KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kevin Harlan is a two-time National Sportscaster of the Year who has called NFL games for nearly four decades, and he traces the start of his football broadcasting career to a Mizzou spring game in 1985.
After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1982, Harlan was hired as the voice of the Kansas City Kings. But he also kept a job he’d held since his days at KU, producing a three-hour Chiefs radio pregame show for KCMO radio.
In 1985, the Kings announced their plans to relocate to Sacramento and Wayne Larrivee, the radio voice of the Chiefs, moved to Chicago to call Bears games. The Chiefs were considering Harlan for their job, but first they wanted to hear him work a football game.
So they asked him to call that Mizzou spring game, which was held at Arrowhead Stadium. To Harlan’s surprise, Len Dawson joined him on the test broadcast.
“Somehow they coerced Leonard into doing the taped broadcast with me on Saturday afternoon in the spring,” Harlan recalled. “And so he was in the booth when I walked in. And he said, ‘Let’s make this work. I’m excited. This will be great.’ He’s always up and very positive. So we did the first half of the Missouri spring football game at Arrowhead into a tape machine that they had with engineers in back.
“That following Monday or Tuesday, I went to Arrowhead Stadium and (Chiefs founder) Lamar Hunt had heard the tape with Bob Springer, the PR director. I walked into the room and there’s a big oval table shaped like a football and Lamar said, ‘Well, I’ve heard the tape. It sounds great and we’d like to hire you.’ And it was in no small part due to Leonard’s endorsement and his willingness to do that mock broadcast to practice an audition tape so they could hear my football. ... So when I was 24 I got that chance to do play by play with Len Dawson on the Chiefs Network and lasted nine incredible years. And I enjoyed every second being by his side and with Bill Grigsby, who I should mention too, because Grigs very much a part of that broadcast.
“I don’t know that I would have gotten that job, even with all the things I had done, without Len giving his approval. His stamp of approval meant everything.”
A pioneer
Dawson, who died at the age of 87 after entering hospice this month, his family announced Wednesday, is remembered by many not just for a legendary football career that earned him a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but also for his work in broadcasting.
While playing with the Chiefs, Dawson joined KMBC-TV (Ch. 9) as a sports anchor in 1966, holding the job until 2009. After retiring from football, Dawson became a familiar face to a national television audience.
The New York Times’ Bill Pennington called Dawson “a cable TV pioneer” for his work on HBO’s “Inside the NFL” with former Miami linebacker Nick Buoniconti. Dawson was on the show from its inception in 1977 until 2001.
Also in 1977, Dawson was hired by NBC Sports as a game analyst, and he held that job through the 1983 season. Then the Chiefs came calling.
Dawson joined the Chiefs radio team as an analyst in 1984 and endeared himself to fans for his blunt assessment of the team. He was part of the radio crew until 2017.
That body of work in broadcasting led to Dawson receiving the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award by the Hall of Fame in 2012.
“Radio at that time was so important. Because there was no ‘Red Zone.’ You didn’t see highlights very often,” Harlan said. “You saw some maybe at halftime of ‘Monday Night Football’ narrated by (Howard) Cosell. So these teams were really after the biggest names in the history of that team. So for him to do HBO in the national show, and it received rave reviews, and I think that was one of the reasons why he got in the broadcast wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In fact, it may have been the biggest reason why he got in there.”
That work on NBC and HBO made Dawson a star radio voice for the Chiefs.
Harlan recalled that AFC games were on NBC in the 1980s, and the network’s broadcasters would always stop by the Chiefs radio booth. Legends like Dick Enberg, Curt Gowdy, Charlie Jones, Jay Randolph, Paul Maguire and Bob Trumpy all made a point to see Dawson.
“They would come in our booth and say hi to Len Dawson,” Harlan said. “So it was big for the Chiefs radio broadcasts, and it was regional, four or five states as it still is now. But we had a network type announcer doing the home team radio. So yeah, it was a big deal. That was a really big deal.”
Beyond the booth
Harlan and his wife, Ann, have three daughters and a son, and the girls were all born during his time calling Chiefs games. He said Dawson became like a family member to Harlan’s children.
Dawson especially liked seeing the kids in the booth before a game.
“They were just little babies and then they were little girls and so he saw them from the time that they were born until I left to go to Fox in 94,” Harlan said. “He wouldn’t say much except just kind of look at them and laugh. He’d hear them talk and watch them digging into my briefcase or looking at the headsets or messing around with our spotting boards.
“He always had a camera with him and he would take pictures, and he was so great. Almost like he was their grandfather. And so that was a special memory with our girls.”
Harlan left the Chiefs for that national network job after breaking in with ESPN a few years earlier. That network gig came in part through the work of Harlan’s agent, who had represented Dawson since at least the 1970s.
The agent met Harlan through Dawson, and Harlan’s career took off.
“So by getting that connection, because of Leonard’s guy — and Leonard had spoken very well of me, thank goodness, to his agent — that got me a chance to go there and do ESPN,” Harlan said. “And that’s how I got my ESPN start with the Big Ten in ‘91 and I did that for a couple years. And of course then went to Fox and the NFL and then CBS.
“He always treated me like I was on his level which I never could be because he was a Hall of Famer and a legend. And he always treated me so kindly and so fair and so genuine.”
