NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Friends and family gathered Thursday morning at Congregation Micah in Brentwood to remember the late Mark Howard.
Howard was a sports anchor at NewsChannel 5 for nearly two decades before becoming a fixture on sports radio for two decades more. He died July 24.
Former NewsChannel 5 Sports Director Hope Hines picked Howard for an open weekend sports anchor position out of hundreds of audition tapes that were mailed to the station in 1986.
"I must have had two boxes of cassette tapes," said Hines. "I got so tired of looking at tape after tape after tape — and then all of a sudden, I put Mark Howard’s tape in and it just lit up. I said, 'I think we have found our man.'"
Howard truly covered all the bases, from reporting on three World Series games for the Atlanta Braves, hundreds of high school football games and the start of the Nashville Predators in Music City.
Voice of the Titans Mike Keith first met Howard while covering press conferences at the University of Tennessee, which often featured Howard and Head Coach Johnny Majors sparring back and forth.
"Coach Majors' face would turn all red, and we would just have to put our hands over our mouths and laugh. Mark wasn’t doing it to necessarily be tough, he was doing it because he was Mark. He was always doing it because he could leave," Keith said with a laugh. "But Majors loved him. Majors could never get mad at him because I think he knew Mark was Mark, and that was OK."
Where Howard seemed to really shine was injecting humor into every sportscast.
When Tennessee State University Quarterback Leon Murray emerged as a dark horse, outside candidate for the Heisman Trophy, Howard quipped in a story, "To boost Murray’s Heisman candidacy, he needs a hook, a slogan! How about — 'Don’t be a Peon, Vote for Leon?'"
"He could write humor into his stuff, there was a smart aleck in him," said longtime Nashville Radio personality George Plaster.
Howard also put together a tongue-in-cheek story about how NASCAR fans must assume he writes his scripts. "They can’t do that to him, it’s an outrage. I’m going to put that into my story," Howard said, as he wore Buckshot Jones gear from head to toe. "There’s a conspiracy to get Buckshot Jones."
"He would find ways to take stuff and make it fun and funny — just witty things," said Kevin Ingram, Howard's former co-host on 104.5 The Zone's Wake Up Zone and current play-by-play for Vanderbilt University.
Only Howard could take a mundane Titans practice and turn it into appointment television. In 1999, he made light of then-rookie Zach Piller's unique haircut. "But the biggest question remains, when will rookie guard Zach Pillar get rid of that tuft of hair that reminds some of the movie pig — 'Babe'?" wrote Howard, as a side-by-side graphic of Babe the pig popped up on air.
"He was just so much fun," said Keith.
Howard could also laugh at himself, like when he — and almost everyone else — wrote off the Titans' last-second chances against the Buffalo Bills during the historic 1999 Playoffs run. "Of course, I didn’t take into account the Music City Miracle — and listen as I stay as cool and composed as a 10-year-old girl at a Brittany Spears concert," said Howard. A hot mic caught Howard cheering on Dyson as he ran down the field.
"Here comes Dyson, right down here and Mark was nowhere to be found," remembered Hope Hines. "He was already in the end zone. He was waiting on him when he got there."
In the early 2000s, Howard left NewsChannel 5, but not the world of sports. He joined former Titan Frank Wycheck and Kevin Ingram, launching the Wake Up Zone on 104.5 The Zone.
"That’s where I thought he could really show off his knowledge and just how much he knew about sports. It was unbelievable, it was almost like he knew too much stuff some of the time," said his longtime co-host Kevin Ingram.
"My God, he was a walking encyclopedia," joked Plaster.
"He knew more about sports than any person I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not sure it’s really close," said Keith.
What Howard didn't know off the top of his head, he seemed to always carry with him. "He would go through a ream of paper in a week of the show I think, probably," said Paul Kuharsky, a longtime sports writer and radio host in Nashville.
"I see these reams of paper and I’m like — what the hell is this?" said Plaster with a laugh.
Sports radio gave Howard the chance to air his opinion, and did he ever.
"He could be pretty gruff on the air, no doubt about it. We joked about him cutting off callers. As we progressed as a show, he got a little more patient with people, but especially early on, there was not a lot of suffering fools," said Ingram. "If he had a caller he didn’t care for, man, he goes right into him. I think a caller one time called him Marcus Interruptus. I thought that was hilarious."
"Brash, outspoken and if it — I don’t want to say hurt your feelings but there was a little bit of that. He didn’t really care, he was just saying what was on his mind. Often it was thought-provoking, and certainly discussion-creating. And that was good," said Kuharsky.
But it wasn't all serious. Kuharsky's favorite moment with Howard had nothing to do with a game.
"He was boasting about his walking — his walking come on — and he told Frank, I will walk you into the ground. So I immediately was like —we have to set up a walk-off," said Kuharsky. "Mark, in no time, either pulls his calf or his hamstring. Frank is just la-dee-dah, walking like a normal guy, lapping Mark. I mean it is hysterical."
Because Howard enjoyed having the last word, it seems only fitting to continue that tradition here. For a sports reporter who didn’t just stand out in Nashville media, he changed it for the better.
"I hope you’ll remember me as a fearless reporter who always knew his place," said Howard, narrating a piece that aired his last day on NewsChannel 5.
Mark Howard was 65 years old. He's survived by his wife and four children.
