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DMN Bill Mercer: Three Most Impressive Students At NT


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I had multiple classes with Dave and worked at KNTU while he was there. His voice was as clear and clean back then as it is now. He was always very good, that is calm, clean and accurate. We are lucky someone with experience with multiple NBA, MBL and national broadcast networks has landed in our booth. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Kind of weird but true to form, that they listed about 10 of Mercer's broadcasting jobs and left NT were he had to broadcast longer than anywhere.  Also obvious that he continues to omit Dunham as a student when he lists them.  

Mercer was a treasure that NT should have found a much better way to replace than they did.  

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2 hours ago, VideoEagle said:

The  way Mercer was treated was terrible and it didn't need to be done that way at all. 

Why should this surprise anyone?

But being not real familiar with the situation, remind me again who was the department head responsible when this treatment occurred?

Edited by UNT90
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10 minutes ago, EagleD said:

Mercer was in the broadcast booth for Rangers game in the third inning last night. I didn't get to catch it but was told at age 90 he still has it. 

 

Great great man. 

He does still have it..  It was great to hear him and the guys talking old times.  

I believe it was Sloan who was the AD.(might have been Helwig though by then?)...when he was jubbed in the back.

 

Rick

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3 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

I believe it was Sloan who was the AD.(might have been Helwig though by then?)...when he was jubbed in the back.

 

Rick

If the question is who was the AD at the time, I think it was Helwig. I base that on remembering the decision was made by a new AD just coming in. Part of the justification to the administration was a new AD should be able to name his own people, and thus "this is the time to make a move." 

As I understand it, there had been a whisper campaign that Bill had lost it and was making too many error on calling games. The whisper campaign was made to the AD and convinced the AD a change needed to be made. No one talked to Bill, asked him about the mistakes, compared the number of "missed calls" by Bill to any other announcers, none of that. Mercer explains much of what happened in his book which I suggest everyone read

If you are a new leader coming in and want to replace a long time person in your department, you should talk directly to that person, thank them for their years of service, have a party and call them a hero very publicly and announce their retirement. The person being replace might not like it, but when you are being publicly praised and even have some kind of celebration in your honor it's hard to say you were mistreated. 

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It was Helwig. He was brand new, had just fired Dennis Parker, as well as several other guys in the AD who got run off. That, in and of itself, isn't really all that bad, but the problem was that he hired poorly, too, and was allowed to stick around too long, which hamstrung us with incredibly poor OOC schedules for the two main revenue sports.

I never had any problems at all with George Dunham getting the gig, as he loves the university tremendously and was a part of the local sports station that was quickly climbing the ratings, allowing us to still get mentions in DFW sports media, when usually we just go ignored (some thing really never change...) Bill Mercer is legendary in these parts and I think his legacy of tremendous students becoming great voices in sports speaks for itself. And I'm glad to know that George and Bill finally got reconciled to the point where hard feelings are no longer at play.

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I read Mercers book. He got screwed, especially since he gave his heart and soul to NT. I'm glad he made nice with Dunham.  Craig Way had to play peacemaker. I am fortunate enough to have the occasional conversation with Craig. Mercer is his dear friend as is Dunham. If the University hadn't done something to bring him back into the fold it would have been a slap in the face. 

 

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11 hours ago, RushnStudies said:

Not just these parts. A bunch of us girls growing up in the Houston area used to watch World Class Championship Wrestling on Saturday mornings. Or perhaps I should spell the word as Bill used to say it... "Rassling."

A decade or so ago there was a roast of Mercer. Verne Lunquest said he appreciated Bill doing wrestling as it made Verne's "Bowling for Dollars" look better. 

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