Joe Starkey

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Joe Starkey was the sports director of KGO radio for many years in San Francisco, California. Starkey is best known for serving as the play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco 49ers, and the University of California, Berkeley Golden Bears college football games since 1975. He has also broadcast for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings and Denver Broncos, the USFL's Oakland Invaders, and the first telecaster for the NHL's San Jose Sharks.

Previous assignments include the Pittsburgh Penguins and Colorado Rockies of the NHL, and basketball games for the NBA's Golden State Warriors and the University of California. Also he called the radio broadcasts of Super Bowl XXIV and Super Bowl XXIX.

Starkey was also the radio voice of the now defunct National Hockey League's Oakland (later California Golden) Seals. His trademark call, whenever the Seals scored a goal, was "What a bonanza!"

Prior to assuming play-by-play duties with the 49ers, he served as color analyst on 49ers radio broadcasts in 1987 and 1988 with the legendary Lon Simmons handling play-by-play.

When the 49ers moved their broadcasts to rival station KNBR in 2005, Starkey had to resign from KGO in order to continue his role with the 49ers. Although Starkey is still the broadcaster for the Cal Bears on KGO radio, he is now paid by the university, not the station as had previously been the case.

Starkey is most famous for his frenetic call of The Play in the 1982 Big Game between Cal and Stanford: "Oh, the band is out on the field!". Starkey nearly lost his voice during and after this event, which he hailed as "the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heartrending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football!"