John Baylor has been the Voice of Husker Volleyball 30 years

As we all know, John Cook knows a thing or three about volleyball, so this is no minor pat on the back when Nebraska’s head coach says:

“John Baylor is the GOAT of volleyball broadcasters. People tell me all the time how much they enjoy his calls. In fact, people sprint to their cars to listen to the postgame. We are so fortunate to have him as a part of Nebraska Volleyball.”

For 30 years now, JB has been the radio voice of the program. Season 31 is just around the corner. Expectations are high, as always. The Huskers, under Terry Pettit, won their first national championship in 1995, in Baylor’s second season calling NU matches. They were one winning match away from championship No. 6 last December against Texas but fell short. Still, It was a season for the ages, with crowds to prove it.

As Baylor has said, just when you think Nebraska Volleyball can’t get any bigger, it does. It happened again on Aug. 30, 2023, when the Huskers played in front of 92,003 friends at Memorial Stadium. It was the biggest crowd to ever witness a women’s sporting event. A world record. It was a wonderful day in the middle of an extremely difficult time for Baylor, who lost his younger brother, James, last fall.

It was “senseless,” John has said. A random act of violence in downtown Lincoln led to a head injury that killed James Baylor, who lived a fulfilling life despite battling schizophrenia. He was 55 when he died just a few days after the stadium match.

John, who has also had great success getting high school students ready for the ACT and SAT through his OnToCollege business, doesn’t hide the hurt. It was really hard; always will be, he said.

How did he handle it all last year?

“Not very well. I really struggle,” said Baylor, 58. “I still struggle with it every day because there are reminders of my brother every day in Lincoln, whether it’s people or buildings or locations or the Zoo Bar, where we would go most Thursday nights or, you know, church on Sunday morning. I mean, he was such an intricate part of my life; it was really tough. So it was, you know, the way he died and how unexpected and sudden it was and then how he was really an integral part of my life.”

Husker fans can thank James for John being here. John was a nomad. He would be the first to tell you that. He grew up in both Massachusetts and Nebraska. He graduated from Stanford. He didn’t know a whole lot about volleyball when he was offered the gig three decades ago. But with his famous “Kaboom!” he became a star and a major part of the program. He became the Vin Scully of volleyball announcers, according to Pettit.

“He’s really the reason I moved back to Lincoln. It was to be with my brother. We were very close growing up, and then he got schizophrenia when he was 18. And then we lived together. He lived with my family for 13.5 years and then he lived on his own for about 13.5 years, until the night he was attacked.”

“The attack was the night before we played SMU. I called up the Husker Sports Network that morning. I was like, ‘I can’t call this game’ and then, you know, three days later was the Memorial Stadium game. And I thought long and hard about that, but I, I made a decision Monday that this doesn’t come around very often. My brother was in a coma that week. It was becoming increasingly bleak. Actually, the morning of the Memorial Stadium game is when it became clear that he wasn’t gonna ever recover. I started, you know, listening to the doctors, they’d been trying to tell me for about 48 hours. I finally started to understand. But I’m just really grateful that volleyball is part of my life, especially last season because it was a pure escape. It really helped me get through it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this, but it really helped me get through it. And the fans were great. I remember one fan made this necklace for me, with a bunch of little beads in the shape of volleyballs. But then there were two others. They had two crosses on them. For me and my brother. Just little things like that.”

“It was thanks to (athletic director) Bill Byrne and (broadcaster) Jim Rose. I knew I wanted to come back to Lincoln, I think because I wanted to be with my brother, and also, I wanted to give sportscasting a shot. So, it wasn’t just selfless. I wanted to be a big-time sportscaster in my mid-20s, and I came back. I was a traffic reporter. That was truly humbling. I often would be spied in grocery store parking lots, eating donuts in the car, describing how you need to prepare to tap on your brakes on Capitol Parkway as if that were not ever the case on a Tuesday morning. Then I was part of a sports talk show. I was second fiddle to Jim on a show called ‘Sports Day Mid America.’ And then about six months into that, they gave me my own talk show, a news talk show, and then about a year after that, they gave me Husker volleyball. In the summer of 1994, Bill came to Jim and said he wanted Broadcast House to take one other sport in-house, and that was volleyball. Jim said ‘OK, but it’s gonna be John Baylor. Terry (Pettit) said ‘Who’s that?’ understandably. Jim told Terry that I would do a nice job. I was calling a bunch of women’s basketball games and a lot of Husker baseball games and doing a lot of production for men’s hoops and football. Grudgingly, Terry consented. Jim pushed it, and Bill pushed it, too, and they needed a lot of patience because I was pretty bad at the beginning. But you know, over time, Terry and I became pretty close. That’s how it all started. I’m still here 31 years later.”

“Well, I did it alone for a while, and I don’t ever want to do that again. I do enjoy calling baseball alone. Not always, but when I call baseball, I think it lends itself to doing it alone for a majority of the game. But volleyball, you don’t wanna do it alone. There’s so much going on, you can’t see it all, and often the color commentator can bring an insight that the play-by-play person just misses. Diane (Mendenhall) is such a gifted announcer. I mean, she could have been, if she had chosen this path, could have been big-time. National volleyball. Still could be, but she just has such insight, such fun on the air. And Lauren (Cook West) is just so much fun. I just laugh when we’re together on the air, and I always appreciate that she seems to enjoy my humor. Although, I don’t know she always gets it, but she always acts like she enjoys it. She is so insightful but candid. I just love her candor with her father and about the program. And I think it’s a very appreciated part of the broadcast, to have a color person who’s so honest and not necessarily complimentary. She is so focused on motherhood and family, but she could go anywhere in this business as well. She’s that skilled.”

“My favorite season is 2008. That was not a national championship, but that was a special team. I like to call that team ‘Jordan (Larson) and the Miracles.’ That team overachieved. They were down two sets to love at Seattle, and most of the state went to sleep and gave up on the Huskers that night in the regional final, and they won the third set. Then they were down in the fourth set. They were up like 21 to 19 and then go down like 23 to 21 and it’s over, and they come back and they win the fourth and then in the fifth, they’re down 9 to 3 and they come back and win it, and then they’ve got Penn State on the ropes and the regional semis up 10 to 8 in the fifth set. That’s a special, special team.”

“Everyone who has watched the stadium match has told me that they were moved by it. Everyone who was at the match was moved. I’ve been doing this thing for 30 years and, you know, acquaintances and friends of mine outside Nebraska have rarely mentioned Nebraska at all. They don’t know much about it. You know, if you’re not from the state, you don’t really get it, but that captured their imagination. It stimulated their imagination. It was just a masterful stroke to sell the program, and to have it come off so flawlessly, it’s really a tribute to the program. It was beautiful to behold. I had plenty of mixed emotions that day, and when people just asked me about that match, I was torn. But that was a torrent of emotions for me. You know, it’s tough to remember all the matches, but that one I’ll never forget.”

John Mabry can be reached at johnmabry47@gmail.com.