Communiqué
Former WOUB and Ohio University Broadcasting Legend Joe Tait Dead at 83
< < Back toNote: Joe Tait, a longtime Cleveland sports broadcaster and voice of the Cavaliers for more than four decades, died Wednesday. Early in his career, Tait worked at WOUB Public Media and was the voice of the Ohio Bobcats. He was 83. According to reports, Tait had recently gone into hospice care following a lengthy battle with kidney disease and liver cancer. Today, WOUB is resharing a story and audio interview WOUB Community Engagement Manager Cheri Russo conducted with Tait last year. Tait talked about his time in Athens and how it shaped his legendary career.
Legendary Cavs Basketball Radio Announcer Joe Tait was WOUB’s “Golden Voice of the Bobcats”
ATHENS, OH – One of the most celebrated voices in Ohio basketball history is remembering his time in Athens.
Joe Tait was the radio play by play announcer for the Cleveland Cavaliers for roughly 40 years. He was inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame of Ohio in 1992 and was selected as the founding member of the Indiana Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2004.
But, before all of that he was the sports director at WOUB Radio and Television and the voice of the Ohio Bobcats from 1966 – 1968.
“The first year I was there in 1966, the Ohio Bobcats football team went 0 and 10. I guess you can’t struggle much more than that,” said Tait. “The basketball team, yeah they had a tough way to go as well. They were playing .500 or there abouts. The legendary Jim Snyder was their coach, who is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my life, and they didn’t have enough horses to pull the wagon in the Mid-American Conference Basketball League.”
For Tait, working for WOUB and becoming the play-by-play voice of the Bobcats was his big break. Before taking the role, he had worked in local radio doing radio announcing work for high school teams in Illinois – the Frankfort Hot Dogs and the Monmouth Zippers.
“Of course, I was in college in Monmouth, Illinois, and we followed the Fighting Scots but none of them compared to the Ohio University Bobcats and the Mid-American Conference,” said Tait. “I had arrived as high on a sports ladder as I had ever been.”
In addition to calling Bobcat games, Tait’s role involved teaching classes and working with students at WOUB.
“It was a great experience. In the years I was down there, we had as many as 29, at one point, students who were able to get some experience doing play-by-play sports. Granted, it was on tape recorders, but up there at Grover Center, I used to have tape recorders lined up with kids doing play by play of Ohio University basketball games. We did baseball. We did lacrosse. We did hockey. Hockey was really big down there.”
Tait remembers the hockey games being a place where he and the students had the freedom to try new things to enhance the broadcast.
“We were able to televise their home games, and we had two fellows, Tiff Cook and Al Albert. They were hockey goalies. Al was the brother of Marv Albert (Sports Broadcaster) of NBA basketball fame. And if they were going to beat somebody real bad, like say Denison came in for a hockey game, and you knew the Bobcats were going to name their score on that one, we would mic up the goalkeepers, and then we alternate periods,” said Tait. “Then we’d have mics on the goalkeepers in goal, and they could describe to us exactly how they were feeling as the puck was coming down the ice in their direction. It was innovative, and it was fun. We had a good time. A lot of good things happened down there.”
Even though he had a storied career after leaving Ohio University, Tait says one of the games he was a part of during his time in Athens was his all-time favorite. It was a football game in Lawrence, Kansas against the University of Kansas Jayhawks on October 7, 1967.
“I guess if I had to nail it down to one game, I think if I looked on my shoulder, I might still see the bruises. The Ohio University Bobcats played at Kansas on Parents Day. Pepper Rodgers was the (University of Kansas) coach and of course he had quite a career. John Zook played on that (Kansas) team. So, we’re not talking about the Kansas football team of recent vintage that couldn’t beat themselves. This was a team that actually made a bowl game, and they picked, obviously, what they thought was a real target for their Parents Day game. Ohio University went in there and beat them, 30 to 15. Bill Hess was the (Ohio University) football coach. His wife, Katie, sat with me up in broadcast booth that day in Lawrence, Kansas, and every time Ohio University would do anything of note, like scoring touchdowns or make good defensive plays, she’d haul off and hit me on the shoulder,” said Tait. “That was a great win for Ohio University. It was fun. It was fun to see the Bobcats go out there and win against a big-time foe.”
During his short time at Ohio University, Tait became known as the “Golden Voice of the Bobcats.” In 1968, he left the university to accept a position as sports director for WIOK radio in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. According to an article printed in The Post, Tait had a desire to get back into commercial broadcasting.
“I enjoyed the years I spent down at Ohio University and made some friends that lasted well beyond my days at Ohio University. Archie Greer, (Former WOUB Director of Radio) was a great man and a good administrator, and we continued to correspond for years before he finally passed away,” said Tait. “It was rewarding to see somebody (students) come along and improve and then when they graduated, get a job, and do well in the commercial biz.”