By Frank Rajkowski, SJU Writer/Video Producer

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - When Mark Lewandowski gets behind the microphone to call Saint John's University football and basketball games on the radio – as he's done for well over two decades now – he doesn't have to imagine what his audience looks like.

He can often see a sampling right in front of him.



"That's how loyal Johnnie Nation is," said Lewandowski, who began calling SJU basketball games in 1999 and took over football play-by-play duties the following year. "Even people who are at the games are tuning in.

"There's nothing more incredible than looking out at a large crowd in Clemens Stadium, or at a packed gym in Sexton Arena, and seeing people with headphones on listening to your broadcast."

Of course, for decades and decades now, those listeners have made up just a small portion of a wider audience of SJU alums and fans tuning in across Central Minnesota – and more recently, thanks to the advent of the internet and the creation (in football) of the Johnnie radio network, the entire state, nation and world.

Since the 1960s, Johnnie football and basketball have been carried on a consistent basis on radio stations based in nearby St. Cloud, Minn. And even before that, a number of games were broadcast locally each season during the late 1940s and '50s.

Even earlier still, live updates were sometimes sent out over the airwaves.

The broadcasts have often featured top-notch talent, including play-by-play voices who have gone on to call games at the professional level. For a time in the early 1990s, the football play-by-play duties were even assumed by legendary broadcaster Ray Scott (left, courtesy of the St. Cloud Times), who in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the lead voice of NFL broadcasts on CBS television – calling four of the first eight Super Bowls and other memorable games like the 1967 NFL Championship Game (better known as the Ice Bowl) between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys.

"It's unprecedented for a Division III school to have had the kind of coverage we've had over the years," said Johnnie football coach Gary Fasching '81, a former SJU standout who also handled color commentary duties on SJU broadcasts for several years before returning to his alma mater to join then-head coach John Gagliardi's staff in 1995.

"I don't think you'll find another school our size that has attracted the kind of talent and big names that have come through to call our games over the years. I know we're the envy of a lot of schools. I hear from other coaches in our conference who are amazed at the amount of radio coverage we've had over the years, and at how professionally it's been done."

Many of those broadcasters look back fondly on calling the action for the Johnnies.

"It was really like being part of a Division I atmosphere, but on a smaller scale," said Dick Bremer, who called SJU football and basketball games on WWJO (98.1 FM) in St. Cloud for a number of seasons in the 1980s.

He's gone on to become the longtime television play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins.

"You sense it from the moment you park your car and walk into the stadium," he continued. "People are so into the game and the whole experience. It becomes very evident when you're doing those games that they're social events for a lot of people."

"It's the coolest thing," added Anthony LaPanta '90, an SJU graduate who hosted the John Gagliardi Show on the old Midwest Sports Channel in the mid-1990s and went on to become the play-by-play voice of Johnnie football during the 1999 season on St. Cloud-based KKJM (Sprit 92.9 FM).

He is now the television play-by-play voice of the NHL's Minnesota Wild.

"Here you have a Division III team," he said. "But they play in front of huge crowds and they have so much support out there. You know people are listening from all over. It was such a great atmosphere to be part of."

Early days
The first recorded instance of an SJU sporting event being broadcast on the radio appears to have come on Oct. 22, 1922 for a matchup between the Johnnies and St. Olaf (a game SJU lost 20-10).

"Something new in the line of thrills hereabouts was inaugurated during the Ole-Johnnie mix-up," reported The Record in its Nov. 1, 1922 edition. "Telephone lines, running from the press box on the sidelines up to the radio station carried the story of the game play-by-play. Thence it was flashed by radio to the fans in Northfield."

By 1925, soon after campus station WFBJ went on the air thanks to a radio tower built high atop the old Science Hall (now known as Simons Hall), at least a very small audience had the chance to tune in for real-time updates on the Homecoming game against Hamline – a game SJU lost 14-7.

"On Saturday, Oct. 17, the St. John's radio station, wave length 236 meters, will announce the details of the St. John's-Hamline football game directly from the local gridiron," The Record reported. "The game is scheduled for 2:30 in the afternoon.

"Those who receive the report of Saturday's football game, or who listen to the Sunday evening program (which consisted of pipe organ selections and an address by Fr. Clarus Graves entitled 'A Recipe for College Men') are asked in return to write station WFBJ, Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minn., reporting on the reception."

Johnnie sports updates were regularly featured on St. Cloud station KFAM when it first hit local airwaves in 1938, but it wasn't until 10 years later when full broadcasts of Saint John's football games appear to have been added to the station's lineup of local sports programming.

"Both colleges (SJU and St. Cloud State University, then known as St. Cloud Teachers College) and three high schools will figure into the over-all home-game coverage," reported the St. Cloud Times in its Sept, 17, 1948 edition highlighting that year's fall schedule with Cliff Sakry (left), KFAM'S regional director and social events commentator, handling the call.

"And for the first time in sports history play-by-play accounts of the St. John's home games on the Johnny field at Collegeville will be made possible through the use of KFAM's new portable Soundmirror tape-recording equipment."

The station continued carrying selected SJU games throughout the 1950s. In 1953, for example, every home game in Gagliardi's first season as the Johnnies' head coach was broadcast live on KFAM.

But by the start of the 1960s, a new station had emerged as player on the local sports broadcast scene.

Tin Pan Andy
WJON (1240 AM) first went on the air in 1950. And by the early 1960s, the St. Cloud-based station would become the regular home for SJU football (and sometimes basketball) broadcasts with Jim Roeser handling the play-by-play.

"When I first got there, we started to get pretty heavy into doing the local high schools and colleges," said Roeser, who remained the sports director at the station until he departed in the early 1970s to take a sportscasting job at television station KCMT in Alexandria, Minn.

"KFAM had been the first station in town. But WJON was really coming to the forefront with Andy (Hilger) as the program director at the time. He was the guy who hired me, and having local sports – especially Saint John's – on his station was really important to him."

Hilger (right, courtesy of WJON) started at WJON in 1958 as a late-night DJ who went by the name 'Tin Pan Andy.' He worked his way up the ladder quickly, buying the station in 1965 and later adding WWJO, KMXK (now Mix 94.9 FM) and KKJM to his portfolio.

"Having sports on his stations meant everything to Andy," said Emmett Keeenan '81, an SJU graduate who went on to call Johnnie football and basketball games during the 1990s before taking over his current role as the longtime activities director at St. Cloud Cathedral High School in 1998.

"There weren't many stations in the country who were willing to hand over four hours on the weekend on FM to local sports. But Andy did that when 98 Country (WWJO) got started in the early 1970s. And then he had the St. Cloud State games over on WJON as well. Not to mention all the high school sports they were doing. He really believed in supporting the community.

"And Saint John's, St. Cloud State and the local high schools were a big part of that."

"I think Andy's goal was always to make WJON the WCCO of St. Cloud and Central Minnesota," added John Schroeder, who served as sports director for Hilger's stations from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

"He modeled the station after that. Weather, local news and sports play-by-play were a big part of what he wanted to do. Then you had the fact that Saint John's was a Catholic college, and Andy was a big-time Catholic. And the whole mythic legend that surrounded Gagliardi. It all added up to this huge personal connection he felt toward having the Johnnies on his airwaves."

Roeser spearheaded that early coverage, following along when Gagliardi and the Johnnies headed to Sacramento, Calif., for the NAIA national title game in 1963. There, SJU defeated a Prairie View A&M team that featured future NFL stars like Otis Taylor and Ken Houston by a score of 33-27, earning the first of the head coach's four national titles.

"That was the best football game I ever saw in my life," recalls Roeser, who returned to call SJU football on WWJO for a couple of seasons in the late-1980s with Fasching as his color man.

"Both teams were so talented. (Defensive back/halfback) Bernie Beckman had maybe the best game I've ever seen. He went both ways and I don't know how much he even came out. He put on quite a show. I've watched a lot of football over the years. But I've never seen a game like that."

But WJON was not alone in the press box for that game, nor for the 1965 NAIA title game in which the Johnnies defeated Linfield (Ore.) in Augusta, Ga. Unlike today, when contracts guarantee exclusivity, there were no barriers then to prevent other stations from airing the games if they chose to.

KFAM, which was owned by the St. Cloud Times, took advantage of the fact that sportswriter Mike Augustin was already on hand for both the 1963 and '65 title games (Johnnie alums paid to fly him out) and pressed him into double service as a play-by-play man on the radio.

"Was there an Oak Grove Dairy in the area?" recalls Pat Reusse, the longtime Twin Cities sports columnist who worked with Augustin at the St. Cloud Times in the mid-1960s, and later for many years at the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

"I believe they were a sponsor. Auggie told this story 1,000 times in bars. He was overamped about a punt return and read the next ad as 'Drink Oak Grove Egg Nog and you'll never drink egg nog again.' He (was so excited he) skipped the word 'another' in front of the second egg nog."

Roeser, meanwhile, said he enjoyed his time broadcasting Johnnie games. Even if, like many who came after him, he sometimes found it difficult to get much information out of Gagliardi in the week leading up to a game.

"He never changed," recalled Roeser of the legendary coach who retired in 2012 with 489 career victories – the most of any coach in college football history. "I interviewed him for well over 20 years – in both St. Cloud and Alexandria – and he never told me a damn thing. He never wanted to give anything away. The only thing he'd ever say about the upcoming game was that the team they were playing was bigger and faster and he didn't know how the hell the Johnnies were going to beat them.

"But somehow they almost always did."

Roeser also lived near Johnnie basketball coach Jim Smith, who took over at Saint John's in 1964 and retired in 2015 with 786 career victories, the most of any coach at any level of college basketball in Minnesota history.

"Jim was always a super great guy," Roeser recalled. "In those days, St. Cloud State was a bit more dominant as a program. Jim was just starting to get Saint John's turned around. So we did more SCSU games than SJU. But I always loved covering him."

Still, Roeser eventually grew weary of the grind that St. Cloud radio required in those days.

"The TV job in Alexandria was a heckuva lot more money for a heckuva lot less work," said Roeser, now 84, who has lived in Denver the past 25 years.

"I was getting up every morning to be on the air at 6:30 a.m. six days a week. I'd be on through Party Line at 10:30. Then I'd go home, clean up, and hit the streets to do sales until it got to be time to leave to do whatever basketball or football game I was doing that night. A lot of times, I wouldn't get done until 9:30 or 10 p.m. Those were long hours, especially when I had five kids at home.

"But in those days, you did what you had to do until you could afford to do what you wanted to do."

The Connie O Show
Roeser's departure opened the door for the arrival of a new play-by-play voice. Connie Overboe, who went by the on-air name Connie O, arrived in St. Cloud from Illinois in 1972.

Soon he was handling play-by-play for SJU football and basketball, in addition to high school sports (especially Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn.). Overboe (left, courtesy of the St. Cloud Times) arrived around the same time Johnnie sports migrated from AM (WJON) to FM (WWJO).

"The coverage area was much larger at that time," Overboe recalls. "(WWJO) could carry into the Twin Cities and all that. I worked by myself a lot of the time. Sometimes I had Charlie Reichensperger with me on color for football. Once in a while, Thom Woodward (a 1970 SJU graduate who worked as the school's sports information director and later in institutional advancement) would help out as well. But mostly it was just me."

Among the highlights of Overboe's time in the SJU booth were calling games for the 1976 Johnnie football team that won the NCAA Division III national title and for the great SJU basketball teams of the late 1970s led by All-American Frank Wachlarowicz.

"That (1976) national championship game was in Phenix City, Ala., and I can still remember it vividly," said Overboe, who retired from radio in the early 1990s, but still resides in St. Cloud. "The Johnnies played Towson State (Md.) and they were ahead 28-0 in the fourth quarter. The players were all high-fiving which, in retrospect, was not a good sign. Towson came back and scored four-straight touchdowns and the game was tied in the final minute.

"The Johnnies got the ball back and Jim Roeder – a kid I knew from calling his high school games at (St. Cloud) Apollo – went down the sideline and somehow caught a pass from Jeff Norman. Then Norman kicked the field goal to win it (31-28) as time expired.

"John (Gagliardi) was always so tense and tight before games," he continued. "But on the bus back to the Holiday Inn, he was as relaxed as I ever saw him. His wife Peg was there with him and a couple of his kids. And he was having so much fun.

"He was a great guy to cover, but he could get really paranoid before games. I remember (in 1978), the Johnnies were playing Macalester. And the Scots were going to set a national record for consecutive losses if the Johnnies beat them. John would not even do a telephone interview with me the week before that game. He just didn't want to say anything that would motivate them. 

"They ended up beating them 44-0."

Macalester's losing streak eventually stretched to 50, a mark that now ranks second all-time for futility in college football history. But far more harrowing then coaxing an interview out of Gagliardi was the experience Overboe had with the SJU basketball team when the Johnnies began the 1978-79 season on a frigid night in Jamestown, N.D.

"The Johnnies got beat and it was a real nail biter," he said. "It was about 20 below outside. And not too far out of Jamestown on the ride home, the bus froze up and broke down. The driver hitchhiked back into Jamestown to get a new bus while we all waited for him to come back and get us. Then that bus broke down on the outskirts of Fargo. So we all piled into a restaurant and they sent a new bus to get us. But that bus thought we were at Saint John's and headed that direction down Interstate 94. So another bus had to get sent to pick us up back in Fargo. 

"Now it's like 7 a.m. and we finally start heading home again. Everybody is falling asleep. But I looked up and saw the driver – who'd been with us the whole time – starting to nod off. I walked up and asked him if he was OK. He said he was fine, but he wanted me to sit there and talk to him. So I did that the rest of the way back to Collegeville."

"Two games later, they started that 27-game winning streak that took them all the way to (the NAIA national tournament at Kemper Arena in) Kansas City before they lost to Drury in the second round."

Smith recalls a humorous moment in Kansas City involving Overboe and Woodward, who was on hand to do color.

"I think Connie had to use the bathroom at one point," Smith said. "And they came back on the air sooner than expected. So Woody had to improvise and try to do the play-by-play until Connie got back. But Connie was always such fun to be around. He brought so much enthusiasm to those broadcasts.

"And they were really important to Saint John's, even back then. I can remember Mike Augustin (who remained at the Pioneer Press until his death following a battle with cancer in 1997) telling me he'd try to find a hilltop he could drive to in the Twin Cities where he could get reception because he wanted to listen to our games."

Legends in the booth
Though he remained in the area, Overboe had moved on from Saint John's broadcasts by the late 1970s. And the baton was picked up by Gary Sparber, who called SJU action on WWJO from 1979-82 before embarking on a successful broadcasting career that included a stint as the TV play-by-play voice of the original Charlotte Hornets during the NBA team's first season in 1988-89.

"I answered an ad in Broadcasting Magazine," said Sparber, a New York City native who was working in Napoleon, Ohio at the time. "Jim Donovan (now the longtime radio voice of the NFL's Cleveland Browns) was the sports director at the time and he was also doing St. Cloud State games. He hired me. I knew WJON was really well-known and respected in the business. And St. Cloud was significantly bigger that Napoleon. So it seemed like a good move."

Sparber eventually went on to host a sports talk show at legendary radio station WBT in Charlotte, and worked as the TV voice of the ACC Network for two seasons before getting the Hornets job. He said voice problems eventually caused him to leave the business, and he embarked on a 26-year career in sales in New York City.

These days, he resides near Sacramento, Calif.

"I went on to do a lot of things, but I don't think I ever found as much pure enjoyment in a job as I did during those years in St. Cloud," he said. "Between the high schools and Saint John's, I was doing play-by-play five nights a week, which I loved. It was a great place to be …. except for the weather."

Dick Bremer, meanwhile, had already began to make his name in Twin Cities media – starting as the weekend sports anchor at WTCN-TV (now KARE) in 1981 and working for several seasons on Minnesota Twins and North Stars broadcasts on the old Spectrum Sports channel.

But the Staples (Minn.) High School and St. Cloud State graduate had plenty of familiarity with Central Minnesota, working for a time as a disc jockey on St. Cloud Top 40 station KCLD (104.7 FM).

"Duke in the Dark, that was the name he went by," said Mike Carr, a member of the 1976 national championship team who provided color for Bremer during Johnnie broadcasts – a role he has reprised numerous times over the years.

"There are a few people who still call him Duke to this day."

"I started doing the Saint John's stuff sort of out of necessity," Bremer recalls. "Spectrum Sports had ended and I wanted to keep doing games. But everywhere you looked in the Twin Cities, there was a legend working. Herb Carneal was doing the Twins. Ray Christensen was still doing the Gophers. Al Shaver was doing the North Stars.

"One of the guys I worked with at KCLD, Jack Hansen, was involved with Andy Hilger's operation at WJON and WWJO. He connected me with Andy and I agreed to come up and do some Saint John's football and basketball."

That meant getting to know both Gagliardi and Smith.

"Those guys were legends long before I covered them," said Bremer, who rejoined the Twins broadcasts in 1987 and has been there ever since. 

"But I enjoyed my time with each of them immensely. I think subliminally I learned something about longevity, and what it takes to last for a while in the same job. Now here I am in the same job (calling the Twins on television) for decades now."

But Bremer said covering SJU football could be challenging for a broadcaster – both professionally and gastronomically. 

"John would dress so many players that sometimes there'd be two 77s and you had to figure out which one made the last tackle, which wasn't always easy," he said. "I also learned to go to the concession stand (located on the ground floor of the press box) before the game started. The smell of heavenly apples or popcorn or hamburgers would drift up and get in your nose. And you'd be hungry the whole game if you hadn't already eaten."

Bremer remained through the 1987 season. After that, Roeser returned for the next couple of years. Then, in 1990, circumstances led Scott into the SJU booth.

The legendary broadcaster, who was also the voice of the Green Bay Packers during the Vince Lombardi era and who called Twins baseball from 1961-66, was living in the Twin Cities at the time.



Paul Johnson, who began the year doing the Johnnies' play-by-play, also hosted a weeknight sports talk show with Scott that was broadcast from Scott's restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

When he needed a color man early in the 1990 season, he called on his co-host, who was happy to do it.

"I said 'Heck, yes,'" Scott told the St. Cloud Times that season. "This is the first time in 45 years I haven't done a full schedule of games."

He ended up sticking around, taking over the play-by-play duties through the 1991 season. Scott died at age 78 in 1998.

"He was awesome to work with," Schroeder recalls. "I remember sitting down with him for a long, extended interview about his career. This was a guy who called so many big games. I mean he was a true legend.

"But I think he liked the connection with Gagliardi. He really ate that up and he stayed for a couple of years."

Carr occasionally served as his color man in the booth.

"I'd just sit there in awe," he remembers. "Here was a guy who called the Ice Bowl, who'd called World Series games and Super Bowls. It was amazing that he even cared what I had to say. But he couldn't have been nicer to work with."

On the air in the '90s
Filling in for Scott when he could not make games during the 1991 season was Keenan, who had called Johnnie basketball on the radio as a student on campus station KSJU during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He took over football and basketball play-by-play duties full-time in 1992, joined by Fasching for football color commentary. He and Fasching had actually lived on the same floor in Tommy Hall as sophomores at SJU.

"One of my best memories of doing those games came before a Johnnie/Tommie game in St. Paul," Keenan recalls. "(Mike Augustin) was covering the game for the Pioneer Press. He'd worked at the Times in the '60s and he loved Saint John's. (Longtime St. Thomas basketball coach and athletic director) Steve Fritz knew that and he used to accuse Auggie of being so pro-Johnnies that he wore red underwear. It was kind of a running joke.

"Well, before this game, Steve came into the press box, and in that big booming voice he has he yelled 'Auggie, you better not have that red-colored underwear on today.' At which point, Auggie actually dropped his pants to show that he really did have red underwear on."

J.G. Preston (left), who was also working on Twin Cities Public Television's "Almanac" program at the time, took over football duties from Keenan in 1993, though Keenan remained on color at times and also continued to call Johnnie basketball – including a memorable 80-75 victory over Wartburg (Iowa) in the first-round of the NCAA tournament in March of 1993 in which SJU's Mike Trewick hit a desperation, off-balance, 30-foot shot from the hip to seal the victory.

Preston (who was WJON's morning man until 2005, and who had also called University of Minnesota football on the Minnesota News Network in 1986 and '87) and Keenan also teamed up to call high school sports, including the second of two-straight state championships their boothmate Fasching won as head football coach at St. Cloud Cathedral in 1992 and '93.

"When Cathedral won its second state title in 1993, J.G. and I did the game together on a Friday (afternoon) down at the Metrodome," Keenan said. "The Johnnies were playing a playoff game in La Crosse (Wis.) the next day. So J.G. left from there. But I had to go back to St. Cloud to emcee the welcome home ceremony for the Crusaders. Then I turned around and headed down to La Crosse myself to do the game.

"There was a lot of running around in those days. But it was great."

Preston, meanwhile, remained on commentary for the bulk of the games from 1993 to 1998 (except 1995), making him the play-by-play announcer listeners heard when SJU became just the second Division III school in the country to put its radio broadcasts online in 1997. 

He was also on the call when the Johnnies advanced to the national semifinals in both 1993 and '94 – falling 56-8 in the mud at rising Division III football titan Mount Union (Ohio), then dropping a heartbreaker 19-16 at home to Albion (Mich.) the following year.

"Holy God, that 1993 team was so good," said Preston of a squad that averaged 54 points per game (and a Division III record 61.5 ppg during the regular season). "They scored every time they touched the ball. (Quarterback) Willie Seiler came out of nowhere to lead that team. I think he was like the third-string quarterback to start the season. But he proved to be the right guy. 

"I remember that Mount Union game for all the wrong reasons. The field was an absolute mess. The mud had to be three inches deep. I don't know what that game would have been like a on a dry field. But in that mud, Saint John's never really had a chance."

Hilger, who died at age 83 in 2013, sold WJON, WWJO and KMXK to Regent Communications in 1998. But he kept Spirit 92.9 (KKJM), the station to which SJU broadcasts had already moved in 1997.

The move also brought a new play-by-play voice when the up-and-coming LaPanta took over football play-by-play for the 1999 season.

"I did games on campus radio when I was in college," LaPanta remembers of his days as a student at SJU. "There was no communications major at Saint John's at the time. But I got experience that way. I knew I wanted to get into broadcasting and I knew I wanted to do play-by-play.

"I ended up hosting the John Gagliardi Show on (Midwest Sports Channel) in 1994 and '95. So I was up there every weekend shooting game highlights, interviewing the players and interviewing John. Then (Twin Cities sports talk station) KFAN was doing an MIAC game-of-the-week for a time. It wasn't always Saint John's. But I did that for two years. So I'd been around a lot of Johnnie football."

During broadcasts, LaPanta was paired with former SJU quarterback Steve Varley, who'd been his college roommate.

"He did a great job," LaPanta said. "It was really fun to have him there.

"I became pretty good friends with (then-SJU quarterback) Tom Linnemann that year. He broke his leg early on that season, so he was always in the press box. He knew Varley because Steve had been a student teacher in Melrose (Minn., Linnemann's high school). So he'd come up and hang out with us. We ended up becoming pretty close. I was in his wedding. He became my daughter's godfather. And that all grew out of that season."

VOJ … Voice of the Johnnies
LaPanta was already working on Twins' broadcasts in 1999, and when he was unable to make a couple of games because of scheduling conflicts, his place was taken by a new play-by-play voice that has ended up sticking around for over two decades now.

A 1992 graduate of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, Lewandowski began his radio career in Little Falls, Minn., before going on to stints in Havre, Mont. (calling Montana State University-Northern sports) and Scotts Bluff, Neb. (calling junior college and high school athletics).

He returned to Central Minnesota in 1999 and began calling SJU basketball that winter. The following season, he was paired with longtime Saint John's Prep coach and activities director Bryan Backes '87 in the football booth and the two have been together ever since (right, courtesy of Tommy O'Laughlin).

They were on hand to call the Johnnies' run to the national championship game in 2000, and again years later during the season in which Gagliardi passed Eddie Robinson as the winningest coach in college football history and won his fourth national title with a memorable 24-6 upset over Mount Union.

And there have been many other memorable calls – both on the football field and basketball court – in the years since.

"The national championship in football is certainly right up there," said Lewandowski, who moved with the broadcasts to Tri-County Broadcasting's powerful AM station WBHR (660 AM in Central Minnesota and beyond) in 2006. "But who could forget Russell Gliadon's game-winning field goal against Bethel (in 2009) when all the fans came streaming out on the field. That was a huge call for me.

"And the Kyle Gearman call (when the wide receiver caught a Hail Mary pass from quarterback Alex Kofoed in the final moments to beat Concordia in Moorhead in 2005) was another big one. We were coming out of the break before that play happened and Bryan asked me what I was going to do for Thanksgiving. That's when it dawned on me that if they lost, they weren't going to make the playoffs.

"When he caught the ball, he was a good five yards behind the defensive backs. You can actually hear me on the Concordia radio broadcast. Larry Knutson, the dean of MIAC announcers, was calling that game and I was so loud you can hear me in the background."

Lewandowski also cited several memorable basketball moments, including a big 61-56 win at St. Thomas in February of 2012 in which then-senior Aaron Barmore went 7-for-7 from the field and the Johnnies completed a season sweep of the defending national champion Tommies on a night when St. Thomas was honoring Fritz, who had stepped down as basketball coach the previous offseason.

"There are games when I can get pretty excited," he said with a smile.

Indeed, Lewandowski's passion and exuberance for all things SJU (as well as his occasional … umm … critiques of the officiating if a call goes against the Johnnies) have become his trademarks over the years – much to the delight of his listening audience on WBHR and the two other stations around the state that now make up the Johnnie radio network.

"I'm a homer," he said laughing. "There's no doubt about that. I broadcast the games for Johnnie fans. And it's been an amazing 21 years. I can't believe time has flown by the way it has. But this is such a great community to be part of. And the crew we have on the broadcasts now – with Mike and (son) Charlie Carr (a former SJU punter) – is amazing. I can't say enough about all those guys. They make me look good.

"This has truly become my home. I feel very lucky to have been as accepted as I have been by Johnnie Nation. It's been a blast to be able to do football and basketball all these years, and we've ended up doing some hockey and baseball and wrestling as well.

"It's been a pretty good way to spend the last two decades."