Hall of Fame
Cliff Russell will be the fifth recipient of the Athletic Hall of Fame Honor Award, which recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves in assisting Wayne State Warrior Athletics.
A Detroit native, Russell played his final two years of collegiate basketball for the Tartars and coach Vern Payne. As a junior during the 1977-78 campaign, he played in 25 of WSU's 27 games, starting 21 times. He scored 207 points, grabbed 161 rebounds and led the squad with 13 blocked shots.
The following year, he started 26 of Wayne State's 27 contests and averaged over 10 points per game, while leading the team with 220 rebounds.
The end of his playing career was the beginning of his announcing, broadcasting and teaching career at Wayne State. For the next decade, Russell served as the public address announcer for almost all of WSU's home football and basketball games. During the 1980's, a number of Wayne State's home football games were televised on WGPR (TV-62) and Russell worked as the play-by-play announcer, color analyst or sideline reporter. In 2002, when Wayne State began regular radio broadcasts of Warrior football and men's basketball games, Russell was chosen as the play-by-play announcer.
His lengthy career as a professional broadcaster and local media figure began when he was still a broadcast communications major at WSU. Russell hosted a weekly show about Wayne State Athletics called "Tartar Talk" on WDET. He has worked at numerous radio and television stations in metro Detroit including eight-and-a-half years at WWJ.
In 1994, Russell became Detroit's first African-American Press Secretary to the Mayor, when he was asked to serve in that position by Mayor Dennis W. Archer. In 1996, Russell began a two-year stint as a full-time lecturer in the WSU Communications Department. He became the first African-American to serve as Senior Director of Communications for any Major League Baseball team in history when hired by the Detroit Tigers in 2002.
A 1974 graduate of Roeper High School, Russell is currently an assistant basketball coach with both the boys and girls teams at RHS while also serving as an announcer for Comcast television on numerous local sporting events.
In addition, he was a charter inductee into the Roeper High School Athletic Hall of Fame.
He currently resides in Ypsilanti with his family.
