Sports are a universal language. There is a certain pride in cheering on the athletes who we build connections with through the good years and the bad.
However, there is one aspect of any sport that many people tune out and quite honestly don’t care about. Not the referees — we know how well replacements work. Not the coaches — if your team is losing you know whom you’re upset with. There are one or two key figures in every game that you would notice if they were gone and those are the broadcasters.
When I came to Harding in the fall of 2011, I was a music education major planning to teach high school marching band. Little did I know after just one semester, I would be seeking a public relations degree. However, the change wouldn’t stop there — in the coming semesters, I worked in chapel, directed TV-16 “Live at Five” news and flew on the Harding jet to film away football games.
Currently I work for Crain Media in Searcy as a radio play-by-play high school basketball broadcaster. On some nights, you may turn on your radio to 100.7 or 99.1 and hear me telling you what is happening in some small, run-down gym in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas.
I am very new to my job and know that I am not the best at it, but I continue to learn and grow through every game that I broadcast.
Going back to professional broadcasting, think about what is happening when a play isn’t being played. In American football, the average time of actual play — from snap to tackle — is 11 minutes. Eleven minutes of actual play over the course of three hours. All that dead time must go somewhere.
A major portion of any sport is filled by the voice of broadcasting. The professionals always have someone in their headset, feeding them information and statistics, but the process is still the same for them and me. When action is not happening on the field, broadcasting is your source of entertainment. You learn things about players, teams, rivalries and upcoming matches.
So the next time you turn on a game, think about what is being said and enjoy listening to someone telling you all the information you need to know.
