VOICE OF THE WILDCATS by Alan Sullivan and Joe Cox is Now Available

It has been said that the best sportscaster is the one you grew up hearing. College sports fans know that following a team means being part of its culture. They know the history, the team colors dotting the arena seats, and the scent wafting from tailgaters' grills. Equally important, however, are the sounds of the crowd and the voice calling the games. The announcer's voice which leaves fans-wherever they might be-perched at the edge of their seats is inextricably linked with his team, like Notre Dame's Tony Roberts or the legendary Harry Caray of the Chicago Cubs. They maintain a bond of trust with fans while propelling them into the throes of victory or softening the blows of defeat.

In Voice of the Wildcats: Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportscasting, Alan Sullivan, Claude Sullivan's son, along with Joe Cox, give the behind-the-scenes account of the man whose voice embodied University of Kentucky Athletics from 1947 to 1967. The 1940s witnessed an explosion in sports broadcasting across the country, and when Sullivan, a seventeen-year-old from Winchester, Kentucky, took up the microphone, he became part of a rapidly changing field. Sullivan's career developed as Kentucky began its rise to prominence and spanned the first four NCAA Basketball Championships under Coach Adolph Rupp. He also revolutionized the coverage of athletics by introducing a coach's show with Kentucky football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. It was not only copied by other institutions but would also become an important innovation that paved the way for the modern televised sports entertainment industry of today.

Claude Sullivan's reputation grew beyond Kentucky, eventually propelling him to the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, which increased his national reputation. He often leveraged his position as an announcer to pursue more strictly journalistic endeavors, including following the Wildcats behind "Iron Curtain" during the early part of the Cold War where he expanded his coverage through interviews with Soviet citizens. He was also involved with the development of a mobile broadcasting unit that was mounted in the trunk of his Oldsmobile convertible. Sullivan's foresight into sportscasting's potential would eventually lead to his induction into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

While Sullivan loved his Wildcats, it had always been his dream to become a national broadcaster. He earned the chance in 1965 when he took over for legendary Yankee pitcher Waite Hoyt as the top announcer for the Cincinnati Reds. The position was short-lived, though, as Sullivan fell victim to throat cancer only two years later, cutting his pioneering career short at the age of forty-two. His death devastated Wildcat fans around the country, including Cawood Ledford, his successor as Kentucky announcer.

As Alan Sullivan and Joe Cox make clear through interviews with players and other announcers, Sullivan's voice still echoes despite the years since his death. At the heart of his career was a series of connections with the players, the coaches, and most of all, the fans listening to his game calls. Those connections, which made a lasting impact on so many, keep Claude Sullivan's legacy alive today.

Alan Sullivan is a healthcare architect and Claude Sullivan's son. Joe Cox is an attorney and the coauthor of 100 Things Wildcat Fans Should Know.

Listening to the Original Voice of the Wildcats

The Claude Sullivan collection has been in the University of Kentucky Archives since 1978, when his wife, Alyce Sullivan, donated 254 tapes made of Claude's sportscasts and additional recordings of his early broadcasts of UK sports events. An additional one hundred plus recordings, including some records that preceded magnetic tapes, were discovered in 1998 and put into the collection. Forty-three transcription disks made by WHAS Radio were transcribed in 2008 and added. Also in 2008, Alan Sullivan, Claude's son, used money from Alyce's estate to begin digitizing all the recordings that make up the "final" Claude Sullivan Collection, which took several years to complete.

Following the digital archives project, Alan Sullivan completed his biograph of his father, Voice of the Wildcats: Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportscasting. The enhanced e-book features 28 embedded audio clips with over an hour of features from the UK Archives profiling Sullivan's work with UK, Cincinnati Reds, horse racing, and overseas travels, including milestone trips for WVLK to Russia in 1956-57 and the 1960 Rome Olympics. Twenty-seven of these audio files are available on http://voiceofthewildcatsbook.com/audio/

Alan Sullivan will be giving a talk based on the book on Wednesday, October 3, 7:00 pm at the King Alumni House at the University of Kentucky.
He will also be appearing at the Kentucky Book Fair on Saturday, November 15 at the Frankfort Convention Center

Voice of the Wildcats

Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportscasting

Alan Sullivan and Joe Cox

Publication Date: September 26, 2014 ♦ $29.95 cloth, ISBN: 978-0-8131-4703-1 ♦ ebook available

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