Jack Cristil (1925–2014) was a Southeastern Conference icon and the Voice of Bulldog athletics for more than five decades. In this biography, Cristil’s remarkable life and career is shared with all Bulldog fans. Authored by Mississippi journalist Sid Salter with a foreword by distinguished Mississippi State University alum John Grisham, the book originally sold over 10,000 copies and raised over $170,000 for the Jacob S. “Jack” Cristil Scholarship in Journalism at MSU.
With a fifty-eight-year association with MSU, Cristil was the second-longest tenured college radio play-by-play announcer in the nation at the time of his 2011 retirement. During his legendary career as the Voice of the Bulldogs, Cristil called 636 football games since 1953. That’s roughly 60 percent of all the football games played in school history. He was in his 54th season as the men’s basketball play-by-play voice, having described the action of almost 55 percent of all the men’s basketball games. In all, Cristil shared with Bulldog fans across the Magnolia State and around the world more than 1,500 collegiate contests. Central to Cristil’s inspiring story was his upbringing in Memphis as the son of first-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants. This paperback edition is updated with new material covering Cristil’s death and memorial service, with additional post-retirement and memorial photos.
