Bill Mercer (’66 M.A.), McKinney, known as the original voice of Mean Green Athletics who taught sports broadcasting for 35 years at North Texas, died March 22 at age 99.

During a broadcasting career that spanned more than six decades, he covered some of the most notable events in U.S. history, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy while working as a reporter for Dallas television station KRLD. He later co-wrote a book about the event, titled When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963, with fellow reporters George Phenix, Wes Wise and Bob Huffaker (’69 M.A., ’74 Ph.D.).

Mercer, who earned a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Denver, began in broadcasting after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. During the 1950s, he broadcast all area sports for radio station KMUS in Muskogee, Oklahoma, before relocating to Dallas later that decade.

He began calling televised wrestling matches from the Dallas Sportatorium for KRLD — now KDFW — and later became the announcer for the long-running Saturday Night Wrestling show on Fort Worth’s KTVT Channel 11. He was the play-by-play caller for Dallas-area minor league baseball games and, in the 1960s, joined the radio team of the then-newly formed Dallas Cowboys. He was the announcer for the team’s famous “Ice Bowl” in Green Bay in 1967 and for their second Super Bowl appearance in 1972.

Regarded by some as the “Godfather of DFW sports broadcasting,” Mercer began with the Texas Rangers broadcast team in the early 1970s. During his career, he also covered the Chicago White Sox, American Football League’s Dallas Texans and Southwest Conference football and basketball. For seven years, he was the color commentator for CBS Radio's broadcast of the Cotton Bowl Classic. He also was the voice of World Class Championship Wrestling and covered the legendary Von Erich family, including Kevin and David Von Erich, who played football and basketball at North Texas in the 1970s.

Mercer — who earned a master’s in communication at North Texas and served as the first manager of the campus radio station — began announcing football on campus in the last year of Abner Haynes’ career at North Texas, after Haynes and Leon King had become the first African American athletes to integrate college football at a four-year institution in Texas. In the classroom, Mercer taught and mentored several prominent future broadcasters, including George Dunham (’88), of Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket, and Emmy winner Dave Barnett, who attended during the ‘70s. Both followed him as the voice of the Mean Green.

A member of the UNT Athletic Hall of Fame, Mercer also was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2002 followed by the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2020. He titled his 2007 memoir Play-by-Play: Tales from a Sportscasting Insider.