Today’s interviewee is Dennis Sanders, the radio play-by-play announcer for Thomson football since 1976. Sanders, 74, will be calling Friday night’s Class 3A second-round playoff game between Ringgold and Thomson on 101.7-FM radio. For most of his time as the radio voice of Thomson football, Sanders was district attorney for the six-county Toombs Judicial Circuit.
Dennis Sanders, radio voice of Thomson football
1. How did you get started doing Thomson games? “I was an assistant district attorney at the time and going to the games. Bob Smith was a principal and was doing the radio. Bob asked me to join him. We were also Little League coaches at the time. He said, ‘You’re articulate; you know football and you know a lot of the players.’ I really didn’t want to do it. But I did one game, then two, then three. Here we are 46 years later, and I’ve never missed a game. There have been games where I was ill, but still managed to broadcast the game. I was nominated in the fall for Gridiron at the University of Georgia [the Gridiron Secret Society is a prestigious club that includes many former Georgia governors as well as Georgia football coaches Vince Dooley and Kirby Smart]. They said it’s the Gridiron, you can’t turn it down. But it was football season, and I didn’t want to end my streak. They were gracious enough to allow me to pass until the spring.’’ [Sanders was inducted with Larry Munson, and the two became friends. Munson gave Sanders a play chart to help him broadcast games. Sanders still uses it and follows Munson’s instructions on how to use it.]
2. What do you enjoy about it such that you’re still doing it 46 years later? “It really has been a release for me. A district attorney has a lot of pressure and stress. When I was running for D.A., I remember that first election day. I was talking with my close friend Sheriff William Swan and asked him what I should be doing. He said just relax. I got in my car and drove to the Brickyard [Thomson’s iconic home stadium] and sat in the stands and thought about the great games and players that I’d seen, all these good memories. It’s been a total escape for me to do that. And the great thing about high school football, whether it’s Thomson or Lincoln County or Washington-Wilkes: Football brings the community and town together. They put their differences aside on Friday night.’”
3. What’s your best memory of calling a game? “Thomson has won five state championships. In 1984, Thomson was playing Marist. We had a running back by the name of Jerry Mays who went to Georgia Tech. Marist was ranked No. 1. We were No. 2. Both were undefeated. They were private. We were public. They were Atlanta. We were country boys. It was a clash of titans. Marist had great fans. We couldn’t ask for nicer fans in the stands and in the press box. Marist had a defensive lineman headed for Norte Dame who was about 6-5, 275, and outweighed our center by 100 pounds. We had seven players on that team that weighed 145 pounds or less. My color man [Alton Jackson] was one of those players. The chairman of the county commission [Charlie Newton] was one of those players. Luther Welsh [Thomson’s coach] ran the wing-T, and we came right at them. We won that game and were 15-0. After the game, the team was down on one knee, and the immortal and great Luther Welsh with tears in his eyes told his team, ‘You’ve given this old man something I could never dream of – an undefeated team.’ No one wanted to go home. They wanted to celebrate. It was a really fun night. We won it again the next year, but it wasn’t as romantic. That ‘84 team played with so much heart, and because of that, it’s my favorite.” [Mays was himself only 5-foot-7 but went on to rush for more than 3,500 yards at Tech. Sanders gave him the nickname “Amazing Mays’’ that followed him to Tech.]
4. You became friends with Luther Welsh. What are your best memories of him? “I could talk to you about Luther Welsh until the morning. Just funny stories. I remember in 1985, we were playing Newton in Covington. We tied [14-14]. We didn’t lose, but we didn’t win. I was coming back by the Brickyard, and Luther was there. I stopped by to talk with him. He asked me what it looked like from up there. I told him that it looked like we couldn’t get wide on them. They took that away. He said we weren’t getting blocking from the tight end. This was about 12:30, 1 o’clock at night. We’re walking up and down the field in the Brickyard. We finally sat down at the 50-yard line. He says, ‘Dennis, why are we using a tight end? He’s not blocking. Maybe we should have a wideout.’ What am I going to say to Luther Welsh. He knew more football than I could ever hope to know. Mostly I just listened. It was 1:30 or a quarter to 2. Finally I told Coach that we needed to go home, our wives are going to kill us. He said you go on. So I headed to my car and he’s still sitting at the 50. The next morning, I talked to his wife, Ann. She said Luther didn’t come home that night. He spent the night on the field house sofa. She said he’d just does that sometimes and she knew not to worry about him. There wasn’t another one like Luther. He was passionate, and he had a way of relating to kids that got the best out of them. They would run through a wall for him.’’
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