RICKY LOPEZ ESPIN is a former soccer player at Creighton. He played professionally in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Miami and Fort Lauderdale. He is now a color analyst for a number of television outlets, including MLS, MLS Next Pro, and USL. He’s been broadcasting for about three years and already has aspirations of broadcasting World Cup games.…

JOHN BAYLOR will enter his 31st season as the radio voice of the Huskers Volleyball team in Fall 2024. He has added some television work, calling games on News Channel Nebraska for the Omaha Supernovas of the Pro Volleyball Federation. We talk about the Huskers, the newvolleyball league and some of the distinctions between doing radio and televisio…

CHRIS WITTYNGHAM is a young American soccerannouncer. He does games for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV+ and Serie A games on Paramount Plus and CBS. He does other soccer announcing as well, including radio for Inter Miami of MLS. He represents the new generation of soccer announcers; he’s young, multilingual, multicultural and learned the business cal…

JAVIER ORTIZ is the general manager, California for the Latino Media Network. He manages radio stations in Fresno, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He also manages the company’s relationship with the Los Angeles Dodgers Spanish-language broadcasts. Ortiz has worked in a number of roles in the radio and television business and has worked in marketing and …

JOSH PETERSON co-hosts the "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" radio show with John Bishop, 2-6 p.m. weekdays at 1620 The Zone radio in Omaha. They've been together for nearly ten years. Sports talk radio in Omaha appears to be alive and well. Josh says Caitlin Clark is the 'biggest start in college basketball" - woman or man. We also talk about finding the …

John Shrader looks at the changing nature of American soccer broadcasting and the young people who dream of making this their long-term career. They would be the first generation of American announcers who started their careers working only in soccer.

STEVEN CALDWELL is a former professional soccer player – in Scotland, the English Premiere League, English Championship and Major League Soccer. He’s a Scotsman who now plies his trade in Toronto, where he runs an academy; his highest profile work is as a television analyst for TSN. We talk here about the role of the TV analyst, the emergence of so…

MICHAEL DIXON is the Play by Play voice of the Lincoln Saltdogs of minor league baseball's American Association. This winter [summer Down Under] Michael has been announcing games for the Melbourne Aces of the Australian Baseball League. He talked with me from Melbourne about what the work he's doing, baseball's place in Australian life, and what th…

DAVE JOHNSON is the original voice of DC United of Major League Soccer, and has been for nearly 30 years the radio voice of the NBA’s Washington Wizards. Dave was for the first 27 years of its existence the TV voice of DC United, but that ended when Apple TV+ took over the nationaltelevision contract for MLS. He talks about not being one of the ann…

:20 Jacob Schrantz and Skylee Nelson with a personal podcast/radio show featuring interviews, discussion and personal observations about recruiting. Interviews in this program include Kelly Mosier of Hudl, Mike Sautter of Hurrdat Sports covering high school sports, and Lincoln Southwest High School athletic director Andrew Sherman. 41:10 Camden Coh…

:50 SARAH PERSON [19:04] a personal view of her loveaffair with the Nebraska volleyball team. 19:30 CAMDEN COHN [10:12] a professional profile ofMilwaukee Brewers announcer and former Huskers announcer Lane Grindle. 29:40 SKYLEE NELSON [20:11] a personal journey of discoveryin sports and in sports media, that will take her next to Bristol, CT. 49:5…

GEOFF EXSTROM is a Broadcasting and Sports Media and Communication alum of UNL’s CoJMC. He is now the Director of Communications and Media Relations for the Omaha Supernovas, one of the seven founding members of the Pro Volleyball Federation. In this interview recorded December 16, 2023 he talks about the new team, his new job, the value of volleyb…

MIKE WATTS is one of America’s up-and-coming soccer announcers. He broadcasts USL and NWSL among the more than 200 events he does in a year, mostly on TV but he also does radio for Westwood One. He is the pre-season voice of the Cincinnati Bengals. Mike is an Ohio native who went to college at Fordham, where many national voices were educated, from…

DAVID BERRI is professor of economics at Southern Utah University. He researches, writes and teaches sports and economics. Here we talk about the College Sports Industry, theincredible amounts of money in college athletics and some context about where they fit into a university budget, NIL and more. [We almost certainly will talk about paying a foo…

NICK BADDERS is going into his second year in 2024 as the voice of the Kansas City Royals Triple-A team in Omaha. His father is an Omaha native, his grandfather was a fan of the Kansas City Athletics. Nick is a Northern California native who graduated from the Cronkite School at Arizona State.

JAKE ZIVIN has been a Major League Soccer announcer for more than a decade, first as the voice of the Portland Timbers, and now one of the lead announcers for the Apple TV+ presentation of MLS. He’s a native of Evanston, Illinois, who worked local TV in Missoula, Montana and Eugene, Oregon. He’s one of the new generation - maybe the first generatio…

LIZ MERRILL has been with ESPN for nearly 16 years. She is a senior writer, specializing in long form, investigative and takeout stories. In this interview she talks about her career, how it got started and talks about of her big stories, including Chiefsaholic and former basketball great who is now cloistered nun. She also talks about Nebraska’s V…

ALEXI LALAS is the top soccer analyst for Fox Sports.He works in the studio for many of their soccer productions, including the Men’s and Women’s World Cups. They were in Qatar in November 2022 and Australia/New Zealand in July 2023. He is the lightning rod of their broadcasts. He is outspoken, confident and sometimes controversial. He’s a Hall of …

LAUREN MICHELSON has been the sports director of KLKN-TV Channel 8 in Lincoln since May 2022. She is the weeknight sports anchor who shoots, produces, writes and delivers sports at least five days a week. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri journalism school. We talk about getting a career started, being a woman in a male-dominated busi…

TOM SHATEL was hired on September 1, 1991 as the sports columnist of the Omaha World Herald. He has been there since. In this conversation he talks about what he does. Also, Scott Frost, Tom Osborne, Bo Pelini and the importance of facing the sources when you write something critical of them. He talks about what makes him unique, his enjoyment of b…

ANDY KENDEIGH is the Sports Director at KETV, Channel 7 in Omaha. The station's Newswatch 7 news shows have been number one in the market for many years. He is a veteran of the high school coverage as well as the Huskers. We talk about those things as well as the process of the job and what the audience wants and expects. SHOW NOTES: :20 Hello and …

SAM MC KEWON is the sports editor of the Omaha World Herald. He also covers Huskers football. He is a rather non-traditional editor in that he writes and reports, including covering the highest-profile team in the state, Nebraska football. He talks about the paper’s relationship with the Lincoln Journal Star, delivery of the news in the 21st centur…

KARIM ZIDAN is an investigative journalist working atthe intersection of sports and politics. His newsletter at Substack is called Sports Politika. We talk here about sports washing and so much more, including how sports fits into the wide world of business and politics. He talks about Saudi Arabia, LIV golf, FIFA and IOC (“they are big mafias”) an…

KARIM ZIDAN is an investigative journalist working at the intersection of sports and politics. His newsletter at Substack is called Sports Politika. We talk here about sports washing and so much more, including howsports fits into the wide world of business and politics. He talks about Saudi Arabia, LIV golf, FIFA and IOC (“they are big mafias”) an…

STEVE SIPPLE is columnist for Husker Online and the On3 Network. He joined Husker Online in the summer of 2022 after 33 years with the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper. This conversation is an update, a check-in on various matters related to sports journalism, coverage of sports in Nebraska, especially Huskers, and what’s going on generally in the sp…

SARATH GANJI Fellow, Center for a New American Security Director, Autocracy and Global Sports Initiative He researches and writes about a number of things related to global sports and security, and has become one of the world’s leading authorities and critics of what has become known as Sportswashing. That is the term used to describe how state act…

DAVID BERRI isa professor of economics, a researcher and author of books on sports and economics and sports and gender. Here he talks at NIL (Name, Image and Likeness.) He also talks about the impact the new marketplace has on the college sports industry; about its sustainability, about where it’s been and where it’s going. [We do not talk about th…

MIKE'L SEVERE has worked in the television, radio and newspaper business in Omaha over the last 20 years. Most recently, he was a media producer for the city of Papillion, Nebraska, after leaving his job as co-host of the morning show at 1620 The Zone. He's now the Executive Director of the Jet Awards Foundation, which honors the best college footb…

Gary Sharp is the co-host of Sharp and Handley in the Morning on 1620 The Zone sports radio in Omaha. He was one of a handful of broadcasters who presented the MCWS games on the radio station. [This was recorded on Saturday morning before the final series between LSU and Florida got started.]

JP DELLACAMERA has been a national soccer announcer since the mid-1980s. He has worked 16 World Cups, and will be in Australia andNew Zealand for the Women’s World Cup in July/August 2023. His first WC was in 1986. He has missed one – either men or women – since. He talks about soccer in this country, about the process of broadcasting the games, th…

JAY NEUHAUS is the Vice-President for Event Planning for Premiere Partnerships (part of Play Fly Sports.) He has worked in Europe for FIFA and EUFA, and in South America for an IMG Endeavor company, FC Diez. He is a Nebraska native who is returning to the U.S. after five years in Asuncion, Paraguay. SHOW NOTES 3:00 Introduction, where’s Jay been an…

DUSTYN STORTZUM is in his first full year as track announcer at Fonner Park, the premiere horse racing venue in Nebraska. He grewup around horse tracks, but it’s been a rather recent development that led him to his job in Grand Island. He talks about his mentor, the late Fonner announcer Steve Anderson, who helped teach him the job; also, the proce…

DAMON HACK covers golf as a studio host and on-course reporter for Golf Channel and NBC Sports. He has now spent more than a decade at Golf Channel after a newspaper and magazine career (New York Times, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Sports Illustrated). Show Notes: :30 Introduction, New role at NBC Sports 5:45 Process of doing the on-course interviews 1…

Mike Woitalla talks about the Reynas and Gregg Berhalter, at length and with deep knowledge. We also talk about news from FIFA and women's soccer and American investment. And we chat about Grant Wahl, the great American soccer reporter who passed away while covering the World Cup in Qatar. Show Notes 1:00 Gregg Berhalter and the Reynas, the drama t…

EVAN BLAND Covers Nebraska football and baseball for the Omaha World Herald. He is the 2022 Nebraska sports writer of the year, an honor he shares with fellow World Herald reporter Stu Pospisil. Evan talks about the process of covering sports in Nebraska, including five years of the Scott Frost Era, which started with a lot of promise and ended in …

EVAN BLAND covers the Huskers football and baseball teams for the Omaha World Herald. He is the 2022 Nebraska sports writer of the year (along with colleague Stu Pospisil) awarded by the National Sports Media Association. SHOW NOTES: 00:00 opening remarks about the award and his position and responsibilities 14:00 the challenges of journalism and i…

STU POSPISIL is the high school sports editor and golf editor for the Omaha World Herald, the largest newspaper in the state of Nebraska. He was named the 2022 Nebraska sports writer of the year by the National Sports Media Association, sharing that honor with his World Herald colleague Evan Bland. Pospisil has been covering high school sports in t…

DOUG DUDA Program Director and Sports Director of ESPN Tri-Cities in Kearney, Nebraska. He is the Nebraska Sportscaster of the Year for 2022, as awarded by the National Sports Media Association; the first non-Omaha or Lincoln sportscaster to win the award since 1996. He has been in Kearney for more than 25 years, in the business for more than 35 ye…

MIKE SCHAEFER is the Nebraska Recruiting Analyst for Husker 247 Sports. In this conversation we talk about his role covering the Huskers and at [25:50] we dig deeply into how the Scott Frost story was covered. Mike has some thoughts about how he might change that in the future. What we do in sports media, why and how with a man who reports, writes,…

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN sports broadcasting students. Projects from the Fall 2022 semester Josh Lill Personal podcast [segment length: 19:50] Interview with musical group The Larks Connor Clark Profile of Cubs broadcasting great Pat Hughes [segment length: 10:00] Jackson Reddick Personal podcast [segment length: 19:40] Impact of the pandemic…

WATCH THE MEDIA January 1, 2023 Student Specials 60:08 All of this audio comes from the BRDC 375 Class Fall 2022: at :30 Grant Hansen Story Time with Steven M Sipple, former Journal Star columnist now with Husker Online At 20:30 Sam Knoll interviews long time KC Royals play by play announcer Steve Physioc At 30:20 Connor Clark chats with CoJMC prof…

All of this audio comes from Sports Broadcasting Class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Fall 2022: at :30 Sam Knoll on working with his dad broadcasting high school football games :30 at 14:00 Dillon Pelster personal podcast interview his friends about sports coverage 14:00 at 34:00 Thomas Codo interviews long time Nebraska volleyball annou…

Veteran writer ADAM ELDER’s first book focuses on the efforts by the United States men’s national soccer team to get to the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. The 1990 team did make it to Italy for the World Cup. Elder chronicles the path and introduces us to an interesting array of characters. The subtitle is “The totally late ’80s and earl…

TIM KEOWN has been with ESPN since 1998, when they created ESPN, The Magazine. Though ESPN no longer publish a magazine, Tim continues to write long form journalism stories that appear on ESPN.com. He also works in the other platforms of ESPN. This conversation centers around the processes of writing and reporting and purposing your work to podcast…

With the Qatar World Cup starting this week, I want to share an interview I did with Grant Wahl in January of 2022. Grant publishes his journalism at GrantWahl.substack.com. We talk about the state of American soccer - granted it's a conversation from early in 2022 - and some big picture stuff about the beautiful game, including the impact the game…

CESAR BRIOSO is a digital journalist for USA Today, and the author of two books on Cuban baseball, including the 2019 book “Last Seasons in Havana” and “Havana Hardball," published in 2015. In this conversation we talk about the history of Cuban baseball, its relationship to American baseball and MLB, and the lasting impact of Fidel Castro. It has …

SEAN CALLAHAN is the owner/publisher of Husker Online, which is now affiliated with On-3 Sports. Callahan also does local television, local radio and makes public appearances around the state. Among the questions posed: how did the state's media and fans get the Scott Frost thing so wrong? can we in the media learn some lessons from this Frost stor…

Alexi Lalas has held just about every job in American soccer, including national team player; he played in Serie A and MLS; he was an executive and now a television analyst for about a dozen years, first a ESPN and then Fox Sports. He's outspoken and warm and friendly. He's insightful and irreverent. It's all fair game with Alexi as we near the 202…

TROY CLARDY is a veteran PxP announcer based on the West Coast. He has worked in sports talk radio, live sports production. He is one of the few African American PxP voices working in the U.S. He talks about that, about hustling work in a busy and expensive market, and the process getting where he is and how he manages the work.…

JAKE BARTECKI AND CAELAN DEBBAN WORK AT RADIO AND TELEVISION OUTLETS FOR FLOOD COMMUNICATIONS IN NEBRASKA; BARTECKI AT KWBE IN BEATRICE, DEBBAN AT KUSO/US 92 IN NORFOLK. THEY BOTH COVER NEWS AND SPORTS FOR NEWS CHANNEL NEBRASKA. THEY TALK ABOUT THE IMPACT OF LOCAL RADIO, THE VALUE OF DOING TELEVISION AND THE PASSION THAT DRIVES THEM TO GET BETTER. …