John Ferguson: Steve Franz, LSU Sports Information.
Melisse Campbell: So, how did you become the Voice of the Tigers? Were you the first man to be . . . ?
John Ferguson: No. The first, I think, to be called the Voice of the Tigers. But there had been two or three announcers of LSU football games prior to me. When I came here, the job was open and so I auditioned for the job and won the audition. So beginning in 1946, I broadcast the LSU football games. First games in Tiger Stadium and in that run, at that time, I did the games for three consecutive years. Then in 1961, I started doing the LSU games again and did them until the middle eighties, without interruption.
Campbell: Okay. Is that when you became to be called the Voice of the Tigers?
Ferguson: Yeah. In that period, beginning in ’61 or along in there, Walter Hill, who was my color announcer and commercial announcer, and also is still a very good friend and a talented man, one day just referred to me as “Voice of the Tigers.” And I guess it stuck. We never did make too much of that. He always introduced me as the Voice of the Tigers. And of course, as I say, the designation stuck and then was used all the way through. As a matter of fact, even though I don’t do the games any longer, they still use it for the guy who does the games now.
-- John Ferguson, interviewed by Melisse Campbell, 1994