New Year’s Resolution 2025: Trusting the Process
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2025 is off to a great start for you and your loved ones.
I spent the past week in the snowy state of Michigan, which offered me my first chance to call a game in the Breslin Center at Michigan State, followed by a bus ride south to Ann Arbor to call Washington at Michigan from Crisler. It was awesome to see Brian Boesch and the entire Michigan radio crew, all of whom I worked with as part of my full-time radio management responsibilities when I was at IMG College from 2010-2017. I made a ton of great contacts over my time working with the Wolverines, and being in Ann Arbor gave me a great opportunity to reminisce and reflect on the role my off-air work at Michigan played in my career. More on that later on in this newsletter.
The new PXPU calendar for 2025
But first, I want to address something off the top – I know I’ve fallen behind on content over the last month or so. When I launched PXPU back in August, I did so knowing it was going to go imperfectly, but I did it anyway for a couple of reasons.
The main one was this: I have had the idea for PXPU for years, and I just never took action with it because whenever I would start to seriously consider it, I’d get overwhelmed by the prospects, or the time never seemed quite right. But as I continued my own journey of growth, I kept hearing different pieces of motivational or inspirational content say this same concept in a different way: STOP WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME. THERE IS NO “RIGHT TIME.” JUST START, AND FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO.
So, I did that. And I did it knowing there was a lot I’d have to figure out along the way.
One of those things I’ve had to figure out is: what sort of bandwidth do I realistically have to offer this project? When we first got going, it was before the football season, I had a ton of ideas, and was eager to execute as many of them as possible. The work was coming from a place of passion, and from a place of working with an off-season schedule. I came out of the blocks pretty quickly, but a few months in, it hit me pretty hard that I had come sprinting the first mile of a marathon. Once football and basketball started crossing over, it crushed me, and along with my responsibilities to my full-time job, as well as my responsibilities at home as a father and a husband, I soon started to realize that sprinting before I could jog wasn’t a great idea. Neither is sprinting at all during a marathon.
While I absolutely love the idea of having a piece of content available every day of the week, the truth of the matter is: that is completely unsustainable for a one-man operation. In order to do PXPU for the long-haul, which I intend to do, I need to come up with a rotation that is a little more sustainable. It almost goes against my nature, which is to get really competitive, to push the limits of what I’m capable of, but every time I fall into that trap, it leads to burnout. I do sincerely apologize and I’m sorry I wasn’t more disciplined and careful with how I unrolled this whole venture. I would do some things differently in retrospect, but also, I do love how much content we’ve already created and how many things we have at our disposal. Regardless, my apologies for going dark.
So, now that I’ve cleared the air with all of that, here is how I plan to scale back and create something much more sustainable for 2025:
There will be three days of content per week:
1. Monday Motivation (paid subscribers only, except for today’s),
2. Thursday podcast (free for everyone) and
3. Saturday prep tutorials (paid subscribers only, which will include but not be limited to Spotting Board automation).
Here are my plans for each day of content.
Monday Motivation: this will be a weekly newsletter that will sort of combine the Wednesday Wisdoms and the Friday Focuses that we’ve had in the past. The key here is that it will be asking three key questions at the end of every newsletter, something for you to reflect upon and use as an action item in taking the next steps in your broadcasting career. While every newsletter will include both a lesson and some wisdom to consider, it will also be my forum to discuss other relevant items like sharing some relevant news in the industry, breaking down a call from the previous week, or providing other insights.
Thursday Podcast: this will continue to be the same thing it’s been, normally featuring a guest.
Saturday Prep Tutorials: I will continue to provide instructional videos on how to automate your prep materials, but we will go beyond spotting boards and go into creating other systems that will help you create a great show as both a play-by-play announcer and a producer.
Additional Offerings
Office Hours: Office Hours will continue to be a once a month Zoom call where everyone who subscribes at that level can congregate, ask questions and talk shop with me and an occasional guest. Thanks to Brian Boesch who was our surprise guest last month! This month’s Office Hours will be held on Monday, January 20 from 7-8 pm Eastern Time (4-5 pm Pacific).
Honor Roll: We will release an Honor Roll to provide a shoutout and a unique platform to those who show a unique, elite level of engagement with our content and dedication to growing at the craft of calling games. Subscribers make the honor roll by meeting both of the following criteria: They were a paid subscriber for all three of the previous three months (or were comp'd a free subscription through our referral program) AND they received a 5-star rating (out of 5) by Substack over the last three months. The rating is based on a combination of email open rate, time spent watching or listening to the podcasts or video tutorials, level of engagement with the Substack page via comments, notes, emails, etc. and how often the content is shared on social media.
Miscellaneous mini-series: I will leave open the space for an occasional mini-series of extra content to occur as the opportunity presents itself. This will most likely be in the offseason, but it will give me the opportunity to supplement the standard rotation of content as I see fit.
Sponsored content: We will occasionally produce sponsored content, as well. Our first piece of sponsored content will be a continuation of Tell the Truth Tuesday, brought to you by Stand By Media, featuring Howard Deneroff. He has agreed to do four episodes with us, and those four episodes will each air over the next four weeks.
Community building: I am still not quite ready to unroll a community building platform yet for Play By Play U, but I’m totally open to your feedback and would love to hear if there’s anything you have in mind for how you’d like to see us form more connections across subscribers. If you have any ideas, please send me an email at playbyplayu@gmail.com.
Listen Live resources: One of the best ways you can improve your craft is just by constantly having your ear on what other folks are doing in the play by play space? Who are your favorite announcers? Why? What is it about them that captivates you? What specifically do they do well? Is there anything they struggle with? Listening is learning.
Refer-a-friend scholarship program: You can now earn a scholarship to PXPU through referring others to our website! Two referals will lead to a free month, four referals will get you a free three months, and eight referals will lead to a free six months. Find out more at https://playbyplayu.substack.com/leaderboard.
This Week’s Lesson
My New Year’s Resolution for 2025 is to be more process oriented and less results oriented. Hence, scaling back to a more sustainable process at PXPU rather than getting super excited and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for a short season in the hopes of creating some amazing result.
Every coach in every industry knows that people only perform consistently if they are disciplined enough to adhere to a great process. A lot of people can perform well when the conditions are just right, or come through with a great performance every once in a while. But when you repeat a reliable process over and over again with great consistency, the natural consequence of that process is improved performance and continual growth.
Being in Ann Arbor reminded me of what some of my processes used to be like before I had the opportunity to call games full-time for a power conference team. In 2011, I was a full-time employee at IMG College managing six radio networks, including Michigan. There were very few games available for me to call because it simply wasn’t my job. And while I didn’t always handle that perfectly, I knew I had to trust the process, because I was making a conscious decision to attempt to work through the same process that got guys like Carter Blackburn, Joe Davis, Cory Provus, Andy Demetra and Alan York their start.
I remember being a little bummed out when the 2011-12 basketball season started, and my co-workers started picking up fill-in opportunities at schools like Duke, Florida State and Auburn. I only got assigned one game to work at the start of that season, and it was East Carolina’s season-opener against Division III Milligan. I was super excited to get to call an ECU game, but disappointed that I would only call one men’s basketball game that entire year. Still, I had to remind myself to trust the process. I wasn’t happy with where my results were, but those were only my results at the moment. The process was still at work.
I did the best I possibly could with that one ECU fill-in, and then settled back into my Network Manager role for the long haul. I gave my management and production responsibilities with Michigan everything I possibly had. Yes, I’d rather be calling games, but man, I saw it as an enormous responsibility to be entrusted with coordinating all the radio network details for a brand as prestigious as that one.
When the 2012-13 season rolled around, Michigan’s hoops announcer was double-booked in football-basketball crossover and needed a fill-in for the Preseason NIT, where the fifth-ranked Wolverines would battle two other marquee programs in Madison Square Garden. When I took the vacancy to my boss, he came back to me a couple days later and asked if I wanted to call the games! I tried to act cool and professional as I accepted the assignment, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t contain the smile on my face.
Meanwhile, ECU had been happy with my fill-in role the previous season and offered me three games on TV. Unfortunately that December, ECU’s radio announcer was diagnosed with cancer and he had to step away for a few months while he underwent treatment. They asked me if I’d like to fill-in on a majority of their games, and I kept his seat warm until he was able to return later that winter.
The point is: the process was working. I moved to North Carolina to get my foot in the door at a company that I believed could help me get a chance to call a few big time games, and it took two years before I got a crack at one, and it was only one. But just one year later, I did more than a dozen, including two for a Top 5 team at MSG. Two years after that, I was using Michigan basketball tape to get the basketball job at Clemson, and three years after that, I was in at Washington. There’s no way I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t gone through that time mostly working off the air in North Carolina. And at the time, I had my doubts about it. It felt like a long two years at IMG before those first doors opened, but as I look back on a 23-year career now, those two years were nothing, and were well worth the wait. Create a great process, trust it, and tweak it periodically.
Now, at Washington, I am continuing to refine my process. I just spent the last two days in a hotel room in Ann Arbor tweaking it. With PXPU, sometimes it’s hard admitting to myself what isn’t working, but if I don’t do that, I can’t change my situation and find something that does. As the great Jim Rohn once said, life change begins with a plan. You need to go about your days with purpose so you don’t drift off with all the distractions. That plan can become your process, and Rohn recommended setting a One Year Plan in place with concrete goals you were working toward. But that plan has to include five things in order to actually be implemented:
1. Daily Review: you must look at your goals every day so they’re at the top of mind, and your day should be scheduled so time doesn’t drift away with all the distractions clamoring for your attention.
2. Weekly Planning: you have appointments to schedule and things to do. How is your Process going to fit into all the other things you need to do in your personal life this week?
3. Monthly Evaluation: What’s working and what’s not? It takes 21 days to create a habit. It also takes one holiday season or one life event or one big project at work to kill your habits. Evaluate where you’re at and tweak your process for the season you’re in.
4. Quarterly Reviews: You’re not going to run the ball up the middle if you’re down by 21 with three minutes to play. Use the end of quarter breaks to change your strategy based on the situations you’re in so that you can still achieve your goals.
5. Accountability: Everyone needs a coach and a community, and that’s exactly what I hope PXPU can be for you.
Three to Think About
1. In order to trust the process, you need to HAVE a process worth trusting. Do you have a process? What does it look like?
2. What is your process for getting games? Prepping for games? Reviewing your performance after games?
3. Is your process repeatable? Do you have the bandwidth to make it repeatable? If not, can you create a process that you can do consistently?