Legendary college announcer set to retire

Longtime New Mexico State radio announcer Jack Nixon’s 45th season calling Aggies football and men’s basketball games will be his final one.

The 74-year-old announced Monday that he will retire following the 2024 season.

Inducted into the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame in 2019 and the New Mexico Broadcaster’s Association Hall of Fame in 2022, Nixon has called over 400 football games and over 1,000 men’s basketball games since he began in 1979. He is one of only six radio announcers to have called 1,000 or more men’s collegiate basketball games for one school.

Other accolades he’s received include winning NMBA’s Sportscaster of the Year award five times, its Newscaster of the Year award two times, and the 2012 National Association of Sports Writers and Broadcasters Sportscaster of the Year.

Nixon told reporters Monday that he’d been contemplating retirement since the year began and notified New Mexico State athletic director Mario Moccia recently.

“I still enjoy it. I feel that my eyesight and my brain is still good enough to do this. But frankly, I’m 74 years old and the travel has just gotten to me.”

Nixon will continue to work as the news director for Bravo Mic Communications after retiring from calling games.

“I love this town, and I hope that people here have warmed up to me,” Nixon said. “If they say ‘We listen to Jack, and we enjoy getting to know Jack,’… I think that’d be great.

“The real joy in life are the friends we make along the way. Throughout it all, the friends you make, the relationships you make and the people that you run into are the things that really sustain you. There’ll be exciting games, there’ll be exciting players, and there’ll be times when it doesn’t go your way, and times when you get a bad interview, or there’s gonna be something negative. But overall, I think that’s really it, the people you meet along the way.”

Hopefully, the Aggies can send Nixon to one more bowl game. They’ve qualified two seasons in a row and are coming off of a 10-5 season that culminated in a New Mexico Bowl berth.

[ Las Cruces Sun News , Nick Coppola ]

The post Longtime New Mexico State announcer Jack Nixon to retire after 2024 season appeared first on Awful Announcing .