How We Got Here
I started working at Golf Channel in August, 2010.
I had spent the previous seven years working for two FOX-owned regional sports channels in Florida. Between the two sister stations -- Sun Sports and FOX Sports Florida -- nearly every major college and pro team in the state played under one television roof. It so happened that my time there coincided with unprecedented success for many of those teams. Between 2004 and 2008, the Tampa Bay Lightning won their first Stanley Cup, the University of Florida won two NCAA men’s basketball championships and two BCS football titles, and the Miami Heat won their first NBA championship. Thanks to Martin St. Louis, Tim Tebow, Joakim Noah, Dwyane Wade, and many others, I received invaluable experience in hosting televised victory parades.
Before I came home to Florida to work for FOX, I was a studio anchor at ESPN. Getting that job was a miracle. We should probably backtrack a bit.
I graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English in the spring of 1993. Soon after, I began an internship in the Broadcasting department of my hometown Orlando Magic, a temporary gig that became permanent after the ’93-’94 NBA season. My job was to write and produce video features for television. I also convinced the Magic to let me act as a sideline reporter for the radio broadcasts. There was nothing in the job description that read “television anchor” or “host”; anything I did on-camera was a result of considerable begging. Regardless, on those rare occasions when I did worm my way in front of the lens, I made sure to make a videotape copy. The goal was to collect enough tape to piece together a resume’ reel, with one eye towards someday getting a real TV job.
While I was toiling away in Orlando, a friend of mine from Cornell, Dan Weinberg, was performing similar tasks in Bristol, Connecticut, where he was an entry-level Production Assistant at ESPN. Danny and I had worked in radio together -- more on that later -- and we frequently kept in touch after graduation, sharing examples of our production work. During the summer of 1996, Dan called me with a hot tip that the Worldwide Leader was hiring. The gig was a new, 24-hour sports news channel that was to debut that September: ESPNEWS.
As mentioned, I had precisely zero experience as a full-time sports anchor, but Dan was persistent. He told me he had seen some of the auditions in Bristol, and he was convinced that I had a shot. All I needed to do was send him a tape. So I polished up my resume’ reel -- which amounted to just about everything I had ever done in front of a camera -- and mailed it to Bristol.
Dan walked my tape down the hall to the office of Al Jaffe, the well-known executive who was responsible for finding ESPN talent. Al was getting hundreds of tapes every week from would-be ESPNEWS anchors, so Dan essentially acted as my agent, explaining who I was and recommending that Al give the tape a look. I’m quite sure that Al responded with some version of, “Whatever.”
Over the next few weeks and months, Dan would periodically knock on Al’s door to see how things were going. Once Al became thoroughly sick of seeing Dan in his doorway -- like I said, the kid was really persistent -- Al finally relented. He watched the tape.
What he watched was a few minutes of my voice narrating Orlando Magic highlights, “SportsCenter”-style. There were a few shots of me at a desk, reading a news story into the camera. A few minutes of special features on Magic players that I wrote and produced. That was about it.
Whatever it was, it was enough for Al Jaffe to call and ask me to fly to Bristol for an interview and an audition. I was twenty-five years old.
That phone call, in my estimation, was a victory. If this story ended right there, if I had staggered through the interview and puked all over the “SportsCenter” desk during the audition, I honestly wouldn’t have cared. Al watched the tape, and he liked it enough to call me. Done. Victory. Only, I still had to, you know, go to the interview and the audition.
Here’s what I remember about my first visit to ESPN in 1997:
It was cold. It was icy. The sky was grey. This would later become a recurring theme.
The night before the audition, I had dinner with Dan at a local joint near the ESPN campus, but was too nervous to eat much of anything. Instead, we spent much of the evening trying to predict what Al would ask me. Dan offered me tips on Al’s famous “sports quiz” that he gave to applicants for the Production Assistant position. Sample question: “give me your contenders for this year’s Vezina Trophy, and tell me who you think has the best defense in the NFC West and why.” I would soon learn that, while it made for interesting dinner conversation, “the quiz” doesn’t come into play when Al interviews potential anchors. Which was a bummer, because I had composed a hell of a case for Martin Brodeur over Dominik Hasek.
Once I got back to the hotel, I did push-ups and sit-ups in an effort to wear myself out enough to go to sleep. It didn’t work.
My outfit for the audition and interview: an olive-green, double-breasted suit. Hey, it was 1997.
The reality of the situation didn’t hit me until I walked into the “SportsCenter” studio and saw that desk. I think I may have gasped, audibly.
As I was getting ready for the audition, I asked an audio technician to help me affix the lavalier microphone to my tie. He chuckled and said, “you must work in a union shop, huh?” Meaning, he thought I worked at a unionized television station, where only members of the technical unions were allowed to touch any of the equipment. I smiled back at him, knowingly. The truth was, I had only worn a lav mic once before in my life, and had no idea how to put the damn thing on.
I thought I blew the audition before it even began. Once the opening theme music had rolled -- that “SportsCenter” theme, the very one you know -- I heard the director say in my ear, “Cue.” Meaning, he was cuing me to start. Only, I had never heard that phrase before. In radio, we always just said “Go.” So I stared at the camera, blankly, wondering what was going on. Luckily, the director was a pro, doubtlessly accustomed to the deer-in-headlights look during auditions. He stopped down, got back in my ear, and asked if everything was okay. I asked him, politely, to just say “Go.” He said no problem. The second time around, I made it through the audition without a hitch. Then I puked all over the desk.
(Okay, not really, but I wanted to.)
Once the audition was mercifully over, the interviews began. Brief meetings with ESPN studio executives Bob Eaton and Vince Doria -- I can remember being awestruck by the shelf full of Emmy awards in Vince’s office -- and a longer talk with Al Jaffe. He was both courteous and curious. No questions about the Seahawks’ pass rush, but lots of questions about what I did for the Magic, and my prior experience in radio. He told me that what caught his ear in my resume’ tape was the quality of the writing. “We can teach you TV,” he said, “but writing ability is harder to develop. You can write. That’s why you’re here.” He also said that if ESPN were to make me an offer, I would be the least experienced anchor they had ever hired.
Both of those statements struck me as odd things to say. Unless, of course, he was already planning to make an offer. A few weeks later, he did.
So at the age of 25, with no experience in local TV and perhaps the shortest resume’ reel in television history, I got the job as a studio anchor at ESPN. I remain forever indebted to Al Jaffe and anyone else in Bristol who had to vote “yes” to take a shot on me. It’s just not supposed to happen that way. Like I said, a miracle.
Working at ESPN was pretty much exactly as a sports fan would imagine it to be. The sprawling (and ever-expanding) campus was perched seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The talent level was off the charts, and I’m not just talking about announcers. From producers to directors to technicians, it was an intensely creative, subtly competitive, mind-bending collection of excellence. Except for me, of course. I sucked. At least, I thought I did, every time I watched Keith Olbermann or Dan Patrick host “SportsCenter.”
The early years in Bristol were trial by fire. ESPNEWS shifts were some of the longest and most complicated shows that Bristol produced, yet the anchors, directors, and producers who were assigned to them were often the greenest. We had nowhere to go but up, but at least we were doing it together.
From daytime shifts on ESPNEWS, I eventually moved to primetime shifts in the evening, then weekend shifts during football season, then specialty shows covering the NBA (my passion) and the NHL on ESPN2. And, yes, I even did “SportsCenter.” In fact, my very first appearance on ESPN’s signature program, in September of 1997, came alongside a fellow Cornell graduate -- Bill Pidto. Small world, that.
At the time I was hired, I was engaged. My wife and I got married back in Florida in January of 1998. We spent a little over six years in Connecticut, and most of the major steps in our life happened there. We bought our first house, in West Hartford, in 1999. In 2000, our son was born, at the University of Connecticut’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington. Our daughter was born a little over three years later at Children’s Hospital in downtown Hartford. The Nutmeg State was the genesis of just about everything that I hold dear, personally and professionally.
However, it was cold. And icy. And grey. And yes, it was ESPN, but when the workday was over, I still had to live there. I just could not get past the winters. Eventually, my distaste for the weather, and the isolation of Bristol, began to overshadow my enjoyment of the job. A therapist in West Hartford diagnosed me with Seasonal Affective Disorder, the “winter blues,” and suggested that I spend a few minutes each morning and evening sitting in front of a light box. I’m not sure if she was right -- more on that later -- but I was desperate enough to give it a shot. It was slowly dawning on me that, despite having landed what I considered to be my dream job at the Worldwide Leader, I wouldn’t last in Connecticut.
I may or may not have been sitting in front of my light box in the basement of our house on Sedgwick Road in West Hartford in 2003 when I received a phone call from a man named Ned Tate, asking if I would be interested in talking to him about a job with what was then called Sunshine Network. The regional channel, based in Orlando, was planning to create a studio operation for the first time, and was looking for a jack-of-all-trades host. Ned, who came to Sunshine Network from Ohio, was unfamiliar with the central Florida market, and my name had been suggested to him by my former employers at the Orlando Magic.
Ned had me at “Orlando.”
A few weeks later, after some gentle haggling over an exit from my ESPN contract, I was packing up my young family once again, grateful to be moving home.
(As an aside -- Dan Weinberg is now an Executive Vice President for CBS Sports, and I still feel like I owe him one. Big time.)
“Sunshine Network” was eventually re-branded as Sun Sports. The sister channel, FOX Sports Florida, was added to the umbrella later. I was hosting studio shows that covered the Sunshine State gamut, from college football to fishing. I did football, basketball, and baseball play-by-play at the University of Florida, Florida State, the University of Miami, and smaller schools like Stetson and Rollins. On the pro side, I hosted NBA broadcasts for the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat, MLB games for the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays, and the occasional NHL contest in Tampa with the Lightning. The teams were doing well (see above), and I had plenty to do.
I loved it. Loved the job, loved the subject matter, loved being home in Florida. So naturally, everything changed.
More accurately, rumors began to fly that the FOX executives in California wanted to move the headquarters of Sun Sports and FOX Sports Florida out of Orlando. From their perch in Los Angeles, they couldn’t fathom why we weren’t in Miami. South Florida looks terribly sexy from a distance. Kind of like Los Angeles.
As an Orlando native, I was keenly aware of the fact that South Florida and Central Florida are nothing alike. The move did not appeal to me, to put it mildly; it certainly didn’t appeal to my wife, who was raising two young kids while I was galivanting about the state. I had taken a huge risk -- and a pay cut -- to leave ESPN and return to Orlando. I wasn’t leaving Orlando for Miami.
So I started snooping around. I didn’t have to look very far.
Golf Channel launched in 1995, the brainchild of Alabama businessman Joseph Gibbs and golf legend Arnold Palmer. Palmer’s connections to Orlando ran deep -- he had owned the Bay Hill Club and Lodge since 1974, and the Golf Channel offices and studios had been built down the street from the golf course. I had a lot of friends who worked there over the years, many of whom were fellow ex-ESPNers. In 2007, the channel had signed a 15-year agreement to become the exclusive cable home of the PGA Tour. Golf Channel was on the rise. I was interested.
It wasn’t solely a matter of avoiding another move. Golf Channel and I had a history together, albeit a minor one. In 1994, a few months before the channel went on the air, I interviewed for an entry-level job there. At the time, Golf Channel was nothing but some rented office space, a ton of boxes, and a handful of harried personnel. There was no studio, no programming, nothing. It was a start-up in every sense of the word. I was offered the job, but turned it down. A few weeks later, I started as an intern with the Magic, beginning the path just described. Still, I always wondered how things may have been different had I joined Golf Channel on the ground floor.
And, there was golf. Growing up in Orlando, I grew up in the game. My dad put a club in my hand before I left elementary school, and I never stopped playing. Even in Connecticut, where the winters drove me to distraction, golf was a huge part of our social lives during the summer months. Working in golf had always sounded appealing, but the stars had never aligned.
It started with a couple of phone calls to people I knew. It progressed into dropping off a resume‘ tape. I asked for “informational” meetings with a couple of people in Golf Channel management. We began exchanging e-mails. The idea of me doing freelance work for the channel was floated. After several months of this gentle, slow-moving waltz -- this is always how it works in our business -- I finally received an offer to join the network full-time. It was August, 2010.
* * *
When I was hired, the directive was simple: I was to be a studio anchor. “Golf Central,” the network’s flagship news program, airs seven days a week, often several times a day. My new employers wanted me to be a reliable face and voice in our Orlando studios. Which I was, for a time.
Within a few months of joining GC, I was asked if I wouldn’t mind going on the road to act as a reporter for Golf Central at the PGA Tour event at Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth, Texas. Just a one-time thing, to help out. Of course, I said yes, despite the fact that I really had no idea what Golf Central reporters did at tournaments.
(This is a great example of my personal First Rule of Broadcasting: “Always Say Yes.” Then, go figure out how the hell to do whatever it is you just committed to do. My Second Rule? “Beg Forgiveness, Not Permission.” We’ll get to that one.)
The assignment at Colonial was uneventful. Early in the week, I interviewed players in the morning and made an appearance via satellite on Golf Central each evening. On tournament days, I conducted live interviews during the Golf Channel telecast, sporting an “RF pack” (a wireless microphone/headset combination that allows a reporter to go just about anywhere on the golf course). The guys in the audio truck taught me how to use it about 30 minutes before I went on the air.
(Always Say Yes.)
By the time I got back to Orlando, it was evident that I could handle myself in the field -- no trains off the rails, no loss of life -- so the newsroom execs began sending me out more often. The resulting schedule provided a nice balance of time in the studio and time on the road.
We produced Golf Central on location at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut and the Nature Valley First Tee Open at Pebble Beach. I joined Golf Channel’s “Live From” coverage at the major championships, including my first-ever visit to the Masters. And in December of 2011, I went to Q-School, where things changed again.
Q-School -- or the “PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament” -- was the annual 6-round crucible that produced 25 new card-carrying members of the PGA Tour for the following year. It was also a choke-fest. The pressure on the players, be they aspiring rookies or desperate veterans, was suffocating. It made great TV -- in the way that railroad derailments make great TV -- so Golf Channel would cover all six rounds. For the 2011 Q-School at PGA West near Palm Springs, California, I was assigned to be a reporter and interviewer.
Keith Hirschland was the producer. Keith and I had never met, so I sought him out early in the week for a drink at the bar in our hotel. We chatted about previous experiences, including mutual friends from ESPN and elsewhere, and I mentioned that I had done quite a bit of play-by-play prior to joining Golf Channel. That’s when Jack Graham popped his head around the corner.
In his role as a vice president at Golf Channel, Jack oversaw live tournaments (or Live Tournaments, as the department is cleverly named internally). Prior to joining GC, Jack had spent 25 years in various capacities at ABC Sports and later ESPN, working on assignments as disparate as Monday Night Football and the Olympics, garnering six Emmy Awards along the way.
I knew who Jack was, but we had never been properly introduced. Once he overheard me talking about play-by-play, we began to chat.
Jack explained that Golf Channel had a package of 5 Nationwide (now Korn Ferry) Tour events in 2012 that needed a play-by-play announcer. Have I ever wanted to call golf, and would I be interested in picking up a couple of those events?
“Of course,” I said.
(Always Say Yes.)
Months later, long after Q-School had come and gone, Jack sent an e-mail reminding me of that conversation. He gave me dates for five events; I had a conflict with one of them, so I offered to do four. My first appearance as host of a Live Tournament for Golf Channel was in May of 2012, at the BMW Charity Pro-Am in Greenville, South Carolina. I would call three more events that summer. I thought they went pretty well.
Apparently, I wasn’t alone. At the end of the year, I was told that Live Tournaments would be my new home. My 2013 schedule would be a full compliment of golf play-by-play, including PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, and Web.Com Tour events. I had, quite unwittingly, become a golf announcer.
(Always Say Yes...?)
Fast forward to 2022. Nine years of traveling anywhere from 20 to 25 weeks a year, primarily for the PGA Tour, but also the PGA Tour Champions, where I sat next to World Golf Hall of Fame member Lanny Wadkins. There are lots of stories, many of which I will present here, but things have changed. As the golf world knows, Golf Channel's Orlando operation was essentially closed at the end of 2020, wrapped into NBC Sports Group and its massive broadcast headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. As a tournament announcer with very few studio assignments, I was not required to move back to the Nutmeg State (all I need is an airport). Instead, I remained a full-time employee for over a year while still living in Orlando. Later this spring, I will become a freelance announcer for the first time in my life, and hope to continue with Golf Channel for a long, long time. It's also an opportunity to get back to my roots, be that college hoops, baseball, radio, what have you. A new chapter in what is already a pretty long story (obviously).
So -- that’s how we got here.
