Kevin Richardson has broken plenty of news from behind a microphone for San Jose State football. This time he was the story.<\/p>\n
On the other end of the line last week, San Jose State\u2019s play-by-play voice since 2009 was still processing what he had just accepted. \u201cHoly smokes, man. I\u2019ve done this for 18 years,\u201d said Richardson. \u201cThis is kind of… feels kind of weird.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weird is one word for it.<\/p>\n
Richardson, the longtime Spartan broadcaster and former Stanford inside linebacker from 1984 to 1988 is heading back to Palo Alto to call Cardinal football play by play. The move closes one chapter and reopens another that started decades ago on the Farm.<\/p>\n
From Spartan mic to Cardinal legacy<\/p>\n
Richardson\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 reads like a South Bay football history book. He started calling SJSU games as color analyst in 2009, moved to play by play in 2023 and has shared a booth with a rotating cast that spans two decades of Spartan football, including Justin Allegri, now with Cal and former Spartan linebacker Jordan Cobbs and David Fales, SJSU\u2019s all time leading passer and a five year NFL veteran.<\/p>\n
That cross section voices, all of it running through Richardson, is part of what makes this move land differently. Few broadcasters in the Bay Area have that many threads connecting them to that many programs and that many generations of players.<\/p>\n
Andrew Luck\u2019s ecosystem calls him home<\/p>\n
Stanford\u2019s broadcast booth had struggled in recent years and Richardson believes that opening, paired with Andrew Luck\u2019s top to bottom reshaping of the football program as general manager is what put him on the Cardinal\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Jason and I can kick it up a notch,\u201d Richardson said of his new broadcast partner. He also pointed to a detail that stood out to him about how Luck\u2019s staff built the booth. \u201cOne of the things that is maybe why I got on their list is to have a booth that is all former players,\u201d said Richardson.<\/p>\n
That partner is Jason Fisk, a former Stanford defensive tackle who spent 12 seasons in the NFL after the Cardinal, including a Super Bowl appearance with the Titans and a close friend of Richardson\u2019s outside the booth.<\/p>\n
Pair a linebacker with a defensive tackle, both of whom played the position at Stanford before making the league and Luck\u2019s new booth is not just staffed with alumni. It is staffed with true football guys, the kind who can read a defensive front as fast as they can call the play unfolding in front of them.<\/p>\n
The reunion with his broadcast partner carries its own layer of familiarity. \u201cJason and I are super tight, we live pretty close together,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cWe can drive up together and do all that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
A friendly rivalry, worn on both sleeves<\/p>\n
SJSU and Stanford are known in the Bay Area as \u201cblue collar vs. white collar\u201d rivals, but few people have stood closer to the line dividing the two fan bases than Richardson. He has spent 18 years as the trusted voice on one side of it while his family held down a tailgate spot on the other, the same one he and wife Teresa staked out in 1992. \u201cIt\u2019ll just be great to just get in the car with Teresa and go up to the game,\u201d said Richardson, \u201cversus, \u2018I\u2019ll meet you in a couple hours.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That split loyalty came up again when Richardson was asked about when San Jose State visits the Cardinal two years from now in Palo Alto. He laughed off the reception he might get from the same crowd he used to serve on Spartan Saturdays. \u201cThey\u2019ll throw rocks at me or something,\u201d said Richardson.<\/p>\n
The response set up the year\u2019s best line. \u201cNo, no. Just flowers and roses,\u201d came the reply. Richardson did not miss a beat. \u201cThat\u2019s all right. We can throw them back.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a fitting image for a broadcaster whose two programs sit twenty minutes apart on the map and for two decades, sat on opposite sides of his own life. Friendly rivals, worn on both sleeves.<\/p>\n
A different kind of loss for the Spartans<\/p>\n
SJSU is well versed in losing pieces of its program.<\/p>\n
NIL and the transfer portal have made roster turnover a season to season reality for every Mountain West team, Spartans included. Richardson\u2019s departure does not show up on a depth chart, but it belongs in that same conversation about what programs are actually losing when someone walks out the door.<\/p>\n
The voice calling the game, the tone of the pregame show, the person a fan has trusted for 18 years to make Saturday feel like home, that is brand too. It is part of the whole nine yards a program and a conference now have to think about, the soup to nuts version of the product that goes well beyond wins and losses. Realism, authenticity, continuity. Every orbit around the actual football has to hold up for a program to feel complete and Richardson was one of those orbits for a long time.<\/p>\n
But rest assured for Sparta. Behind the scenes, they\u2019re use to pivoting, adjusting and re-defining on-the-fly<\/p>\n
A farewell to Spartan Nation<\/p>\n
Richardson\u2019s message to the fans he is leaving behind carried no hard feelings, only gratitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a great ride,\u201d said Richardson. \u201cHonored and blessed. I\u2019ve gone through, gosh, how many head coaches, and the one constant has been the fan support. Waking up on Saturday going, \u2018Hey, this is really cool,\u2019 that\u2019s how I\u2019ve always felt about it. What a good run, and I\u2019m happy that we left it in a good place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richardson made clear he never shopped himself around while rumors of Stanford\u2019s opening swirled.<\/p>\n
Eighteen years, one booth, one voice and now one homecoming. Kevin Richardson is going back to where it started, tailgate and all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Richardson has broken plenty of news from behind a microphone for San Jose State football. This time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89,9393],"class_list":["post-419609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-state-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}