Bob Kelleter admits that he doesn’t recall exactly how the idea for the Bangor Daily News Football Forecast originated.
He surmises that someone on the BDN Sports staff saw a similar feature in a Boston newspaper and decided that a weekly contest to pick high school and college football games might be popular with readers.
That was in 1966 when Kelleter was among four members of the BDN Sports department that included Maine outdoor writing legend Bud Leavitt, sports editor Owen Osborne and sportswriter Bill Warner.
This week, the 75-year-old Kelleter — the only remaining living member of that journalistic quartet — will serve as the honorary first guest for the 50th year of the BDN Football Forecast.
Kelleter is a native of Bedford, New York, who graduated from the University of Maine in 1963 with a degree in journalism. While in Orono, he served as the sports editor of The Maine Campus student newspaper and worked two seasons as a manager for Black Bears baseball coach Jack Butterfield.
In the hope of covering the city’s anticipated major league baseball team, Kelleter left the BDN during the Red Sox’s 1967 pennant drive to work at the Milwaukee Sentinel. The Seattle Pilots were relocated to Milwaukee, but not until after Kelleter had departed for a job at the Washington Post.
He started there as a sports reporter and became an assistant sports editor, then later held numerous other positions, including food editor. In 1992, he returned to Maine as the BDN’s executive editor, a post he held for five years.
Kelleter ended a 48-year journalism career in 2009 with a 10-year stint as an editor for ESPN.com. He lives in Gouldsboro with his wife, Trixie.
Kelleter had a 98-52 Forecast record as a staffer and then went 15-5 as a guest in 1993.