Max Falkenstien, just a few months away from his 50th year as a radio broadcaster for Kansas University athletic events, has been named to KU’s sports hall of fame.
Falkenstien will be enshrined as the first media inductee during halftime of the Kansas-Kansas State basketball game in Allen Fieldhouse next winter.
“Max’s name in synonymous with Jayhawk athletics,” KU athletic director Bob Frederick said.
Falkenstien’s tenure as a broadcaster ranks second among NCAA Division One programs to Iowa’s Bob Brooks, who has been a voice of the Hawkeyes for 50 years.
Falkenstien has been behind the microphone for 524 football games, or more than half of KU’s 999 games. He has also broadcast 940 — or more than half — of Kansas’ 1,567 basketball victories.
His broadcast career spans nine head football coaches, five head basketball coaches, 10 athletic directors and four conference affiliations.
In 49 years, Falkenstien has never missed a football broadcast and has been absent from just three or four basketball games.
Falkenstien, a Lawrence native, started the first Kansas radio network in 1949 with stations in Colby, Wichita, Coffeyville, Topeka and Dodge City. His first KU basketball game was a Kansas-Oklahoma A&M basketball game on March 18, 1946. His first KU football game was against TCU on Sept. 21, 1946.
Falkenstien, 72, recently retired as an officer at Douglas County Bank. He’s currently chairman of the Kansas All-Sports Hall of Fame board of trustees and is a past recipient of the Kansas Broadcasters Association Hod Humiston Award.
