RICHARDSON, Texas - Legendary sports commentator and broadcast journalist Bill Mercer passed away at the age of 99 on Saturday, March 22.

Mercer was inducted into the UT Dallas Athletics Hall of Honors in 2011, after serving as the public address announcer for the Comets and helping to develop live broadcasts. He also had on-air roles with the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, World Championship Wrestling and the University of North Texas. Additionally, Mercer reported on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Mercer's connection to UTD occurred by chance. In 2005, he gave a lecture at the UTD Library about a book he co-authored, which focused on the news coverage of the JFK assassination. Following the lecture, officials from the Athletic Department approached him about becoming the public address announcer for home basketball games.

Within a year, Mercer and UTD officials began discussing the possibility of broadcasting games over Radio UTD, the campus's student radio station, utilizing student broadcasters from both UTD and a sports broadcasting class.

While teaching at UNT, Mercer provided expertise, mentoring, and guidance as online broadcasts of UTD events were developed.

A native of Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mercer's award-winning broadcasting career began shortly after World War II. He broadcast minor league baseball games in the Dallas area throughout the 1950s and joined the radio team for the newly formed Dallas Cowboys in the mid-1960s.

When Major League Baseball arrived in the area in the early 1970s, Mercer was selected to be part of the Texas Rangers' broadcast crew. He later taught broadcasting classes at UNT for nearly 40 years and mentored several well-known sportscasters, both locally and statewide.

Mercer earned a journalism degree in 1950 from the University of Denver and a master's degree in communications from UNT in 1966.