Voice of Razorbacks retires from TV

Mike Nail is retiring from television.

After 35 years in broadcasting, the sports director for KHBS/KHOG, Channels 40/29 says he is ready for a break. Nail plans to leave the stations by April 9 for “personal reasons.”

He will continue to do play-by-play announcing for the Arkansas Razorbacks Sports Network, where he has covered the University of Arkansas basketball team for the last 18 years. Nail may be best known to Razorbacks fans for calling Scotty Thurman’s game winning 3-point shot in Arkansas’ 74-72 victory over Duke University in the 1994 NCAA National Championship game.

“There have been a lot of highlights over the last 35 years, and calling that game was one,” Nail says. “The only thing I’m leaving now is television. I hope to stay active in local sports in some way. I hope to be finalizing plans for something else soon.”

Nail wrote a weekly sports column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for most of 1998 but had to scale back his workload this fall for Razorbacks basketball. His announcing credits also include doing radio for the 1972 NAIA football championship game and the 1981 NJCAA basketball title game.

Nail got his start in radio in the summer of 1963 before his senior year at Fayetteville High School, working as a weekend disc jockey at KFAY-AM 1030. He moved into sports doing Friday night football and high school basketball. Career stops in Conway, Little Rock, Fort Smith and Joplin, Mo., helped Nail land the 1974 play-by-play announcing job for the Oklahoma City 89ers, the Class AAA affiliate with the Philadelphia Phillies professional baseball organization. He announced pro baseball for three seasons

In 1978, Nail returned to Fayetteville and broke into television at KHBS/KHOG where he did sports until 1986. He then went to KPOM/KFAA, Channels 24/51 for six years before entering “semi-retirement” in 1992.

In April of 1995, Nail returned to television at KHBS/KHOG where he has anchored the stations’ sports casts ever since.