The Pennsylvania Military College, now Widener University, straightened out aspiring sportscaster Bill Stern in 1925, but it didn’t straighten out his facts, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report by Frank Fitzpatrick.

“I came there a young punk,” Stern was quoted as saying, “and left a man.”

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While there, Stern explored interests in basketball, football, polo, jazz band, and radio. But even the military drills couldn’t bring Stern’s tongue into line when he went on to star as a sportscaster in NBC’s nearly-20-year-running “Bill Stern’s Colgate Sports Newsreel.” It became “one of the most successful and most listened to shows in radio history” thanks to much-elaborated and often fictional accounts of sports heroes, the article explained.

“There was no limit to Stern’s audacity in creating these phony stories,” writer Jack French stated. “Instead of the inside dope, his listeners got a steady dose of stories well outside the boundaries of truth and reason.”

Read more of Bill Stern’s background and success after graduating from the Pennsylvania Military College in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.