36 things I do to prepare for a football broadcast
After calling two Pac-12 championship games, a Rose Bowl, a Sugar Bowl and a national championship game, here are the things I can't call a game without doing
Preparing for a football broadcast is a different monster than preparing for any other sport. It’s not as fast paced as basketball, so you need to be able to tell more stories and provide more context between the plays. It’s not as slow paced as baseball, so those stories better get to the point quickly before the next play is snapped.
There are by far more players to prepare for than any other sport. The games carry more weight due to the small number of contests. The history of the sport is celebrated and important, and it’s a crucial element in understanding a program’s history, its culture, and what it truly means to be a (fill in mascot’s name here). The conference title picture and playoff picture is always fascinating.
The problem with football isn’t that you simply need to prepare a lot of information. It’s that there is never enough time to know everything you’d like to know going into a game. As my former analyst Damon Huard once joked, “when I was new at this, I asked Bob Rondeau if he could give me some tips and pointers about what I needed to know going into a broadcast. He shot me a funny look and said, ‘You need to know everything!’”
Obviously, that’s not possible. And while a week seems like a lot of time to prepare between broadcasts, that week goes by pretty quickly between coaches shows and practice schedules and interviews and packing and traveling and setting up equipment and printing out live reads and… you get the idea.
So, in the interest of providing a tangible checklist that will help you determine what you need to do and what you can afford to ditch, here is my 2024 game week preparation checklist, which can also be downloaded for free here:
Create flashcards for Top 30-35 players on opposing team: Name spelled phonetically on one side, the jersey number and position on the other. Gives me a stack of cards I can keep in my pocket all week so that when I see a number, I immediately can recall which player it is.
Brainstorm with our football team’s director of creative services: He likes to use the audio from our broadcast on his cinematic video recaps, so we have a creative brainstorming session to sync up our vision for storytelling in his videos with our radio broadcast. This came together beautifully here and here. If you don’t have someone like this to brainstorm with, it’s a worthwhile exercise to spend time visualizing by yourself: if there was a hype video made about this game, what would I want the soundtrack to sound like?
Print, read and highlight information on the opponent: I try to go in chronological order so it feels like I’m progressively experiencing what it’s like to be the opponent’s fanbase. So, I typically do it in this order:
Read preseason magazine articles about the opponent
Read every AP game story covering the opponent in order from the start of the season to now. (Also, I’ll do this for the previous season if it’s the first few weeks of the year.) If the AP didn’t cover the event, I’ll read the game recap on the team’s official website.
Read news stories and columns from reporters covering the team that week
Read the press release/game notes
Update the databases for the team I cover: I keep a spreadsheet that has every score in school history and the team stats for every Husky game back to 1947 (which is all we have). I call the game with this spreadsheet open. It allows me to very quickly reference superlative data. If we’re up 13-0 at halftime, I can easily see not just the last time we shutout an opponent, but the last time we shutout a conference opponent on the road if I want to. I also copy and paste the team’s box score into a database that will update career info for the players, including career games played, rushing/passing/receiving yards, career touchdowns, career sacks, forced fumbles and interceptions.
Print the timing sheet for the events in stadium and update the timing for our format that week: It’s important to know when the national anthem is going to be played, and precisely what time the coin toss and the opening kickoff are going to occur. If my one hour of pregame coverage begins at noon, that hour is going to look a lot different if kickoff is at 1:01 p.m. as opposed to 1:10 p.m. We don’t want our pre-recorded coach’s interview to air, followed by the ensuing commercial break, followed by a high-energy opening billboard, only to bring it back to us live in stadium… listening to the Star Spangled Banner. It takes a lot of timing, precision and attention to detail to get that right.
Print my own statistical comparisons of the teams: because D1 college football has some pretty good publicly available stats, I’m able to use a lot of that data to create my own analytics that makes for some pretty interesting talking points. I’ve never been able to really find stats like where a team ranks in percentage of drives that result in a touchdown, or percentage of run plays that go for 20 yards or more. But with a lot of the principles I teach in Spotting Board U, I’m able to generate those with the click of a button and give myself an extra handful of analytics that help tell the story of the season.
Print a very thin, phonetic roster for each team: Having a number, name spelled phonetically and position for every player on both teams is non-negotiable. I print mine in small font so it’s long and thin and tapes nicely on the window in front of me.
Record our Monday head coach’s press conference and upload it to our podcast: I don’t ask questions at our press conferences since I’ll have the coach to myself for an hour on our weekly radio show. But I do want to make sure I’m in the room whenever he’s speaking publicly and I’m taking notes of what he said to the media.
Touch base with the opposing radio announcer and see if there’s anything they need: It’s always courteous, especially if you’re the home announcer, to reach out and see if the other crew might need any information about the broadcast set up before they arrive. Also, opposing announcers always have interesting insight on the team, and they’re a great resource for the following things:
Who hasn’t played recently who might come back for this week’s game?
What’s the vibe around the program and the fanbase?
Are there any personnel oddities they’ve put on tape during a game? (Like a certain package for the backup quarterback, etc.)
Check with the home team’s marketing department or sports information folks for special in-stadium events during the game: When you’re wearing a headset, you’re kind of isolated from the rest of the stadium and totally in broadcast mode. Therefore, it’s very easy to miss one of the most famous players in school history being honored between quarters. I hate it when I see something going on in the stadium and I have no idea what’s happening or who’s participating. So I always send a note asking: Are there any special national anthem performances and/or flyovers? Any honorary captains? Moments of silence? In stadium recognitions? Returning former players? Scoreboard surprise welcome homes or engagements? Usually, someone with marketing has a complete script of the coming events.
Write out an abundance of questions and topics for our coach’s show: The absolute best questions you can possibly ask during a coach’s show are follow up questions to something they’ve said. You can’t ask a follow up question if you aren’t listening intently. I’ve found that I’m best able to listen intently when I have a ton of other questions prepared in front of me. That way, if nothing the coach says sparks my interest for a follow up question, I simply look down at the paper and carry on.
Print out my commercial format and live reads for the coaches show, and then go host the coach’s show. Upload coach’s show to the podcast.
Assemble my own game script: There’s no way to script verbatim a play-by-play broadcast. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a script. I like to try and write my opens to the pregame show, opens before the kickoff, get my live read advertisements in, and get all those things in chronological order so I can check them off one after another. This is also where I bury some time sensitive stats that only make sense to say at a certain time in the game. For instance, if our opponent is 0-23 the last 23 times they’ve trailed at the half, I don’t want that on my spotting board because I could forget it. I want to put that either right before my end of first half break, or right after the last halftime break.
Record and edit player interviews: I’ve started recording these on my phone, because the audio quality is good enough for air, and it gives me the chance to listen back to the interviews multiple times during the week without being around a computer and I can easily take notes.
Attend practice: Ask if you can attend practice. Not everyone will let you around, but if you’re welcome, there’s nothing that will help you in a more all-encompassing way than actually getting around the team when they’re suited up.
Crew meetings: This varies from week-to-week and from year-to-year. Once a week, I meet with the Learfield crew which sells the sponsorships to the broadcast to go over any changes and anything that might be specific to the upcoming game. Occassionally, there will be a sponsored halftime interview or something else that needs fulfilled in a specific way, so we vet out as many details as possible to ensure a clean delivery. I also like to make sure our on-air crew is all on the same page with key storylines for the week and a plan on how to cover certain aspects of the game, while simultaneously respecting everyone’s time and knowing the last thing people need is another empty meeting. Point being, it’s important to find ways to get everyone on the same page, and sometime, the most effective way to do that is with a meeting.
Send my crew an audio recording of the name pronunciations: Yes, I need to learn how to pronounce the players’ names, but so does my analyst, and my sideline reporter, and our pregame hosts and studios hosts. Recording all the tricky names into an audio file is not only good practice, but it also give all of us on the crew something to listen back to over and over to get ready for gameday.
Finish and print my spotting boards: Remember those automated spotting boards? There’s still a lot more info that needs to go on them. Usually, Wednesday is a great day to go back through all those highlighted notes and articles I read earlier in the week, and type the highlighted info onto my charts and hit PRINT. I’ll still hand scratch some later developing notes on the boards as the week goes on, but I like to put those to bed by mid-week.
Finish my Auto Spotter: Auto Spotter is a stats system I devised using Google Sheets which allows my statistician and spotter to input simple data quickly and concisely in a way that will pop up on my monitor in a different tab. It includes not just game stats, but season and career stats as well.
A targeted Twitter search using hyper specific keywords: This one may be fruitful and may not, but it never hurts to see what people are saying about the game. This can be particularly helpful if there isn’t a lot of other media coverage around your teams. Now, it should go without saying, don’t repeat something simply because you read it on Twitter. But it gives you something to consider or look into.
Create my STORYLINES sheet: My storylines sheet is a one-sided one-sheeter with two columns, one devoted to each team. I tape it up on the window or wall and it’s full of bullet points that I’d like to get to at some point. I usually use about 10% of the information on there, but it’s great to have. My storylines sheet always has:
Series history, including scores and notes on recent memorable games
Season recap for both teams
National rankings and conference notes
What’s at stake for both teams
Profile on the coaches
Bullet points on the accomplishments and history of the programs, championships won, famous former players, etc.
Any connections between the two programs
Storylines to watch about each team’s offense, defense and special teams
Venue information and the city we’re playing in
A list of players who may have been from the backyard of the opponent
Flagship station radio hit promoting the broadcast: If they don’t already have one scheduled with you, reach out and see if the station carrying the game is interested in promoting the broadcast by having you on earlier in the week. Ideally, if I can, I try to listen to the show a little bit before I hop on so I know what they’ve been talking about, whether it’s related to the game I’m calling or not.
Make sure I have both team’s media guides downloaded: I also scroll through them so I get a sense for how they are laid out and I know where to quickly find information if I need to look it up on the fly during the game. Media guides are usually 200-300 pages long, and if you don’t know your way around it, there’s no way you’re going to find what you’re looking for between plays. Even if you have help, they won’t be able to know where to look if you don’t.
Get the names of important non-players/coaches: the head referee and the head team doctor and/or trainer in case of injury are good places to start. Also in college football, I like to know the name of the director of the marching band so I can mention it when they’re performing.
Cut interviews and press conferences into sound bites: I usually like to have several sound bites ready to go for our pregame show. No one tells the story about the season better than the players and coaches themselves. The more of them and the less of you, the better. Weaving all of that together in a coherent, organized way can be a challenge, but your broadcast will be best if it can include hearing from the players and coaches often.
Find a home for my tickets: If I’m making arrangements for friends or family to get to the game, I want to make sure as much of that is done before gameday as possible so I don’t have to worry about it when I get to the stadium.
Make sure everyone on the crew either has their credentials or knows where to get them: You don’t want to waste any energy the day of the game worrying about how you or someone else on your crew is getting into the stadium.
Finalize live reads: Working with my sales staff to finalize the sponsored reads is one of the most important things I’ll do all week. We pay the bills for the broadcast through the sponsorships, so no stone should be left unturned in fulfilling those sponsorships in the most quality way possible.
Scripting opens and other creative: Just because play-by-play is an art in ad lib doesn’t mean you can’t script. My game script will always include, in order:
Teams, records, stadium name, capacity, city
My sign on, followed by bullet points for after my analyst jumps in
The live reads in chronological order
My sign on after the game open, right before kickoff
A sentance or two about any extras surrounding kickoff (like an honorary captain, a Make-a-Wish shoutout, a flyover, etc.)
The two or three sentances I want to say immediately before kickoff to set the stage
The words I want to say before each offense takes the field for the first time
Any other words that I want to work in verbatim as a result of my creative production meetings and my visualization process
Print game script: Once the live reads are finalized, I should be good to hit print on my game script. Here’s an example of a game script for last season.
Watch games or highlights on YouTube: The point of being as efficient as possible earlier in the week is so you can do as much of this as possible. Watching practice is great, but there’s no replacement for watching game film. Seeing tendancies, where guys line up, what they look like carrying the ball and other context clues could be the difference between misidentifying someone, blanking on their name altogether, or nailing it when the ball comes their way. Also, in college with all of the double numbers, it’s really helpful to see how guys dress up before the game. On special teams, it can be downright impossible to tell which #7 made the tackle. It really helps to know key identifiers going into the game like: do they wear gloves? What color gloves? Do they wear their socks high or low? Do they tuck a towel into their pants? Is their mouthpiece attached to their helmet? Those subtle clues answer tough questions in the moment. Knowing answers ahead of time by watching game film is a huge advantage. It also gives you a chance to practice calling some plays and know how you might like to describe some of their tendancies.
Google Image search key players: Same concept. Seeing game action photos ahead of time does marvels for your ability to quickly recall their name.
Food for gameday: Have a plan for what you’re going to eat, where you’re going to get it from and when you’re going to eat. I’ve decided to take care of the whole crew by bringing a spread to the game and laying it out in the press box. Football games are a rare celebration. Food makes it feel festive. And you don’t want to be feeling hangry and have your stomach growling while you’re trying to focus on a great call.
Bring a large atomic clock: I’ve missed enough legal IDs over the years that I’ve got to keep the time of day front and center in front of me. Also, it’s clutch for timing out the pregame show.
Set up the booth a day early (if possible): If you have access and you know the booth will remain locked, there’s no reason not to get set up a day ahead of time. It’s one of the best feelings in the world to walk in, hit the various power buttons and be ready to go. Whether it’s testing a technical connection or just taping certain information on the walls the way you like it, you don’t want to be doing those things last minute.
Vocab and visualization: At least once a week, I go over a long sheet of synonyms I can use for a variety of plays in football just to keep the words fresh in my mind. I have a thesaurus for football and one for basketball. Also, I like to spend at least 20-30 minutes just closing my eyes and daydreaming of what could happen in the game and the words I’d use to describe it. I type down what I can, but the more important point of the exercise is to elevate my excitement and to really feel what it will feel like to be in that moment, and practice focusing on coming up with descriptions for what I’m experiencing in the midst of that feeling.
Love it Tony, this is awesome