VIDEO: Jim Zabel's reunion with Kirk Ferentz and Iowa football team

He is not retired. He probably never will be.  Jim Zabel, 66 years after starting with the station, is still an on-air personality with WHO-AM radio in Des Moines. He simply works from his home in the Greater Phoenix area.

Zabel, who has spent almost nine full decades on this planet, paid a visit to Iowa's Insight Bowl press conference Sunday at the J.W. Marriott Camelback Inn in Scottsdale. He's still telling all the old jokes, in his permanent merry way.

For a week in China, I was Zabel's roommate in 1986. We were the only media to accompany Tom Davis' first Hawkeyes basketball team as they toured Asia. It was an amazing experience. Sure, the Great Wall of China and the sights and sounds of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong were interesting. But rooming with "Z" was unforgettable.

I was 28 and thought I had some stamina when it came to the night life. But I was zonked every night before he rolled in, yet he was awake first every morning and raring to go again. They'd put us on these tour buses to do this, go here, etc. After a while, you wear down to a nub. Unless you were Zabel. I bet they still talk about him over there.

It was great to see him again.