Jackson enjoyed a long and celebrated broadcast career with ABC Sports, lasting more than 40 years (1966–2006), where he was the first play-by-play announcer on Monday Night Football and was a fixture on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Jackson coined the term “The Big House” for Michigan’s stadium and christened the Rose Bowl “the granddaddy of them all.” Jackson’s assignments also included coverage of the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics and he joined Walter Cronkite in reporting from the 1964 Republican National Convention.
His distinctive delivery and ‘down to earth’ manner’ has been compared to that of Edward R. Murrow. Both Jackson and Murrow are graduates of the WSU Department of Speech, a precursor to what is now the Murrow College.