Over the course of five decades he called play-by-play for numerous sports on television and radio, becoming known for his smooth delivery and baritone voice.

[1] He began his broadcasting career at radio station WBAA while studying for a premedical degree at Purdue University where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.

Schenkel was at the microphone for DuMont's last broadcast and its only color telecast, a high school football championship game held on Thanksgiving in 1957.

[4] In 1956, with DuMont exiting the network television business, he moved to CBS Sports, where he continued to call Giants games, along with boxing, Triple Crown horse racing and The Masters golf tournament, among other events.

ABC Sports hired Schenkel in 1965, and there he broadcast college football, Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, golf and tennis tournaments, boxing, auto racing, and the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

Schenkel and his broadcast team provided exciting and colorful coverage to a sport not typically considered attractive to a television audience.

Many viewers considered it a weekly tradition to watch bowling on Saturday afternoons, which was a lead-in to ABC's Wide World of Sports.

He would eventually call a televised 300 game on January 31, 1987, when Houstonian Pete McCordic bowled one in the first match of the Greater Los Angeles Open.

Schenkel went on to broadcast many more huge games, including the celebrated Nebraska-Oklahoma match on Thanksgiving Day 1971, as well as the Sugar Bowl national championship showdown between Notre Dame and Alabama on New Year's Eve 1973 (with Wilkinson and Howard Cosell, in a rare college football appearance).

He was the spokesman for Owens-Illinois's "Good Taste of Beer" advertising campaign which began in 1975 and continued through the remainder of the decade.

In 1996, the National Football Foundation created an award in his honor, given annually to distinctive individuals in broadcasting with ties to a university.

He played the role of play-by-play announcer in the final match between characters Ernie McCracken and Roy Munson.