Well here I go again showing my age….
To me Keith Jackson defined a new era in sports broadcasting and set the bar impossibly high for his successors. His predecessors were primarily radio broadcasters and damn good at what they were doing but worked with an audience that had no video imagery of what was taking place, so painted the picture with their narration. Damn good at what they did, but Ted Husing, Bill Stern, Harry Wismer, Mel Allen (Bama grad), and Red Barber, et al, pretty much had to paint a verbal picture of the action they were seeing, and if they erred in names, downs, yardage, etc, there was no one challenging their calls, the radio audience just had to blindly accept their description.
Keith Jackson however, was providing the voice over to the action the audience was watching, to me a much more demanding circumstance and one he handled supremely well. For me, in doing this, he set the bar supremely high for those that followed him, and all have failed to achieve his level of excellence.
Farewell and Godspeed Keith, you were gone too soon and I miss you and your elegant interpretation of the game terribly.