A story was published years ago about former Montana Grizzlies voice Mick Holien. It talked about how Mick was selling a bunch of memorabilia he collected over his 31 seasons as the Voice of the Griz.
The story got me to thinking about my favorite memories from my sports broadcasting career. My two favorites aren’t even about on-the-air stuff.
Read More
The best coaches and trainers know that how an athlete spends their off season is vital to preparing for a successful next season. If you use the time off to binge Netflix and eat donuts, you’re going to have problems when preseason begins.
As a broadcaster, how you spend the slowest part of your year will either motivate you to achieve bigger goals or perpetuate a cycle of stagnation.
Read More
A sportscaster friend of mine shared with me something that has turned around his career: honest self-evaluation.
More than reading books. More than attending seminars. More than studying other sportscasters, honest self-evaluation has done more than anything to impact this guy’s career.
Read More
It’s been five years since we published our list of the top five sports broadcasting schools in the U.S. It’s been nine years since our initial Top 20 ranking in 2013.
It’s time to update the list.
The list of top sports broadcasting schools has remained largely the same over the past decade. There are some new additions, and some schools have risen or fallen slightly. Still, though, largely the same.
Excellence is rooted in consistency.
1. Quality instruction
The best instructors are those who are, or have been, sports broadcasters.
2. Campus radio and/or TV stations
Having a place to get reps is mandatory. A perk of Big 10, SEC and ACC schools is being in conferences whose TV networks provide professional-quality broadcast opportunities for students.
3. Alumni involvement
The best schools have alumni who return to campus to mentor, teach, and help graduates get jobs.
Read our 2017 ranking of the Top 5 sports broadcasting schools for more tips on what to look for when choosing a good one.
Schools are listed in alphabetical order.
Schools in the Big Ten, SEC and ACC are worth an additional look, regardless of their placement on our lists. The reason, as mentioned at the top of this page, is because of the relationships they have with their respective conference broadcast networks. Each of the three conferences streams broadcasts produced entirely by students, including the on-air talent.
The games are in big-time settings and the production quality is high. Everyone steps their game up and it looks great on a demo reel.
Since the webcasts reflect the quality of each school’s sports broadcasting curriculum, these schools generally provide excellent classroom instruction.
These schools take the education of sports broadcasters seriously enough that they’ve created majors, or at least sports media concentrations, that are more specialized than a general broadcasting major.
Schools are listed in alphabetical order.
Geography
You can’t put a price on happiness. Choose to live someplace you are going to enjoy.
Cost
Not every school is going to be in everyone’s budget. Don’t sweat it, though. Read on . . .
You can launch a successful sports broadcasting career from anywhere. Though a ton of sportscasters have graduated from Syracuse, their number is far surpassed by sportscasters who went elsewhere.
Your success will depend upon the degree to which you take advantage of the opportunities provided to you. If you are at a school where the quality of instruction is less, seek outside mentors. If you aren’t getting the reps you want, create your own opportunities doing webcasts of local high school and small college games.
Success will depend most upon the opportunities you create for yourself beyond the school curriculum, having mentors to critique your work and what you do with the opportunities you are given.
The most successful sportscasters are the most invested — the most disciplined and hard working.
We’ve advised hundreds of students — and parents of students — about what colleges might be best for them.
Do you have questions or comments? Please leave them below. I enjoy helping!
Jon Chelesnik,
Owner, STAA
Most job applicants feel qualified for the jobs for which they apply. Nearly as many are confident they will get it. On the occasions when they don’t, applicants might feel emotions ranging from disappointment and frustration to downright disbelief. How can this employer be so short-sighted as to not see my greatness?
Those emotions are fine. They’re understandable. I have felt some of them myself in the job market. Keep them to yourself.
Expressing your disappointment to the employer who doesn’t hire you burns bridges.
Read More
The most discouraging phone call of my career was in July 2003. I took that call while sitting at the desk in my home office in Carlsbad, CA. After four years of hosting Weekend AllNight on ESPN Radio, I was being replaced. I felt shock, disbelief, anger, despair, betrayal, bewilderment and a loss of confidence. Maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be replacing me, right?
I was 36. I sobbed.
After several days I was able to sort through most of my emotions. The one that remained, though, was my lack of confidence. I wondered if maybe I had been fooling management for the past four years. Maybe they never listened to the show. After all, it aired in the middle of the night on weekends. Maybe when they finally listened, they realized it sucked. Or maybe the person who hired me thought of weekend overnights as a throwaway shift. When new management came in, I reasoned, they put new emphasis on the time slot and thought I wasn’t good enough.
Read More
In Deon Sanders’ Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech, he recalled that when he went from Florida State to the NFL, people called him an overnight success. He replied that he had been playing football since he was seven — that his overnight success was 13 years in the making.
There is no such thing as overnight success.
Read More
There is a veteran play-by-play broadcaster in the Midwest. We’ll call him Scott Cameron. Cameron was very excited to learn that three NCAA Division I football and basketball play-by-play jobs were opening. He had honed his craft, built his resume, and paid his dues.
How often do people tell you to network for sportscasting success?
Regular followers of STAA know that I try to avoid the word networking. Instead, I talk about relationship-building. Networking often implies “what can you do for me.” Relationship-building is about “what can I do for you.”
“I don’t have time.”
How often do you say that to yourself about building your sportscasting career?
168 hours in a week is a lot. “I don’t have time” really means “this isn’t a high enough priority for me.”
Read More
