Voice of the Wildcats: Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportscasting by Alan Sullivan, Joe Cox (review)

My new boss—okay, my boss’s new boss—recently introduced me to the German word Festschrift, which means a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar. It is a word I doubted I would use in conversation or in writing—that is, until now. The word came to mind when I first picked up Voice of the Wildcats: Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportcasting. When I finished the book, however, I realized that this work does not stand as Alan Sullivan’s festschrift to his father, at least not as I envisioned it. But, in an unexpected way, it actually does. I will explain this further later. First, as any good reviewer should, I need to provide an overview of the book.

Author Alan Sullivan, one of Claude’s two sons, along with Joe Cox, detail Claude’s life history chronologically over twelve of the book’s thirteen chapters. The final chapter, as well as the book’s introduction, foreword, and afterword, contextualize Claude’s life and legacy. The creators adorned all this text with photos and figures—sixty-seven, according to University of Kentucky’s webpage for the book—and inserted them at the appropriate spot within the chapters, which, compared to a gallery of all photos in the book’s midsection, this reviewer welcomes.

I found this book on the OHR’s book table at the Oral History Association’s annual meeting; I assumed it landed there because of the oral histories conducted for it. And when one looks at the bibliography, one can see a list of interviews, conducted by Alan. But one does not find much more about oral history than that list and the occasional reference to something like, “Tsioropoulos [one person interviewed by Alan] recalled his admiration for Claude in a recent interview,” followed by the person’s anecdote (62). One will find nothing on the methodology utilized or the questions asked.

In their defense, I am quite confident that oral historians did not land high on the authors’ and publisher’s target audience list, and Claude, the book’s protagonist, passed away tragically in 1967 without any oral history from him (although Alan did interview his mother, Claude’s widow Alyce, in 2004). Plus, if one expands the definition of oral history (which this reviewer admittedly rails against), the now-accessible interviews Claude completed with college and pro athletes do depict a well-prepared interviewer questioning an interviewee and recording it, which sounds a lot like oral history. But since the University of Kentucky Press does publish some works deeply imbued with oral history, I would have appreciated more about oral history than a passing reference and a list in the bibliography.

So, back to the festschrift idea—when I finished the book, I initially felt that Voice of the Wildcats: Claude Sullivan and the Rise of Modern Sportscasting ended up being as much about the latter (Claude Sullivan) as the former (the Wildcats). Alan Sullivan and Cox laud their cast of characters, including every University of Kentucky (UK) basketball and football team, as much as they do Claude. Some chapters read merely as overviews of UK’s athletic seasons—at least those of the two main sports, football and men’s basketball. Interesting aspects of Claude’s life—Claude’s foreign travel and perhaps intrigue (see chapter 6, “Kentucky Broadcaster and International Man of Mystery”) and his few years as the play-by-play man for the Cincinnati Reds—came across almost as asides. This book promotes UK (Big Blue Nation) as much as Claude’s role in informing the public about it. So I came away thinking that the “scholar” being lauded by this festschrift was Big Blue, not the Voice of the Wildcats.

But upon further review, if one expands the definition of festschrift...