Talking his way into Hall of Fame: Frederick County resident Jay Jacobs to be inducted into West Virginia University HOF

Aug. 2—Most people who will be enshrined in West Virginia University's Sports Hall of Fame this year have stellar statistics of some sort included in their bios.

Jay Jacobs is the exception. His bio does mention that he played for WVU's men's basketball team. But instead of out-of-sight numbers, Jacobs' ticket to the Hall was earned by insightful words.

Jacobs, an 85-year-old Walkersville resident and former Thomas Johnson boys basketball coach, is heading into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame as a broadcaster. During a career that has lasted nearly five decades, be it on TV or more recently radio, he's analyzed some of the greatest moments in WVU basketball history.

Jacobs still serves as a WVU basketball analyst. He's also been a popular contributor on a weekly radio show, where he bantered with longtime Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins on a wide range of topics — pretty much anything but basketball — for years before Huggins resigned this summer.

Jacobs learned he had been selected for the university's Sports Hall of Fame about four weeks ago via a phone call from WVU athletic director Wren Baker. Jacobs was told to remain hush-hush about the news until the official announcement, which came on Saturday.

The induction ceremony will be held at Morgantown on Sept. 23 prior to the West Virginia-Texas Tech football game. Among the six people who will be enshrined, Jacobs is the only one entering the hall as a broadcaster.

"It's pretty exciting for me because I was a player up there for a cup of coffee only," Jacobs said. "So I'm just thrilled above all else to be able to get in there."

Jacobs' "cup of coffee" actually came during a memorable era in WVU men's basketball history. He was a member of the Mountaineers when they reached the 1959 NCAA championship game, where they fell to California, and featured future Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West.

Jacobs didn't play in that national title game — he saw limited action that season because of an ankle injury — and he didn't have the type of career that opened up any doors in the NBA, let alone the Naismith Hall of Fame.

But Jacobs stayed involved with basketball by becoming a coach at his alma mater, Morgantown High School, and he then served as TJ's boys basketball head coach from 1968 to 1974.

He stepped down as the Patriots' coach because he became a school administrator. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, that move helped launch two legendary careers.

Tom Dickman took over TJ's program and became the most successful boys basketball coach in Frederick County history, guiding the Patriots to seven state titles.

Meanwhile, Jacobs began broadcasting high school basketball games in Frederick, Hagerstown, Annapolis and Cumberland with a Hagerstown cable outlet. The Friday night games were shown on Saturday mornings, and his audience included someone who was in the market for an analyst.

"What happened was, Paul Miller saw me on a Saturday morning job, and he was West Virginia's assistant athletic director," Jacobs said. "He wanted to start a television network in-house. They hired me, and I've been doing it ever since."

Jacobs became an analyst for Mountaineer Sports Network television in 1977. He worked with a pair of play-by-play announcers — Woody O'Hara and Jack Fleming.

Jacobs also did TV work for Home Team Sports, Creative Sports Marketing and ESPN during Sun Belt Conference games before transitioning to mostly radio in the 1990s, where he was paired with Fleming and, later, play-by-play announcer Tony Caridi.

After heading to the NCAA tournament twice as a player at WVU, Jacobs would return to the big dance often as a broadcaster. He's worked eight trips to the NCAA Sweet 16, an Elite Eight appearance in 2005 and a trip to the Final Four in 2010.

He continued calling games during the coronavirus pandemic, but he did so from a studio instead of being courtside.

"It was an adjustment because you're looking at monitors, and you've got to follow," he said. "I have a great play-by-play guy who's with me, we've been together over 30 years. I just followed his lead and he took it and then I would jump in and do my eight to 10 seconds, whatever it was."

It's been reported that Jacobs regularly makes the long drive from his Walkersville home to Morgantown to do games.

"Everybody thinks I do, but I really don't," he said. "I have a hotel in Morgantown, and that's where I stay."

Last season, Jacobs only analyzed home games. He figures he'll do the same thing this season.

But thanks to the hall of fame induction ceremony in late September, he'll have an excuse to show up in Morgantown before basketball season begins.