning the college World Series. I mean you don't get a chance to describe a national championship very often. And so that was. And that team fought through a of adversity at the end. So it was really a special thing. And then reaching the final four in 2013, beating Ohio State and LA to go to the Final Four after a period of time when you wondered if Wichita State could even be nationally relevant again after the stretch that we had been through. So those certainly stand out as three of the most significant.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Well, since you just talked about relevancy, you know, and you know, all of the changes in the last just two, three years in athletics, what can you say about that in terms of shocker athletics and our relevancy and given everything that we need to invest in now, to many of us feel like that's what it's going to take, more investment to be relevant.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: It's still almost hard to gain a full spectrum of what is going to be necessary. But. But yes, investment, more money. The NIL is such a big piece of things and I think my perception is that right now Wichita State has improved its NIL fund to the point where they're attracting able to bring in better players than what they were before. I think this group is more talented than the previous couple of teams.
Now the challenge is going to be can you keep them if they have more than one year of eligibility or you develop them from players that weren't very well known into somebody pretty special, then the really big crazy offers are going to come from other places. And so it's a combination of maybe more money to help keep them here, but also just developing an atmosphere and a place they want to be and might take less money than somewhere else to stay in this situation.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yeah, Kevin Saul and I talk a lot about this in our meetings that we have, and I definitely understand that it's going to take more of investment and we have been doing that and we'll continue to do that.
It's going to be more of a challenge for us because we don't have football. And a lot of the revenues that come to athletic departments is through their ESPN contracts and their deals that various conferences have.
And most of the money goes towards football. So that's just a little bit of a challenge. But I also think that still about culture, and I know that Kevin Saul believes that too. And tell me about what you think in terms of that. Because you can throw money at as much as you want, and we've seen some examples of that in this current season in different schools where they're not having a winning season.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's still important. And where Wichita State beat the odds through some of their glory years recently was taking players that were not as well known, not as highly recruited and developing them, but they had three and four years to do that. Now that's going to be more rare.
But I still think if you do create the kind of culture you're talking about, and I think that we're feeling some of that here right now.
These guys like being with each other, they like playing together. I think that's important. And, and again, I think, you know, you may have to be at least competitive financially with what they're being offered, but they might take less to stay in a place where they enjoy being in the culture and know they've got
[00:11:22] Speaker A: some future there and feel supported. And you mentioned in the past the university has had a lot of success bringing in less known student athletes. You know, Fred Van Vliet is a good example, great example. And I know that you've had opportunity to get to know him. So can you just using him as an example. When he came here, he wasn't one of the top recruits in college basketball. He drove his car down here with his girlfriend. I think the story, how it went and showed up and well, you know what the history is.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: And he was a guy. They had seen him play in the summer against some of the high profile big time recruits and at least hold his own.
They saw something in him in terms of a work ethic and just a desire to be as good as he could be. And I think you still look for those things and I think sometimes that can help you overcome maybe somebody not being a guy that was as highly recruited and highly paid, but can still help you win ball games.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And boy, what a professional career he's had. And he's gone on to now represent the players and their.
I can't remember exactly what the. You might know, not a union, but something like that.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Players association or whatever.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Players Association.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: You know, I'll say this too, and I don't know, I hope this still continues to be a factor. But if these young people coming in can learn what this community is. I can't tell you how many student athletes I've seen come here over the years from other states who have stayed in Wichita because they loved the community and had employment opportunities and so forth because of the university and its connections and just because of connections they made with people who followed the program.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
So we're also known here in Wichita as having a really good fan base.
Have some ups and downs.
We're hopefully going up at this point. You know, basketball's having a lot of success. Some of our other sports are as well. Tell us a little bit about what you think about our fan base here.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Well, first of all, and. And it really started in basketball with Ralph Miller Clearback in the early 1950s, the fan. The primary fan interest had been football before that, but basketball really started to pull people over, and that's continued to this day. And I think even now, there's nothing that can happen in Wichita that will pull more people together and get them excited if the basketball team's having a really good year.
And certainly, I think the fan thing was affected greatly by Covid, just like a lot of other parts of our society. And people figured out they didn't mind staying home and watching things on tv. And I think that's been part of the issue, you know, that year in 21, where you could only have a few people in the arena, and that weird feeling, it's been a battle to come back from that. And it's not just here. I think it's a lot of places, but the fan base, the fan interest is still here.
And you have to win. I mean, you hate to say that, but you do. You have to win. You have to be entertaining. And I think people have started to realize this team is fun to watch. It is entertaining. They're winning. And so the crowds have kept growing. We haven't filled it yet, but the last three or four crowds have significantly gotten better, and it's been a really good atmosphere.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Yeah, Kevin, he's always sending me data about every little aspect of the athletic department but how the teams are performing. And he sent me a text late Saturday night about the attendance. I think it was just right. Over 8,000 people scanned in that day.
But if you. And you'll know this more than I do, because you go to all the away games, that's still significantly more people than our current league in what they draw in, in most games.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure even when we've been averaging, say, 5,500 a game, that's been second in the conference to Memphis and.
And theirs is down some because they're not having the year they usually do. But, yeah, we're right up there at the top in our conference. And it's still the other thing that's been a big recruiting advantage over the years. Players learn about the atmosphere here and how fans support the program.
Now these guys are getting to see that at a level that hasn't been for a while. And those returning will certainly tell others. And those are things they can show recruits.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Well, I wanted to go back in time a little bit, a difficult time at the University.
It's in 1970, and once you wrote that, you were handed the most difficult assignment of your career. Which was, sadly, the tragedy of one of the football team's plane crashings, or a plane crashing into a mountain in Colorado, which I had never gone there to see that. But I made a point when I became president to go there, because I'm at the memorial services. It's one thing to be up there, and you understand the gravity of that situation by seeing the people that come back every year for that memorial, but it's yet another thing to go to the site.
How did you handle that at the time? What do you think about it today?
What's your thoughts?
[00:17:01] Speaker B: It was a Friday afternoon, and I don't know how the campus is now, but it was pretty much deserted on Friday afternoons back then. And several of us that did stuff at the radio station just kind of liked hanging around there. And there were several of us just kind of hanging out. And somebody would go up periodically and check the AP news wire just to see if anything was going on. And somebody comes running back down. And there was a story that had broken about a Wichita State plane crash in Colorado. And actually the first story, right after it, they sent an embargo. This isn't supposed to be released yet. We don't have enough information. And it was really sketchy for a long time, exactly what had happened. But we had an idea. I think we knew there were two planes that had gone.
And so my first assignment was to go over to the administration building, see if. If we could find out if they knew which plane it was, if they had a list of who was on each plane.
And as it turned out, either they didn't or didn't feel like that was anything they could share at the time.
But walking across the campus that day, it was absolutely the most perfect October day you could ever imagine. And I couldn't stop thinking, how could something this terrible happen on a day like this? And I understand it was the same way in Colorado that day. So I got back to the radio station. The phone was going crazy. They had me, man, one of the phones. And I spent a long time just fielding calls. A lot of them were from other campus stations and people just trying to find out what anybody knew, what information they could find out. I remember getting a lot of calls from Ohio because several players and several members of the coaching staff were from Ohio or had connections in Ohio as family and friends, trying to find out. And so it was that and just trying to find out information. It was all just very surreal and just a really strange, disturbing day, you know, and it's amazing how all of that has carried to this day. I mean, events have come up over the years. People have done new stories or documentaries, and you find out about connections to the whole thing that you didn't know about.
It's just had a life of its own. That's been almost amazing for any event I've ever had any association with.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: You know, we have that event every year on October 2nd and whatever day it is, rain or shine. And I think it's wonderful that we do that. And then, of course, we have the monument there off a hillside with the additions of the survivors recently.
Tell us about any of the players, the other people who were involved in the program at that time. Have you stayed in contact with any of them?
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I still see some of those people every once in a while.
And there's an organization, there's a group here in Wichita of the people that not only were, because there were freshmen that year, they had separate freshman football that were part of the team that weren't on the trip or anything that still live here and their families.
So they have stayed together. They meet periodically, certainly when that event comes up on October 2nd, they have everybody together in some way or another.
And I've even run into people occasionally when I travel or whatever that had a connection to that. So that still carries on. The late Jim Ratigan told me one time that after a period of time he just wandered, should we keep doing this?
But he called around to the families of the people that were involved, and they said, oh, yeah, it's very meaningful to us. It's very helpful to come back. And so we've continued that. And it's always a special day. One year, when my wife, Debbie, was the CEO of the Alumni association, one of the players who was one of the survivors, one of them who had been on the plane, came up to her and said there were like, I think, five of them that were there and said, is there someplace you have some place that we could get together?
And so she said, sure. And they came over to the Alumni association, went into their conference room, and at some point they asked her to come in, ask if she would talk to them. And they explained to her that that's the first time. And this was.
I don't know if it was the 50th, but something, you know, close to that, that it was the first time they had ever gotten together and talked about it as a group. And they'd always hated that word survivor. They'd always carried that guilt of, why me?
And that just tells you how much something like that stays with people.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Well, I think it's important to remember it so we don't forget.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: I think people, especially today, there's so many distractions that we have and things are competing against our time to remember.
And I like history. I like the history of the university. I like all the things about it, good, bad, whatever. And I just think it's important to do that. And you see that in the people that show up.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I agree that that's really important. And it's my understanding.
I'm really pleased to hear these kinds of things. I think there's at least some class, there's a class that teaches that every year or talks about it. And several of the current coaches now have their student athletes come to the ceremony so that they have a sense of what it was, what it's about. And I think that's great. I think that's important.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I do, too.
So this long history of this work that you've done, that's been so important to the university, to shocker athletics, everybody knows who you are. So you're going to be contained to, obviously going to announce the remaining basketball games. So there's three more?
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Well, hopefully more than that.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: That's true.
I shouldn't say that. There'll be at least a game in the tournament where we're hoping that there'll be many more after that.
So thank you for pointing that out.
And then baseball, you'll finish out baseball this year.
What's next? I know you've been asked that a lot, and it's probably hard to know.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: I haven't made big plans and I'll still come to games a lot. I'm going to be around. But we have two granddaughters that are Division 1 athletes. One runs track at Iowa State, one's soccer goalie at Abilene Christian, one at Evelyn. Christian's a freshman, and the girl at Iowa State is a sophomore. So they've still got some time. And I've kind of put it. I've described and watched other people's kids for 50 years.
It's time to go watch some of my own family, you know, compete. And I'm really looking forward to that.
I've also said Debbie has a really busy, challenging job, but it's also one where she can kind of arrange her schedule sometimes. So if they need to have an event or meeting, she can schedule those so she can do some other things. I've always been, you have a game this day, at this place, at this time, there's no flexibility. I Can't change any of that. So it's going to give us an opportunity just to do some things together. And then I've got a couple of book ideas I would like to reunite with the game of golf, which I've just pretty much abandoned over the last, I don't know how many years.
I've got some things I think I'll keep busy. All right.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Well, and people are going to keep you busy, too, by asking you to speak or do various different things.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: And those things are fun, and I would look forward to that. But the biggest thing is just not having such a demanding schedule that just demands you be here at this time, all the time. That's going to be the biggest change.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I know Debbie. She and I were former colleagues back in health professions. I know that she'll probably want you to come to some of her events, too.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And I'm sure she'll find things for me to do at the children's home and certainly honeydew things at the house that have gone neglected.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: So you're retiring, not totally stepping out of life or we'll never see you. You have these ideas that you shared with us. What is your advice to the individual that follows in your footsteps?
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Well, and I have, I think, a pretty good idea of who a couple of the candidates are, and I've worked with them. They both said that I have mentored them, which I appreciate, but I think they probably understand. And what I would hope is whoever it's going to be is their own person, their own individual. And there's no reason to try to copy anything I've done or be anything.
I appreciate that I've had a certain amount of success and that the people have appreciated what I've done, but they should be their own person, take their own approach.
And I know the two people that I'm talking about will both do the work. They'll do the preparation.
They'll do whatever it takes to do the best job possible. And I'm very confident that it will be in good hands. Going.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah, a different variety. Sure. Yeah. And that's what happens when there's change. So, Dave Dahl, your longtime companion on air, what's Dave doing? I haven't heard anything about that.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: He's tried to not talk too much. He wants the spotlight on me, which I appreciate, but I really think he wants to continue. I think Bob Hull wants to continue, and I hope they have that opportunity because they both do a great job.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Yeah, they really do.
Partnerships always make things much more interesting.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: When you have ideas to mention. Yeah. Especially when you're traveling and things, it's nice to have guys that are your friends that you enjoy being with. And that's certainly been the case.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Well, one of the things that I appreciate about you is your authenticity and your approachability.
I don't know if you remember this, but when I got into central administration and started going on some of those trips and we'd had some conversations and I was always, always wondering, okay, so you just have this bag that you're carrying around your equipment and you just plug it in and go. And it is almost as simple as that, right?
[00:27:31] Speaker B: As simple as that. Yeah. And especially now with. It's an Internet connection and it's a high quality signal, used to be phone lines and you had to do some things to try to clean those up a little bit in the quality. But yeah, you plug in an ethernet cord, you plug in your equipment, and away you go. It's pretty simple.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah. It's amazing that on one of the photos just the other day, I could see there's just like a little box kind of thing. Right.
And it's not very.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Those boxes used to be a lot bigger, just like computers and everything.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: I was saying to myself, there's that box that he's talking about that he plugs in. Well, Mike, thanks for stopping by the podcast. It's good to get to know you and I'm sure we'll be seeing each other along the way at various athletic events because you said you're going to continue coming to those but other events at the university and just also want to just express my appreciation for your service of all these years and it's been really great for the institution. So thank you.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me. And I'll just say I love this university. I've been blessed to do something I love at a place at a university that I've absolutely loved since I was very young. And I appreciate the fact that it's in good hands with you and I look forward to its continued growth and success.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Mike. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to follow, rate and share the podcast so others can find it too. And if you're curious to learn more about the mission and vision of Wichita State, check out my book, Student Centered and Innovation, A guide to transforming Higher Education.
It dives deeper into the story of Wichita State's transformation and what it takes to lead meaningful change. Visit wichita. Edu Book for more information. Go Shockers.
Sponsorship for the forward together podcast is provided by scott rice officeworks and the shocker store.
Additional thanks to nair amp wsu carpentry shop and go create.
