Sample chapter:
Radio and television
Chris Clark arrived in Providence in 1955 as a young sportscaster with a dream of doing radio play-by-play. He had grown up in Manhattan and was basketball crazy as a young man. Clark played in high school, and after World War II, when he returned from the Navy, had attended as many games at Madison Square Garden as he could. There, he saw Joe Mullaney play when Holy Cross was on the card, and he was in Alumni Hall when Mullaney’s Providence team upset Notre Dame in February of 1956.
Clark paid close attention and took note of the program that Mullaney was building at Providence, and by the fall of 1958, he was convinced that something special was about to happen on Smith Hill.
Clark pushed his boss at the radio station to broadcast Friar games and met initial resistance. To satisfy everyone he proposed a 20-game package, with ten Providence games, five Rhode Island games, and five Brown games. After a few broadcasts, there were still no sponsors, but the mail and phone calls indicated that the vast majority of the interest was in the Friar games. Initially, all of the games broadcast were home games, although the January 17, 1959, game against Boston College (a 51-49 loss) was the first away game.
“All of a sudden,” Clark recalled, “there came the Villanova game down in Philadelphia. And Joe (Mullaney) and I always disagreed. To me, that’s the game that put Providence on the map, the four-overtime win against Villanova.”
A week before the game, Clark went to his boss’ office. “He said, I know why you’re here and the answer is no,” said Clark. “I said, look, if Providence ever wins this game, it could be the steppingstone to something. I gave him all the reasons why we should do it. I worked for nothing that night. All I had to do was pick up an engineer, and get myself down there, which I did by plane, and do the game.”
Clark’s instincts were correct. Providence beat 19th-ranked Villanova in a four-overtime thriller 90-83, as Johnny Egan scored 39 points, and everything changed. “People always ask me,” said Clark, “is this true literally? But the following Monday morning, the sponsors were standing in line. They were there. That started it all for me, that was the big game.”
Providence’s first game on television was a national broadcast against Bradley in the NIT finals on March 22, 1960, on NBC. Clark saw how well received that game was and began to petition the local television station that he worked for to televise some games. The first local telecast was a Providence-Holy Cross game on March 4, 1961, and throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, approximately ten games each year would be televised, as Clark simulcast those games on both radio and television.
Chris Clark quickly became the first Voice of the Friars. His game calls brought Providence basketball to a generation of fans who couldn’t get seats at Alumni Hall, a messenger who helped establish PC as the state’s home team by bringing games into the homes of fans. Broadcasting in an age where there was no internet, no cable television, no social media, no streaming options, Clark’s radio and television calls were the only way for Providence fans who weren’t lucky enough to get tickets at Alumni Hall to access the games.
Clark broadcast the games for 21 years, until 1979, on both WJAR-AM/Channel 10 and WPRO-AM/Channel 12, depending on which station earned the contract. Sometimes he worked solo, sometimes he had a color man, like Vin Cuddy or Jack Comley, and always he had Jeremy Kapstein at his side as his trusted statistician.
When the Big East formed in 1979, the league assumed control of national television contracts, but local television still carried a few games each year into the early 1980’s, and radio broadcasts were still wholly under the purview of each conference team. The radio station carrying Friar games at the time, WJAR, lost the radio contract to WPRO, and Chris Clark’s time as Voice of the Friars came to an end. Gil Santos assumed play-by-play duties on the radio for three years, while Mike Gorman provided play-by-play for local television.
Chris Clark returned to the radio broadcasts for the 1982-83 season, which coincided with Joe Mullaney’s second stint as coach, and resumed his role as Voice of the Friars for three seasons, with Eric Reid handling the color and Ray Perry on stats.
For the 1985-86 season, Eric Reid assumed play-by-play duties and he was joined by former Friar great Joe Hassett, who began his long-running role as color analyst. Reid handled the role for three seasons, and when he left, Gary Cohen stepped in to call the games for one season, in 1988-89.
When Cohen departed, John Rooke took the reins for the 1989-90 season, and teaming with Hassett, has carved out a 30-plus year, legendary career as the second Voice of the Friars. Rooke, a graduate of the University of Texas, had worked for five years as a TV and radio play-by-play announcer for the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs before joining Providence’s WPRI-TV as a sports anchor. That led to his hiring for Providence College basketball. As was the case with Chris Clark, the team of Rooke and Hassett, along with their statisticians, the late John Zanini, also known as the Stat Beast, and Austin Rooke, became as well known among many Friar fans as the coaches or players, which helped to advance the Providence brand.