Behind a 4-foot tall, navy blue wooden podium in the Carrier Dome stands a man who can sum up thousands of sporting events over parts of the last four decades with six words.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!” Joe Godley, 64, bellows down the promenade of the Carrier Dome.

He echoes the phrase hundreds of times, with the same inflection in his voice like the beating of a drum.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!

“It’s the voice that draws them in,” Godley said. “You need the voice, you need the people.”

Godley has manned his podium since the Carrier Dome opened on Sept. 20, 1980, and vended at Syracuse sporting events since he started selling Coca-Cola in Archbold Stadium in 1974.

Godley’s personable manner has led him to build relationships with people around the country. Friends and family have hosted Godley as he’s worked 30 Super Bowls, two Olympics, six Final Fours, three NFL teams and one Masters Tournament through his career.

As droves of fans filed through Gate N of the Carrier Dome on Friday night, dozens of locals — better known to him as family of 30-plus years — stopped by his podium to check in, most handing over $15 to extend the conversation, not for the program.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!

“I’ll call ya at Christmas,” he tells a father and son he’s friends with. “And don’t you hang up on me.”

His customers either have been buying from him for these 41 years, or walk away feeling like they have. Conversation strikes up when he shoots a “Nice shirt” at passersby wearing team gear.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!

“You tell him thank you,” Godley orders all the children whose parents buy them a program, with every one of them obliging.

Then as he’s making change, the conversation could stem off to the summer he spent in Birmingham, Alabama, living with his sister and vending for the Birmingham Barons while Michael Jordan made his brief baseball cameo with the team.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!

“And here’s some lunch money,” he says to every customer he hands change back to, who all walked away chuckling.

Or perhaps Godley sets the stage for his favorite sporting event he vended at, when Muhammad Ali defeated Leon Spinks in their 1978 rematch at the Louisiana Superdome.

Give him a couple hundred fans at a minor league stadium or 50,000 at a world premier fight, and the same thing holds true: he’ll be heard.

“If you’re walking and he sees you two blocks down the road — it’s too late,” Sherri Redden, a ticket-taker and former classmate of Godley’s, said. “He’ll make sure you know it’s him all the way down there, and he already knows it’s you.”

“There’s only one Joe — loud,” Redden said.

Out of high school, Godley got his first job as a dishwasher at Curry Cafeteria in Syracuse. And because the restaurant was across from the U.S. Navy recruiting office, it was also the place he had his last meal before being stationed at the U.S. naval base in Pensacola, Florida in 1970.

He drove a gas truck in Pensacola, going from plane to plane on the base to fill them up. He said deciding to join the Navy didn’t compare to the fear he had driving that truck.

“It crashes, you’re dead,” he said. “Here, I got nothin’ to worry about.

“Get tonight’s program! The souvenir program!”

Everyone certainly does seem to know the man behind the podium. The self-proclaimed best vendor in the United States has made his mark on the Carrier Dome like few others have.

Syracuse players like Carmelo Anthony and Donovan McNabb remain eternal for what they provided for the fans while they were playing. In an unprecedented manner, Godley has nearly done the same just by showing up for work since 1974.

He’s crossed paths with Anthony and McNabb when they played. He’s brushed by Michael Jordan while vending programs, and even sold one to Vice President Joe Biden.

All of these moments, of course, stemmed from those same six words.

“Joe is Joe,” Charles Harvey, a ticket taker and friend of Godley’s for 50 years, said. “He’s a one-of-a-kind and he’ll always have a place in here.”

At 64 years old, Godley is approaching a time where he thinks retirement is on the horizon. He pegged it at six more years — because 70 is a good number — when he might step away.

He may stick around to be an usher, because there’s too much that he’s done in one building to just leave it all behind him. But he’s always looking forward — forward to the crowds of people he’ll inevitably share his stories with, and forward to at least the next six years.

Said Godley: “Joe’s not done. He’s still got it in his blood.”

Published on March 29, 2015 at 8:18 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman