Dave Barnett learned plenty listening to and watching legendary sports broadcaster Bill Mercer over the years that helped change his life — at least after a bit of a tough start.
Like a lot of boys growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, Barnett, the voice of North Texas athletics, loved to watch Mercer call World Class Championship Wrestling.
“My brother and I would try out the wrestling moves that we would learn watching Fritz Von Erich, Killer Karl Kox and Skandor Akbar,” Barnett recalled this week. “Mom didn’t like us wrestling on her floor while watching Bill Mercer.”
Memories of Mercer came flooding back for a host of influential broadcasters and media members following his death Saturday at the age of 99.
Those family wrestling matches in the Barnett family home might have been the only time Mercer led one of them astray during a wide-ranging career in sports media, news and teaching.
Mercer covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, worked the Texas Rangers’ inaugural season in 1972 and also covered the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Texans of the American Football League and Chicago White Sox as well as Southwest Conference football and basketball games. He was also the voice of North Texas athletics.
Mercer was the soundtrack for generations of sports fans, who watched him cover a wide variety of events with the skill and care that made him widely respected in the media business.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find a broadcaster who had a career like Bill did,” said Ted Emrich, who studied under Mercer and now calls games for ESPN. “He called so many sports, had a background in news and a legacy of mentorship. He was so influential.”
Mercer was a prominent wrestling announcer in the 1950s in Muskogee, Oklahoma, before moving Dallas.
The number of landmark moments he covered after landing in Dallas are almost too many to count.
Mercer told Lee Harvey Oswald that he had been charged with killing Kennedy in a media scrum in 1963. He also called UNT’s games when Abner Haynes and Leon King became the first Black athletes to play college football in Texas in 1956.
Mercer’s time calling World Class Championship Wrestling certainly wasn’t as serious as some of the events he covered during his time in news, and even college and pro sports, but it made him a prominent figure across the world.
Those experiences were a precursor to Mercer’s time teaching at UNT that spanned 35 years. Mercer’s former students who went on to work in the media are often referred to as the “Mercer Mafia.”
“Bill’s impact as a teacher is far more widespread than what he did as a broadcaster even with his reach in wrestling circles,” said Craig Way, one of Mercer’s former students. “He was voted the fourth most popular [TV personality] in a survey in Israel in the 1980s behind the Von Erichs, but his impact went far beyond what he did on TV and radio because of the way he developed students into becoming better broadcasters and better people.”
Mercer’s former students say they marvel at the way he imparted the knowledge he gained through the years. Way was taken aback by how Mercer could boil down the key aspects of calling games to the basics that he would outline on a chalkboard in the days before PowerPoint.
“I can’t speak for other individuals at North Texas, but I feel pretty strongly that they would all concur that we would not be where we are today in our respective careers in sports media without Bill’s guidance, teaching and mentorship,” said Mark Followill, the longtime television play-by-play voice of the Dallas Mavericks. “We learned so much from him. He was an incredible teacher and had an understanding of the craft of sports media, particularly sports play-by-play.
“He had a craft for teaching it.”
Mercer would send his students out to call games from the stands with fans all around them and ask them to come back with a recording of them calling the action. He believed if his students could tackle those tough environments, they could handle being in a press box or sitting courtside.
“You would turn it in, and the next week you would have several sheets from his legal pad with his notes in red pen on voice quality and if you’re giving the time and score enough,” Emrich said. “He knew what made for a great broadcast and how to communicate that to all of us.”
Those critiques didn’t stop when Mercer’s students left UNT.
Way still had Mercer listen to his broadcasts over the years.
“It was like a golfer going to a swing coach,” Way said. “You need someone to listen with a critical ear and give you the guidance you need. Most of the time, he would say, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. You sound great, but you might want to do this or that.’ He gave me great guidance for decades beyond when I took his classes in 1982, ’83 and ’84.”
Mercer taught well beyond retirement age and remained in close contact with his former students. He enjoyed talking about his time serving in Navy in World War II and about how they were faring in their broadcasting careers.
Way is convinced that Mercer could have stepped in for a short time to broadcast a game at 99. Mercer swapped emails with his former students up until a few months ago.
Barnett was among Mercer’s former students who stayed in contact decades after his mother banned him from flipping the television to wrestling in the living room.
“I never saw Bill in a bad mood,” Barnett said. “I visited him last summer, and he hadn’t lost a thing mentally. He remembered incredible details about his life. That was a blessing. I’m glad we had Bill for as long as we did.”