This issue looks at the career paths of five male television
sportscasters -- ones who followed a journalism path rather than
a competitive sports career path. (I will look at female sportscasters
in the next issue.)
In 1989, while Joe Buck was attending Indiana University, he began doing play-by-play for the Louisville Redbirds, a Cardinals minor league affiliate. "I sent my tape to Anheuser-Busch [owner of the Cardinals] and they saw the novelty of my being Jack Buck's kid." (1) He was also a reporter for ESPN's coverage of minor league baseball's Triple-A All-Star Game.
In 1991 Buck graduated with a degree in English and a minor in telecommunications. He became a radio and television announcer for the Cardinals.
In 1992 he also became the voice of the University of Missouri basketball team. In 1993 he was announcing Major League Baseball for CBS Radio and calling play-by-play for Missouri baseball on Prime Network. In addition, he was a sports reporter for the local CBS affiliate, did Grand Prix Horse Jumping play-by-play for ESPN, and was a host of a radio talk show.
In 1994 Buck's mother suggested her son to Fox's executive producer, Ed Goren, who had been at CBS where he had known the family for years. Noted Goren, "I'd been on board for about week, and Carole said, 'You ought to take a look at Joe.' I told her to get me a tape. She did, and it was one of about 300 or 400 we went through. We narrowed the field way down and he made the cut." (2) He was called in for an audition, where he had to do play-by-play of a taped game. Even though he had little experience calling football, he felt he could handle the job. "I figure it's the same old story, second verse. I traveled to 'Monday Night Football' with my dad and got to know a lot of people. I've done basketball, baseball and this will just be another thing." (3)
At 25 he was the youngest announcer to call a regular slate of NFL games on network television. Buck also serves as the lead play-by-play announcer for Fox "Saturday Baseball Game of the Week."
When Nantz was a sophomore at the University of Houston, his golf teammates Blaine McCallister and Fred Couples dared him to ask NBC for a job during the Houston Open tournament. He spoke to the producer and told him he was on the golf team and was a communications major. He was given an unpaid job shuttling NBC announcers around the course. The following week he worked as a spotter for NBC at the Byron Nelson Classic, a golf tournament in Dallas. He also called up local stations offering to phone in reports about the tournament. That led to a job hosting a local radio Saturday morning call-in show.
In his third year at school he was the fill-in weekend sports anchor at the local CBS affiliate. He also was the public address announcer at his school's basketball games. "By the time I was a senior, I had so much going on that I'm surprised I didn't have burnout. It was such a relief when I graduated and didn't have to bring my books with me everywhere." (5)
After graduation in 1981, he worked for a variety of radio and television stations. At age 23 he was hired by a station in Salt Lake City as a sports anchor. He beat out approximately 100 others who also auditioned. He also did analysis for Utah Jazz games and called Brigham Young University football.
In 1985, when he was 26, he was invited to audition for CBS Sports and was hired. Two weeks later he was hosting college football telecasts. "There were so many multiples of luck and breaks involved, but at the same time, by the time I reached the network level, I had accomplished more than any 26-year-old broadcaster in the country." (6)
Nantz covers college basketball, golf, and the college football pregame and halftime shows for CBS. He hosted the 1998 Nagano Olympics for the network. In the fall of 1998 he will be involved with pro football. He has also covered tennis, baseball, boxing, swimming, diving, and track and field. "I love the diversity. I love doing some studio work, and I love doing play-by-play." (7)
Noted Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports, "Jim's style is that he is not intrusive at all. He lets the athletic competition be the star, not Jim Nantz, and people like that. The descriptions and tone he sets for different events are extremely professional. Jim is more satisfied letting the story unfold in front of the viewer. And he's very likable, and likability is something you can't teach anybody." (8)
About his style, Nantz said, "I just talk to the camera. I realize that it doesn't come that easily to some people. But I guess I have an ability that I was born with or blessed with." (9)
"I go into every show trying to have a perfect performance. You never achieve perfection, but afterward I try and see what I did well, what I did badly. Did I miss a syllable in a word? Did I have the proper inflection at a dramatic moment?" (10)
In 1979, after he graduated from the University of Dayton with a degree in broadcasting, he played religious tapes at a radio station on weekends at night and worked on a golf course during the day. When he tried to get a job as a sportscaster, "People were telling me to come back when I had experience. I thought, 'Who has more experience than I do? Nobody's watched more games than me.' " (12)
After four years in radio, Patrick made a videotape to show to local TV stations. He was having no luck when finally one news director offered to let him do odd jobs in the sports department. "For months, I got no closer to getting on the air than seeing somebody else broadcast the high school football scores I'd taken down over the phone in the office." (13) Then one weekend Patrick was called upon to fill in for the backup sportscaster. "... I took my one suit, I arrived ten hours before the show, and I filled in -- I'd never been on television before. The news director liked what he saw and made me the station's field reporter." (14)
But the station didn't offer him a full-time job. "It crushed me. I thought about quitting. I thought, that if I wasn't going to get a job in Dayton, Ohio, how was I going to get a job in CNN or ESPN?" (15)
That same year he went to Atlanta to visit friends and while there dropped in at CNN. The sports director didn't pay much attention until Patrick said he was from Ohio. The director was from a city near Dayton and said he'd look at the tape Patrick brought. The next day CNN made an offer.
Patrick worked as a anchor/reporter for CNN from 1983 to 1989. On his first broadcast, the microphone didn't function. "Here I was on the world's most important network. Everybody I know was watching, including my mom. I just kept reading. Afterwards I was amazed at how polite everyone was. They said, 'You know, we couldn't hear you, but you sure looked good.'" (16) Patrick also worked as a sports director of a radio station in Atlanta from 1987 to 1991.
In 1989 he joined ESPN. He has hosted "SportsCenter," called play-by-play for NCAA basketball games, and done reports from the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, and Final Four.
"... I did anything I could do to stay in broadcasting even though I didn't become a full-time sportscaster until I was twenty-seven years old." (17)"There is so much luck and chance and fate involved in this, and they don't believe it. If certain things don't happen I don't get here." (18)
Confirmed Berman, "I've wanted to be a sportscaster ever since I was 12, once I realized I would not set an Olympic record in the 100 meters, wouldn't dunk a basketball with great regularity, hit a baseball 450 feet or throw 80-yard touch-down passes. I was very dedicated to this. Doing this job, I'm staving off reality for a long time. Maybe forever, if I'm fortunate enough." (20)
He attended prep school where he played tennis, soccer, and basketball. Like many of his classmates, he went to an Ivy League school. He chose Brown, in part because it had a radio station. "I majored in history. It's a great background for what I do. I advise youngsters that they don't have to study communications. They must be able to communicate. Study political science or English or history, subjects in which you need to express yourself verbally and in writing. What you need to do is get into the best school you can, one that has an excellent radio station. Today I guess you'd look for both radio and cable TV on campus. On my fourth day at Brown I got involved at the radio station. I eventually became the voice of the Brown University Bruins." (21)
After graduation in 1977, he took a friend's suggestion and went to work at a radio station in Rhode Island. His next job was in Waterbury, Connecticut where his job included traffic reporting. From there he moved to a TV station in Hartford. Two months later, in 1979, he joined ESPN. "I had little experience. They said all they needed was someone who could speak in complete sentences. Actually, I was hired as a nightlight for new fathers." He was host of "SportsCenter," which started at 2:20 A.M. Conditions were primitive back then. (ESPN was in a building without flush toilets.) "But it was fun. It was like a space experiment. Like shooting up Sputnik and seeing if it would work." (22) The late night slot allowed Berman to experiment with giving athletes nicknames, for which he has become famous.
Berman was relatively low-paid until 1989 when NBC offered him four times what he was making at ESPN. He persuaded ESPN to make him a counter offer, but it wasn't the money that kept him there. "Look what we have here: I do nationwide sports, a labor of love, at a place that does sports better than anywhere else. It's right here in Connecticut, which is where I'm from. It's 15 minutes from my house, and I don't have to go to New York, ever." (23)
Said Keith Olbermann, who attended prep school with Berman and also worked with him at ESPN, "Chris is like one of them - an average, loudmouthed sports fan. It's just that his references are very intricate.
"... If he was just doing what he does and he didn't know what he was talking about, then he would just be a yahoo. But he has that expertise, and therefore it sells." (24)
Berman agrees. "I'm just a guy who gets excited about sports and loves to kibitz about them. I'm the same me, on or off camera -- jokes and all. Nothing is contrived." (25)
"Sports should be fun, and I want viewers to share in the enjoyment I get from the games. But I also owe it to those same viewers to be thoroughly prepared and to know what I'm talking about." (26)
Berman's schedule is full, but he handles it. He said, in reference to working 16-hour-days hosting NFL shows both on Sunday morning and evening, "Sundays are special. I feel like a player when I get up. You practice all week, then you have one day. This is my time of year. Frankly, I'm killing myself, but it's a labor of love. Sleep? I'll do that in February." (27)
Berman's jobs have included hosting "NFL Gameday," "NFL Primetime," baseball play-by-play, and "Baseball Tonight."
"Their voices were as much a part of the game as the players. These were my heroes just like Mantle." (29)
He studied communications at Syracuse University. Even though he would practice doing play-by-play in high school, he said he didn't think too much about a career before college. "I had a vague notion that I would be a sports broadcaster, but I was not really focused on it as a teenager." (30)
As a sophomore he broadcast some Syracuse basketball games.
In 1973, when he was a senior, he heard that a local minor league hockey team needed someone to call play-by-play. He told them he didn't have any hockey tapes available and gave them a basketball tape instead. "Of course, I didn't bother telling the Blazers that the reason I didn't have any hockey tapes available was that I had never before called a hockey contest in my life." (31) He got the job.
In 1974 Costas was hired by a radio station in St. Louis to call games for the Spirits of St. Louis, an American Basketball Association team. He got the job by submitting a tape of one of the Syracuse games he had called. ''... I put together a tape of the most exciting segments and edited them out of sequence so it would be the most exciting five minutes of basketball.
''I had the engineer turn down the treble and turning up the bass, so I'd sound a little older and more authoritative. I figured I was too young and inexperienced, but I was hoping I'd get some attention so I'd be considered next time.
''[I] was 22 and I looked 15 ...... but they liked the idea of a real young guy that could grow beyond the assignment.'' (32)
The job ended when the team disbanded.
From 1976 to 1981 he was the radio voice of University of Missouri basketball. In 1976 he was hired by CBS to handle regional NBA and NFL games. For the 1979-80 season he also called Chicago Bulls road games.
In 1980 he was hired by NBC to call regional NFL games. ''I did my first NFL game for CBS when I was 24. When Don Ohlmeyer hired me at NBC in 1980, he saw bigger things for me than I ever thought for myself. All along I've had modest goals.'' (33)
Then in 1982 NBC gave Costas the chance to call baseball. He didn't tell them that he had only done play-by-play on four baseball games. Baseball was something he had always wanted to do. "You can put a personal stamp on a baseball broadcast, be a reporter, something of a historian, a storyteller, conversationalist, dispenser of opinion." (34)
In 1984 NBC chose Costas to do live halftime and post-game NFL shows. It was only after he got the job that he told the network he had never worked in a studio before.
In 1985, at age 33, he became the youngest person ever named Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. "I would have been more than willing to pay my dues, but nobody ever made me." (35)
In 1990 Costas also served as host of NBC's "NBA Showtime." In 1997 he started doing NBA play-by-play.
Costas hosted the late night coverage of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the prime time coverage of the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and several non-sports shows on NBC. He has a contract with NBC which extends through 2002. Talking about his Olympics commentary he said, "I write a good portion of what's aired. We have very good writers ... lucky too, because there is too much material for me to write everything. Often I just review what other people have written and make changes or additions- subtractions, making it feel more comfortable. But most of the essays that close the evenings, I either write or write a significant portion of it." (36)
Said Lisa Lax, an NBC producer, "He has a base knowledge on a million different topics. From the stupidest little things to the details of the Kennedy assassination. He has a mind-boggling ability to hold a conversation with anybody on any subject." (37)
Costas puts a great deal of effort into his work. "Every good sports announcer is meticulous to the point of obsession about preparation. I've walked out of so many telecasts, and telecasts people said were good telecasts, wondering why didn't I remember to say that. You know you're only going to use a tiny fraction of it, but you don't know what tiny fraction that will be." (38)
He watches tapes over and over. Said his wife, "He's not watching them to watch himself. He's watching them to improve himself. When I first got to know him, I'd say, 'How can you watch that game over and over?' Then I realized, as I watched them with him, that every time he watched it, he'd pick up something that he did that he didn't like that he'd want to do differently next time. He's very adept at that. He learns from his mistakes.'' (39)
While Costas is known for his wit, he says it won't be used at the expense of his sports coverage. "I never use humor or anything that would divert attention from the situation at hand. I pride myself on being well-informed and well-prepared. If the choice comes down to (dispensing) essential information or cracking a joke, 100 times out of 100, I'll come down on the side of essential information. (But) usually that information can be imparted with a smile or with a joke." (40)
Said Tony Kubek, former all-star Yankees shortstop who worked with Costas on baseball broadcasts, ''His abiding love for the game is what allows him to do what he does, some of which is off-beat and irreverent. Bob can do things on the air with his irreverence and his sense of humor because people know that. We're talking about a very personal medium here, television. And because of that love - when viewers hear it in your voice and see it in your face - you can get away with things. That's a unique quality.'' (41)
Costas has said how he wants to be remembered: "I hope over the course of the long haul, people say that NBC and Costas captured some of the emotions but at the same time provided some perspective, some historical context -- reported the news, not just the theater but the news, and did it with appropriate skepticism.
"And within that, there ought to be enough time to let a little personality come through, too. If there aren't a lot of moments when there are some smiles, or even some outright laughs, then they've got the wrong guy for this job." (42)