★ Career
From WKRA to the SEC
A thousand-watt station in Holly Springs, four SEC schools in four states, national networks, and a classroom at the end of it.
Number 11.
Holly Springs
Ninety dollars a week
After Delta State and a year of coaching, Charlie went to work at WKRA, a thousand-watt station in Holly Springs, Mississippi, for ninety dollars a week. A lady ran the station.
1972 · Greenwood
WABG-TV
Television started in the Mississippi Delta, in a little station surrounded by soybean fields and the occasional cottonmouth. The young sports director called Bear Bryant and asked if he could phone him every week for an interview. The next day, Coach Bryant called back.
With Archie Manning, Johnny Vaught, and friends.
1973 · Jackson
WLBT-TV and the Rebels
Four years at WLBT-TV, Jackson's NBC station, and, while still in his twenties, the radio play-by-play voice of Ole Miss, 1974 to 1977, the first of his four SEC schools. In 1977 he called the Rebels' win over Notre Dame in Jackson, the only loss for the eventual national champions. Archie Manning remains his hero of all time.
1977 · Memphis
WREG-TV
A couple of years at the CBS affiliate in Memphis, where he was in the newsroom the day Elvis died. After serving as a state chairman for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Mississippi, he spent two years on its board in Memphis.
Charlie Mac's Sports Facts.
Nashville
Channel Four and the Commodores
Sports director at WSMV-TV, then, from 1986, sports director at WLAC, the fifty-thousand-watt station he grew up listening to, and fourteen years as the voice of Vanderbilt football and basketball. He named the long-range Commodore teams of the eighties the Bomb Squad. Tennessee named him Sportscaster of the Year in 1990 and 1991.
In the booth.
1992 · Lexington
Kentucky and Rupp Arena
At forty-six he joined the University of Kentucky football and basketball broadcasts through Host Communications, after Cawood Ledford's thirty-nine years. C. M. Newton held the news conference. “The Cadillac of all the jobs I could have,” he called it. Within a year he was Kentucky Sportscaster of the Year, and from 1993 to 1996 he hosted NCAA Today on ESPN.
Columbia
Hang a Garnet six
Following Bob Fulton's forty-two years, he became the voice of the South Carolina Gamecocks, with coaches shows for Lou Holtz, Dave Odom, Susan Walvius, and Ray Tanner. When the Gamecocks scored, he told them to hang a Garnet six, and it stuck. He also taught a Maymester class at the university.
Radio days.
And more
Georgia, Middle Tennessee, and the networks
Three years of Middle Tennessee Blue Raider football and basketball, five years in the University of Georgia's communications and athletics department, and selected games for Jefferson-Pilot Sports and Fox Sports.
2026
More Than a Game
His first book, from Heartland Publishing. About sixty stories from a life in sports, music, and second chances. “The booth is behind me now,” he writes. “And I'm still rolling.”
Hear it in his own words
More Than a Game tells the stories behind every stop on this page.