Al Ciraldo
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Alfred Joseph Ciraldo (1922-1997) was an American sportscaster best known for his work as the play-by-play announcer for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets basketball and football teams. A 1948 graduate of the University of Florida with a degree in Radio Broadcasting, he joined the staff at WGST-Radio and broadcast his first Tech football game in 1954,[1] against Tulane. His first Tech basketball game was against Sewanee that same year. Over the next 38 seasons, he called 416 football and 1,030 basketball games for the Rambling Wreck.
Ciraldo served as a color analyst in football to Jack Hurst in the late 50’s and 60’s and then took over as lead broadcaster when Hurst left that post. Ciraldo is often remembered for the phrase "Toe meets leather", with which he led off every football game. Assisting Ciraldo in football form 1974 to 2003 was former Tech quarterback Kim King, whom Ciraldo introduced every week as "the young left-hander from Atlanta’s own Brown High School". King’s book, Tales from the Georgia Tech Sideline, has a collection of anecdotes and stories about Ciraldo.
It was in basketball, however, that Ciraldo most notably left his mark. As Tech basketball reached national prominence in the mid-80’s under Bobby Cremins, Ciraldo – assisted by then-color analyst Brad Nessler – came to the attention of a new generation of sports fans in the southeast. Ciraldo popularized a term that Nessler coined – "Thriller Dome" - to describe the Tech’s home court, Alexander Memorial Coliseum, which was the site of many close games in Tech’s early ACC years.
Ciraldo was an early practitioner of a style of basketball broadcasting that described the constant movement of the ball on the floor, an approach that enabled his listeners to virtually see the game in progress. In the prime of his career, his rapid speech pattern made Tech fans feel they were actually at the game, and after the advent of portable radios it was not unusual to see many spectators at the Coliseum listening to Ciraldo explain what they were looking at on the floor in front of them. Instant recognition of opposing players and a nonstop flow of information offered Tech fans unusual detail and a constant updating of the time and score:
| “ | Dews crosses the time line, now works the right side, down low to Nash, Pat Casey on him, picks up his dribble, back outside to Denton, top of the key to Kaiser, his 20-footer... good, and he’s fouled by Johnny Cox on the play, the junior from Dale, Indiana is heading to the line with a chance to put the Jackets up by 5 with 1:18 left in the half” | ” |
(This fictional re-creation uses Tech and Kentucky players from the 1959-60 season.) Ciraldo also understood many subtleties of the sport. He consistently reported which defenses the two teams were using and was quick to note any changes in them. He also did a nice job of identifying individual defensive battles and was quick to praise exemplary effort in that regard. (“Bruce Dalrymple, one of the best defenders ever to wear the white and gold. When he guards players, they disappear.”)
Ciraldo's baritone voice and many signature phrases were quite memorable. He often described free throws that hung on the rim before falling in as having “a lot of iron, but good” (pronounced, staccato style, as ‘gut’) or by saying “rolls around” - dramatic pause – “and in.” Close games were "barnburners", as in "We got a real barnburner here tonight." He popularized the use of the terms “snowbird” and “bunny” for lay-ups in the 1950’s and 60's, though many of those fans at the games with radios were surprised to see that some shots so described were heavily contested by defenders and anything but easy.
Those who heard Ciraldo only in his final few years of announcing basketball – when age had slowed him a bit even as the game itself sped up – may not have fully appreciated what he brought to a pre-video era. Georgia Tech memorialized his contributions both by 'retiring' his microphone and by inducting him into the Institute's Hall of Fame in 1986. A banner with Ciraldo's picture hangs high over the Coliseum court alongside a number of the players he so memorably reported on.
