Making the Most of Your Football Reps
Whether you're calling your first football game or your 500th, calling football is a rare treat. This series is devoted to ensuring you make the most of it when you do.
With fall right around the corner, America's new favorite pastime (football) is almost here. And whether you're hoping to call your first football game this fall or your 500th, the fact of the matter is this: it's been a long offseason and there's a lot of rust to knock off.
Even those lucky few at the top of their game who double-dip between major college football and the NFL each weekend only get to call, what, maybe 30 football games a year? And many of those folks are doing TV on Saturday and radio on Sunday, so they aren't even doing the same medium for all those reps.
It's one of the hardest things about trying to break into football broadcasting: just getting meaningful practice. It's a supply-and-demand double whammy. It's the country's most popular sport, meaning there's the most competition to broadcast it, with the fewest games available to call.
There's a lot of high school football out there, but even if you're able to call an entire season's worth, that's usually only ten games in most cases. And when you finally do get a game, there's no guarantee it'll be a good game. You can call an entire game without ever coming away with a single drive that you'd love to be on your next demo. Meaningful opportunities can be scarce. So when you do get the chance to call a game, you need to make the most of it.
Over the next several weeks, we'll get football-specific, with articles that focus on:
Identifying your goal and creating opportunities
What to focus your prep efforts on before you take the mic on game day
The most important conversations to have and the people to have them with
Finding a formula for what a routine play should sound like
Nailing pregame, kickoff, transitional periods and down time
Today, we'll start with identifying your goal and creating opportunities. After 20 years of experiencing this from multiple perspectives, here's how I would recommend approaching your rare opportunity to broadcast football, especially if you're not used to it.