For five decades Paul J Schneider has been the face and the voice of Boise State athletics. On Friday he will hang up the mic and say goodbye to something that he says he never really thought of as a job.
During a radio broadcast on Wednesday, he said he really doesn’t know what a world without a 4 a.m. alarm is going to be like - other than hanging out with his wife, Tammy, of 31 years.
That's because for 51 years all he's even known is talking into a microphone - A schedule that included a number-one ranked morning drive time show, with weekday and Saturday ball games sprinkled in during the fall, winter and spring months.
Friday will mark the end of an era when 76 year old Paul J Schneider walks out of the 670 KBOI studios for the last time.
When asked what he thought he would miss the most he responded,
"People. The interaction with listeners.... I’ll still hang around the sports people and do that."
He has interviewed presidents; He got the nation's first live interview with Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal because his good friend Harmon Killebrew had the president's private number.
He has interviewed many other world and state leaders, but his passion is and always has been covering sports - especially Boise State.
He was the play-by-play announcer for 35 years, which included the NCAA I-AA National Championship in 1980 and, of course, his most famous call: the 2-point conversion to seal a miraculous Boise State win over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.
"People will come up to me in a grocery store and say, 'they'll talk about this for years to come,' which I guess is my signature call."
Much has changed in the world of broadcasting in 50 years, and many broadcasters did not survive those changes. Schneider says he did because he was willing to adapt.
"I think that I was malleable enough to survive all that and keep my sense of humor," he said. "I liked to listen to people. I don’t really disrespect anybody who has different thoughts than I do so I think that’s one of the things that I hope people will say, ‘He listened to us.'”
Schneider’s final broadcast is Friday morning from 8 to 10 a.m. on 670 KBOI.
KBOI has not announced who will replace him on “Idaho Talks Live” in the morning.