Woody Durham

Durham began his career at WZKY, a small AM radio station in his hometown of Albemarle, at age 16.[1] As a student announcer, Durham played rock-and-roll records, broadcast church sermons, and did color commentary for high school basketball.[6]

Durham was the sports director of WUNC-TV while he was an undergraduate.[1] He also called baseball games around this time.[7]

After graduating, Durham briefly worked at WBTW-TV before becoming the sports director of WFMY-TV, where he worked from October 1963 until August 1977.[1] While there, Durham also worked on the station's Atlantic Coast Conference package, what would be the predecessor to Raycom Sports. He also did color commentary for Wake Forest Demon Deacons football, starting in 1964. When Wake Forest decided to fire their football coach in favor of hiring a new coach, Durham moved on to call Guilford College football for two years. Durham's work with WFMY-TV led him to want to call play-by-play for ACC football and men's basketball.[6]

In 1975, Durham was the president of both the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the Atlantic Coast Sportswriters' Association.

In 1977, Durham became the Director of Sports and Sports Development at WRDU-TV (which became WPTF in 1978). He stayed with WPTF-TV for four years.[1]

While still working for WFMY-TV, Durham became the play-by-play announcer for the Tar Heel Football and Tar Heel Basketball Networks, sports radio networks, in 1971. He took over from the radio network's founder, Bill Currie, the "Mouth of the South," when Currie took a television job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Durham also became the master of ceremonies for The Bill Dooley Show and The Dean Smith Show, television programs that aired throughout North Carolina.[8][9][10]

In 1981, Durham was named vice president and executive sports director at Tar Heel Sports Marketing.[11]

Durham remained the host of the television shows until 1983, when Jefferson-Pilot Communications bought the rights to UNC Chapel Hill's football and men's basketball television shows.[12][13] Jefferson-Pilot also developed call-in and five-minute drive-time radio shows with Smith and Mack Brown.[14][15] Durham would return to hosting the football television show, then known as The Mack Brown Television Show, in 1993 after the Village Companies, the owners of the Tar Heel Sports Network, bought back the multimedia rights for UNC Chapel Hill. In addition to the football and men's basketball shows, the rights also included Jefferson-Pilot's radio properties.[16][17] Smith, on the other hand, retained Jefferson-Pilot's John Kilgo as host of his radio and television shows.[18]

In 1999, Learfield Communications bought the multimedia rights from Tar Heel Sports Marketing.[19] As Learfield preferred to have only one announcer host all of its multimedia shows, and Smith was retiring from coaching, Durham once again became the host of the men's basketball television and radio shows.[18]

As the Voice of the Tar Heels, Durham did the play-by-play for twenty-three Tar Heel football bowl games. He was also behind the microphone for 13 Final Fours, including national title wins in 1982, 1993, 2005, and 2009.[11]

When the UNC Chapel Hill athletic department relaunched its website, TarHeelBlue.com (now GoHeels.com), Durham and his then color analyst partner Mick Mixon were given editorial columns on the website.[20]

After forty years as the Voice of the Tar Heels, Durham announced his retirement on April 20, 2011.[21] A nationwide search was conducted to find his successor. Jones Angell, who worked with the Tar Heel Sports Network as a host and as Durham's color analyst, was named the new Voice of the Tar Heels approximately two months later.[22]

Some of Durham's expressions during his broadcasts include "Go where you go and do what you do," "Go to war, Miss Agnes"[23][24] (a phrase Durham heard from Chuck Thompson during a Baltimore Colts game),[6] and "Good gosh gurdy."[25] Durham is also known for his "How 'bout them Heels" play call before the end of the 1982 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game.[24][26][27] Durham repeated this play call for a homecoming ceremony at Kenan Stadium after the 1982 championship game, before the members of that championship team spoke to the audience.[28]

In addition to Mixon and Angell, Durham's broadcast partners have included Phil Ford, Charlie Justice, and Eric Montross.[29]

With the help of his wife Jean and sportswriter Adam Lucas, Durham published his autobiography, Woody Durham: A Tar Heel Voice, on September 4, 2012.[30] The book was awarded a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award from the North Carolina Society of Historians in 2013.[31]

Durham wrote editorials for the now defunct magazine CAROLINA: The Magazine.[32]

Durham hosted a radio program, Woody Durham’s Great Moments in Sports History, for WNCW. The program, which first aired in December 2014, was a 60- to 90-second show focusing on little-known sports history facts.[11]