FAYETTEVILLE — Mike Nail, who narrated the golden era of Arkansas basketball as the team’s radio play-by-play voice, died Saturday. He was 80.

Nail passed away at his home in Fayetteville. He had recently been placed under hospice care after a battle with cancer, said Blair Cartwright, a friend of Nail’s who worked with him in stints at KHBS-TV and the University of Arkansas.

Nail served as the deep, gravelly voice of the Razorbacks for 29 years before retiring at the conclusion of the 2009-10 season. On the day of Nail’s final home broadcast, bobbleheads with his likeness were given to those in attendance.

During his time behind the mic, Arkansas won the 1994 national championship, advanced to additional Final Fours in 1990 and 1995, and won 11 regular-season or tournament championships in the Southwest Conference and Southeastern Conference under Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame coaches Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson.

His call of the final minute of the Razorbacks’ 76-72 victory over Duke from Charlotte, N.C., on April 4, 1994, is iconic in Arkansas.

Nail described Scotty Thurman’s go-ahead 3-pointer with 50.7 seconds remaining this way:

Beck to the baseline, spits it out to Stewart. Right side to Thurman. He’s open for 3, good! Scotty Thurman with his third 3! Arkansas leads it by 3 with 48 seconds to go!

Minutes later, Nail described the moments as the Razorbacks ran out the clock on an outlet pass from Dwight Stewart to Clint McDaniel.

Arkansas wins the national championship! The Arkansas Razorbacks have completed its dream season! And the Hogs have won the national championship, 76-72, over the Duke Blue Devils!

Nail dubbed a copy of his call onto a cassette tape for Richardson, who said later that year that he liked to play the tape while he was traveling.

“When I hear the fans in the background and the excitement in Mike’s voice, that’s when it starts sinking in what we accomplished,” Richardson said in the fall of 1994.

Nail was hired to broadcast Arkansas basketball games before the 1981-82 season. He replaced Paul Eells in the role and called 938 basketball games during his career.

“He was conversational,” Cartwright said. “He did the broadcasts like he was talking to you individually. There was a connection.

“He was the voice for 29 years. He was part of everybody’s family because he was in everybody’s home. Everybody felt like they knew him.”

Mike Nail (right) works alongside color analyst Joe Kleine to call a game between Arkansas and Maine on Monday, Nov. 12, 2001, in Fayetteville. (Andy Shupe/NWA Democrat-Gazette)

During a 2006 interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nail credited the basketball play-by-play job for helping him beat a 12-to-15-year battle with alcohol.

“At one time, I had a real problem with alcohol, and it took a while to overcome that,” Nail said at the time. “So I understand a little bit about growing up late. I’ve got to tell you, I credit my family and Coach [Frank] Broyles, though he probably doesn’t even know it.

“When he gave me the opportunity to do basketball [in 1981], it actually meant so much to me that it helped me beat that problem. I wanted to keep the job, but more than that, I really didn’t want to disappoint him.”

Nail submitted a demo tape from high school games he had called with Sutton, the Razorbacks’ head coach who served as a color analyst on the high school broadcasts. Nail had also called games for the Oklahoma City 89ers baseball team, a Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Nail was known to Razorback fans when Broyles hired him to replace Eells on the basketball broadcasts. He provided color commentary for football play-by-play beginning in 1978.

“When they were looking for somebody, Coach Broyles said, ‘I’ll form a committee and we’ll make a decision,’” Nail said during his 2022 induction to the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. “We all know what kinds of committees he had — he was it. He decided that I could do it and he hired me to do basketball, and I’ll forever be grateful.”

In 2006, Nail served as the play-by-play voice of the football team after Eells died in a car accident shortly before the season began. The football team went 10-4, won the SEC West and played at the SEC Championship Game.

In an interview with the Democrat-Gazette that year, Nail called it “probably the most emotional, tense and challenging time” of his career.

“It concerned me for a long time that I would say something or do something that would impeach upon Paul’s style and way of doing things,” Nail said. “I really had to think about that a lot and I worried about it a lot.”

Nail was a multimedia reporter long before the phrase came to define professional journalists in the digital age. He wrote for the Northwest Arkansas Times newspaper in Fayetteville for a time and had a 39-year career in TV journalism alongside his radio career.

Nail worked for TV affiliates of all three major networks — CBS, ABC and NBC — in the Fayetteville/Fort Smith market, and some multiple times from 1969-2003.

“He was the best boss ever,” Cartwright said. “You were family when you worked for Mike. You never wanted to disappoint him, he never had to raise his voice to you. It was just a pleasure to work under him and work with him. He never big-timed anybody. He always took time to take time to somebody who wanted to talk to him.”

Cartwright said that while at KHBS, Nail never allowed others in the sports department to work major holidays if it could be avoided.

“He would work the holidays so we could be off,” Cartwright said. “He was adamant about that. He would work Christmas, Thanksgiving — whatever holiday, he was going to work the newscast so we could be off, and there was no discussion. He would sacrifice so we could enjoy the holiday. It drove us crazy, but that’s the way he was. He always put everybody above himself.”

Mike Nail delivers his acceptance speech during his induction into the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame on Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in Fayetteville. (Andy Shupe/NWA Democrat-Gazette)

Edwin Michael Nail was born Feb. 12, 1945, and grew up in Fayetteville on a farm near the intersection of what is now Interstate 49 and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. According to a 2006 feature in the Democrat-Gazette, Nail’s mother and stepfather raised corn, potatoes and hogs.

“I think we’re all familiar with the phrase, ‘From the penthouse to the outhouse,’” Nail said in 2022. “My whole career has been just the opposite, from the outhouse to the penthouse.”

Nail became interested in broadcasting around the age of 12 or 13. According to the book “Voices of the Razorbacks,” written by Stanley Sharp and the late UA journalism professor Hoyt Purvis, Nail would lock himself in his bedroom with a tape recorder and call games he imagined in his mind.

Nail was in high school when he landed his first broadcast job with the radio station KFAY in 1963. Nail quit school during his senior year and obtained a GED diploma while serving in the U.S. Navy.

In 1965, Nail moved to Conway to work for the Arkansas Educational Television Network before the state PBS affiliate had a building.

“We actually helped lay bricks and do construction,” Nail told Talk Business & Politics in 2003.

In Conway, Nail worked the morning shift on the radio, a day shift at AETN and nights at a gas station pumping gas, changing oil and fixing flat tires.

In 1969, Nail was hired at KATV in Little Rock and managed its Pine Bluff bureau, then got into sports broadcasting when he was hired at KFSM-TV in Fort Smith in 1971.

KATV owned the rights to a weekly in-season show with Broyles, but there was no basketball coach’s show. Nail convinced his KFSM bosses to obtain the rights to the show with the basketball coach, Lanny Van Eman, and fly him on a rented plane from Fayetteville to Fort Smith and back.

“We’d tape the show, drive him back to the airport and fly him to Fayetteville,“ Nail said in the “Voices of the Razorbacks” book. “That went on every week.”

Nail left his home state to work at TV stations in Joplin, Mo., and Oklahoma City. He and his wife, Jean, returned to Arkansas with their children in 1978.

Jean Nail went to work as the spirit squads coordinator for the Razorbacks for 34 years until her retirement in 2016.

“I always called him ‘The Voice’ and her ‘The Spirit,’” Cartwright said.