Mike Keith explains the moment he started thinking about being the next 'Voice of the Vols'

It was October 2022 and Mike Keith was in the hospital with his late father, William Keith, who was recovering from hip surgery. The father and son sat and watched Tennessee’s 52-49 win over Alabama at Neyland Stadium and Keith couldn’t get a thought out of his head as he left. 

Everything that made that game great — a raucous capacity crowd at Neyland Stadium, a streak-snapping rivalry win, Tennessee fans rushing the field and tearing down the goalpost, new life for the Vols under Josh Heupel — sparked something in Keith’s mind.

“That really opened something back up in me and made me think,” Keith told Brent Hubbs last week, “especially because I was there with dad and it’s a tough time.”

Mike Keith on the 2022 Tennessee-Alabama game: ‘It was just otherworldly’

Keith, a University of Tennessee graduate and a product of The Vol Network, was in his 25th year as the radio voice of the Tennessee Titans at the time. What he couldn’t shake was the thought of one day being the “Voice of the Vols,” filling the seat that his mentor, John Ward, made legendary. 

More specifically, it was the CBS cameras at Neyland that day that kept  cutting to a raucous, filled-to-the-brim student section. 

“They were so over the top into it,” Keith said, “like I hadn’t seen since really, I mean, I guess I wasn’t there for all of ’98, but the Peyton Manning days when you couldn’t get a ticket and there was this incredible enthusiasm. 

“And I just thought about as I was leaving that day, all those experiences that I had. Being in Neyland Stadium as a kid, watching them beat Auburn in 1985 and Alabama in 1982 and then the games that we covered for The Vol Network and it was just otherworldly.”

It was a world Keith wanted to be part of again — if the timing worked.

“I’m walking in my car,” Keith said, “and I’m thinking, man, there’s something really extra special happening (at Tennessee) right now. And I hadn’t put it away. I hadn’t not thought about it, but it just opened and it just flooded back into me in a way that I said, if they called me, I want to talk. I want to be interested in this.”

‘Just an absolute blessing that it’s opened up in this way and allowed me to do it’

That call happened this fall. It was announced in November that Bob Kesling would be retiring as The Vol Network’s “Voice of the Vols” at the end of Tennessee’s basketball season. Kesling replaced Ward in 1999 and was stepping away after 25 years. 

Keith was far and away the most obvious candidate for the job. And he had spent two years thinking — about his dad, about their Tennessee football traditions, about where the Vols are now. 

“He had brought me to these games,” Keith said of his father, “and we’d stop and get a biscuit at Hardee’s on the drive up and we had to get our bag of Smoky Mountain Market hot dogs. And we’d go to my grandmother’s for chili. 

“And sometimes if we won, we got to go to Litton’s because my family’s from North Knoxville. And if it was really special. Maybe we’d drive out to Oak Ridge to Big Ed’s.”

Still, back when the thoughts surfaced in 2022, Keith didn’t know if it would ever work out. If the job would open up at a time where his own situation in life would allow him tot take it.

“You don’t know where you are at a contract cycle,” Keith said. “You don’t know where your kids are in school. You don’t know what your spouse is into.”

But after 27 years with the Titans, the time was right. Keith was announced as the new “Voice of the Vols” on Thursday, bringing full circle a thought he couldn’t shake while leaving a hospital room in 2022.

“Just an absolute blessing that it’s opened up in this way,” Keith said, “and allowed me to do it.”