A Seismic Shift

I don’t quite know how to describe the last 11 months.

One definite positive is that 11 is less than the 14, that being the amount of months I went between blogs last time I promised to be better at keeping up, and by definition, that’s an exceptionally incremental improvement (even if in reality it’s still terrible).

I digress.

Before I put digital pen to paper for this blog, I read my last jotting from 11 months ago, and by god, it feels like a different lifetime.

Last time I wrote here I was waxing nostalgic about East Tennessee State’s 2021 football season, my satisfaction with my on-air improvement during the 2021-22 athletic year and my constant reassessment of my life and its direction.

That direction sure changed fast.

A mere six weeks after I wrote that blog, I was accepting a position OUT of broadcasting in my home state of Minnesota. It’s not as drastic of a change as it may sound in that one sentence, but at the same time WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I SAYING IT IS ABSOLUTELY AS DRASTIC AND WAY MORE DRASTIC THAN THE WORD DRASTIC CAN EVEN CONVEY.

So, what happened? I’m not sure that 9 months removed from the decision I still even fully know, but I’ll try to sort through it.

* * *

Things were fine at ETSU. Things were fine in broadcasting. Heck, things were fine in life. Johnson City has a lot of great qualities including geographical beauty, wonderful weather darn close to 365 days a year, and incredible affordability. Professionally, I was doing what I had always hoped - getting to broadcast sports full-time and getting by financially doing so - and personally, my girlfriend Meagan had joined me in northeast Tennessee in 2019, we moved in together just after COVID hit in 2020, and we got to visit our favorite city in America as often as we wanted (Asheville, NC, just an hour away from our place). That was life, and it wasn’t too shabby.

But with life, we’ve got just one to live, and as I continued to take inventory of mine, I began to wonder if I was leading it with the right things in mind.

Having mountains overlook your back porch is fantastic. The temperature never getting below 20 and never getting above 90 is immaculate. Paying $750 for a spacious two-bedroom apartment is a value you seemingly can’t find anywhere anymore, let alone just a 10-minute drive from a job you love to do. I was privileged to be able to have those things, and I may even sound crazy to give up such a sweet setup. Maybe I was.

But right or wrong, the one life I have to live will be led by people, and it was time to put mine first again.

Meagan and I talked at the beginning of the 2022 summer, and she said that at some point in the next couple of years, it was going to be time to move home. She has nieces and nephews, we have a goddaughter, and the vast majority of our friends and family, moving into crucial parts of their lives, reside in Minnesota. Meagan sacrificed and moved to Tennessee for me, and when I added that to our want to support our folks back home, it seemed we’d be doing the right thing for ourselves individually as well as our collective relationship.

Now, full transparency shining through, it sounds great to say “people are number one in our lives” and leave it there, but I won’t martyr myself with the lie that we would just up and go when we figured out that statement. The reality of it is Meagan and I care a ton about our professional experiences too, so things would have to make sense.

Before we knew it, they did.

* * *

The University of St. Thomas is a prestigious institution in Minnesota. The largest private school in the state, the 10,000-student Twin Cities-based learning center has long been known for their powerful alumni base of business connections, as well as their powerhouse stature in Division III athletics. National champions in basketball, baseball and a variety of other sports during the first 20 years of the millennium, the Tommies trajectory was headed through the roof.

Perhaps more than they ever could’ve known.

That 2019 decision by the MIAC that caught the attention of media outlets far and wide may seem like a potentially bad outcome for St. Thomas, but the reality was the exact opposite. Shortly after the conference’s decision, the Tommies drew an invitation from the Division I Summit League, home to the state schools of the Dakotas, the University of Denver, University of Omaha, University of Kansas City and other Division I mid-majors.

A road not traveled prior to this point, if St. Thomas could get the waivers necessary they would be the first-ever team to go straight from Division III to Division I, bypassing the previously-established rule that ensured athletic programs could jump just one division at a time, needing to spend a minimum of 12 years at their new division before moving up again.

A well-resourced, highly-successful, highly-though-of major market university, the waivers fell into place and the first-of-its-kind journey was slated to begin in the fall of 2021.

Where did I fit in? I thought it may be something in broadcasting. I had covered St. Thomas in my days working for the MIAC, broadcasting for and against the Tommies in my freelance work right out of college, and my original connection to St. Thomas predates any of that, hitting a pair of home runs against UST when I played baseball at Augsburg during my undergraduate days. I had long-admired the success of the Purple & Gray, and was well-versed and well-connected to their history and those that managed it internally. So when I met with Tommie brass to discuss what broadcasting for them may look like in the summer of 2021, I was optimistic I had an inside track to play a role I was familiar with in a place I knew so well. In the end, though, St. Thomas signed third-party rights holder Learfield to manage the broadcasting side, and they went with an internal candidate that had worked for them crosstown at the University of Minnesota for more than a decade.

Needless to say, I thought that was that.

But with an existing relationship with multiple people at St. Thomas, including athletic director Phil Esten, when a long-time member of their staff unexpectedly moved on one summer after our initial conversations, I received an email from Phil asking if I’d be interested in applying for his position. “It’s not broadcasting,” he was sure to warn.

It was, however, a crossroads.

I loved broadcasting, and a part of me always will. I put in unthinkable hours and went to unimaginable lengths to even get to the relatively low-level position I had at ETSU. It was years of long bike rides to get to gigs where I’d have single-digit listeners, late nights in the dead of winter taking the bus back after calling Division III doubleheaders, and total exhaustion working a full-time job just to feed my need of broadcasting things like swimming and youth soccer. It was sucking for years and years before getting good enough to get behind the mic for games that even a small amount of people actually cared about.

It was SO. MUCH. EFFORT. Was I really ready to take the headset off, just when it was getting comfortable.

I suppose comfort is never something that’s fit me.

* * *

Not sure I’ll ever know if this was professionally the right decision, but I can tell you that 10 months into this position I’ve already gotten more than I bargained for in the “grow” and “learn” categories!

So what does the day-to-day look like now? It’s certainly less camera-facing, less about me and any “brand” I was looking to personally propagate, and less of the “comfort” that I was becoming accustomed to on the mic. But with those sacrifices come new skills, a chance to be a part of a once-in-a-lifetime expansion and the opportunity to leap into a different echelon of the professional sphere.

It’s been a lot, but in leading our streaming and TV productions, creative content, digital strategy, social media and branding, we’ve had more successes than I could’ve imagined this year.

What a catch‼️@roder_joe making the diving snag#RollToms | #SummitBSB pic.twitter.com/zjVlpFVD5U

— St. Thomas Baseball (@TommieBase) April 29, 2023

ROBBING THE GRAND SLAM‼️

(@SportsCenter music cue'd up)@vos_joe #RollToms | #SummitBSB pic.twitter.com/aZqtgpCx3M

— St. Thomas Baseball (@TommieBase) May 5, 2023

A weekend that spread the word, and raised the bar.#RollToms #D1Year2 pic.twitter.com/pvBbSE6QZ7

— St. Thomas Athletics (@TommieAthletics) November 21, 2022

Schoenecker was 🆂🅷🅰🅺🅸🅽🅶...

Every angle of the energy in the sold out building last night - THANK YOU @UofStThomasMN fans, faithful and students for creating an atmosphere worthy of the high-level @TommieMBBall game we got Thursday. #RollToms pic.twitter.com/cZuw63hFjM

— St. Thomas Athletics (@TommieAthletics) February 10, 2023

That’s curtains on #D1Year2, and oh what a show.#RollToms pic.twitter.com/zAOuMiYRA7

— St. Thomas Athletics (@TommieAthletics) May 22, 2023

My specific role in all of these isn’t important, that’s something this job has shown me in spades, but in this combo position I’ve undertaken what I can say is that there is a ton of oversight while simultaneously requiring a ton of hands-on. I’ll run camera on our live productions one day, troubleshoot a streaming problem the next. I’ll create a video from scratch Saturday, work with others on the products they’d like to have published on Sunday. Help design a jersey in one meeting, help design part of a $200M stadium right after. It’s anything and everything, but always a new something.

* * *

I do hope to revisit broadcasting at some point, but that season has passed for the moment. In the immediate it’s knowledge and growth, guidance and leadership, playing my part professionally, and more importantly, for my people. That part, the most important part, has been abundant since coming back to Minnesota, and while I’m not sure I’ll ever know if I made the right decision professionally, I feel great personal peace at birthdays, baby showers and brunches. They’re living testaments to why I’m here. Why a hard choice seemed clear. Why I’d make the same choice again.

We march on, with our people by our side.

Reflecting

Another year of me promising to blog more than once has come and gone. Incredibly, when it seemed I couldn’t get any more infrequent in this space, I’ve managed to go from April 15, 2021 to June 12, 2022 without any jottings. 14 months of empty blogging promises, which means I should probably stop saying I’ll blog more or just stop blogging all together. Will I? I promise…

To give you an answer sometime in the next 14 months.

As for the blog at hand, I’ve just wrapped my third full-time year and fifth year total at East Tennessee State. Baseball has concluded and summer has set in, which means it’s my annual season to take a look back at the year and it’s happenings.

A season I am instinctually terrible at.

Instinct 1: Focus on what could’ve gone better.

Instinct 2: Look in the mirror and say '“are you making the progress needed if you want to make it in this field?”.

Instinct Always: Question everything and focus on the negative, which makes this time of year tough.

Don’t get me wrong, holding one’s self accountable is something I find to be one of the most important things in life to achieve true progress and eventual success, I’m just generally not spectacular at finding the right balance of being accountable and being reasonable with myself.

BUT! In my constant battle to take the bad in stride, strive to learn and grow from it, and apply that growth, I was able to take some pride in watching and listening back to the part of the product I was responsible for this season at ETSU.

As I went through my basketball work I found lots of improvement from last season, putting out a more consistently solid call than in previous years. Baseball had an eventful campaign complete with multiple walk-offs, a 10-inning complete game, a three-run home run to tie with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and an immaculate inning, and while all of these events were firsts for me, I felt I handled them well while stringing together some quality innings throughout the season.

My biggest challenge, though, came right at the beginning of the year.

Football.

Having filled the play-by-play role for a game just three times in my life entering the season and only once in the last six years, there were five games for which I’d be on the mic in 2021 on ESPN+. As if that task wasn’t daunting enough for a relatively inexperienced football broadcaster, the aforementioned three games hadn’t gone particularly well, as I struggled to identify players, weave in narratives and give my analyst the setup needed to have us work as a team rather than as a couple of individuals rambling aimlessly.

No lie, I was nervous.

The question of how I was supposed to fix these issues without nearly any on-air experience in this particular role for this particular sport sat on my shoulders like an anvil. I was used to prepping for every other sport that I did, and the way I went about that prep always put me in a good position to succeed for baseball, basketball, soccer, volleyball and softball, but my experience with football was that I either wasn’t doing the right things or not doing enough.

Rather than chance it by trying to fix one of those two things, I set out to fix both.

I had never studied a roster to memorize numbers in any sport. That may sound crazy to some, but my experience has been that baseball, softball and soccer are slow enough to have time to look down at your roster and learn as you go, while basketball and volleyball have such small rosters and so few players involved at once that it’s hard not to know them by memory after a minute or two. Football is different on both fronts, with 22 players on the field at all times and the action developing so fast. So on game week, I grabbed both rosters, examined depth charts, and poured through names and numbers until they were seared into my brain.

While not typically studying a roster for memorization in other sports, I am fanatical about being prepared for games in every other aspect. For a two-hour contest, I’ll spend at least four hours on program and individual notes so I have something for every player and situation I can conjure up in my mind. For a baseball game expected to be three hours, prep time is at least six. The adopted rule I operate under is projected on-air time should be doubled in prep. 2 -> 4, 3 -> 6, etc.

Knowing this, a football game projected for three and a half hours should have me ensconced in meticulous knowledge acquisition for seven hours, but as I adjusted what I was doing in preparation for my first call on September 11 by studying rosters incessantly, I also needed to adjust how much I was doing. So I doubled the time I put in leading up to game day to 14 hours.

Insane or ingenious? Probably the former because I’ve never been called the latter, but by the time that first game came around, I was confident, which I believe went a long way towards producing a quality product not only that first night, but every game that followed.

Speaking of a long way, that’s exactly what ETSU ended up going, as they won their first six, 10 of their 11 in the regular season and eventually a playoff game to get to the final eight of the FCS postseason before bowing out to eventual national champion North Dakota State. The Bucs 11 wins stand as their most in program history, their playoff victory was just their third ever and their spot amongst the final eight tied their furthest advancement in the national postseason in the school’s nearly 100-year football history. A special season I feel so incredibly lucky to have been in the booth for.

The most thrilling day I had a part of was the regular season’s final game against Mercer, the winner taking the Southern Conference regular season championship and SoCon’s auto bid to the FCS playoffs. As fate would have it, the result came down to the final play.

Woke up still thinking about yesterday! 🤤#ETSUTough pic.twitter.com/PTmHcgh4en

— ETSU Football (@ETSUFootball) November 21, 2021

That video, with the final play followed by aerial footage of the ensuing Buccaneer celebration, was viewed over a half-million times combined on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and the vast majority of the call was featured on the open to the FCS Playoff selection show on ESPNU. The original broadcast footage of the final moments can be found here.

As my time winds on here at ETSU, what I appreciate most is the continued trust placed in me to do new things. Every year I’ve been in Johnson City I’ve been given more opportunity, and those continued responsibilities make the gig invigorating. So, how’d I do with this year’s task? I’ll leave that up to you! Here’s some samples if you’re so inclined.

Until next time, whether that’s 14 days or 14 months from now, may YOUR biggest challenges hold no opposition to your preparation, process and final product!

Close-Ups

Another year is wrapping up in my time at East Tennessee State University, and never have I felt it more important to focus on what is within my control than during these past two months. Through a mega-crossover season that featured fall, winter and spring sports all being played at the same time and was only made more challenging by a variety of social justice and human rights issues circling around the athletic department, I’m happy to be able to look back on the busiest few months of my professional career and feel like I was able to put forth a strong body of work, despite internal and external philosophical conflict in tumultuous times.

A pair of new endeavors this year were the Porter’s Tires Pregame Report and Ballad Health Midweek Minute, sponsored segments that set the stage for all of our men’s basketball and football games. These reports ran on our social media platforms as well as in-venue throughout the winter and spring as our crowds increased from a few hundred because of COVID restrictions at indoor arenas to a few thousand at football as those restrictions lessened.

The chance to be on-camera more is one I really valued. With the recent increase in video consumption versus other types of media, it seems more and more important to be involved in this visual medium.

Below are the final month of pregame reports that preceded each of the men’s basketball team’s final five games, a stretch that saw them as high as number one in the Southern Conference standings, but saw them fade to the middle of the league by the season’s final day.

Scroll just a bit more and you’ll find a few examples of the Ballad Health Midweek Minute, a feature that had a special eye towards history and was a bit more produced as to stand out from the pregame reports.

Just a couple of the things from a year that threw as many twists, turns and ultimatums in the way as any I’ve been a part of. Only 11 more broadcasts before the athletic season is wrapped up, here’s to finishing strong!

Jerseys For Social Justice

It may be a cliche, but it holds true to this day - some things are bigger than sports.

While my professional life is centered around games and points, standings and statistics, there comes a time when the ills of our world need to be addressed directly. Why?

Because silence hasn’t worked.

So in late August, as unrest surrounding social injustice, inequality and police brutality in America continued, I felt it was important that our student-athletes of color at East Tennessee State be heard. Too often they are racially marginalized or viewed as mere entertainment rather than the intelligent, upstanding people that they are.

So I conceptualized an idea, developed and structured interviews for each of our guests, corresponded with leadership to gain approval, worked with our video team to create a set/look for the videos, and in mid-September, taping for Jerseys For Social Justice began.

During the three days of taping, we heard from six student-athletes on topics ranging from, amongst other things, how racism and social injustice has affected their lives, to how the last few months may have changed their view of the world, to what they think needs to happen to attain a more equal, fair and just climate in our country.

After hearing from the six featured student-athletes, three ETSU coaches talked about what they have experienced and seen in their lives on the same issues, and how those happenings have shaped how they lead and support their student-athletes. Finally, three interviews with ETSU’s top administrators centering around next steps within the department, and at the university, closed our conversations.

After those three days of taping, I assisted our video team in editing, wrote press releases for each video, handled social/outside media, and rolled out the first in the 12-part video series in late September.

Here is that first video in a series that culminated October 29 with the president of our university announcing the athletic department’s first-ever head of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The student-athletes, coaches and administrators that lent their voices and stories to this series were all fantastic. It was hard to hear the pain in their words, and eye-opening to hear about the oppressed world that many of them have to live in. The way people of color in this country are treated is unfortunate, sad and downright disgraceful.

The hope of this series was to give those that are on the wrong end of that treatment a platform to be heard, and to humanize these individuals so they are not only propped up on the field/court, but held in esteem as they walk among us in the community as well. Support can’t end when the buzzer sounds, it needs to be ever-present so marginalized communities can emerge from the dark period they’ve lived in throughout American history.

I don’t know if this series swayed anyone to reconsider their views on race relations, in fact I’d venture to say it would be a relatively big surprise if it did. But I hope that the momentum this series created continues, because behind all difficult conversations needs to be action. We took the first step at ETSU, now our new head of DEI and those that can affect systematic change are tasked with picking up where this series left off.

Whatever they need from me to continue the fight, I’ll proudly provide.

If you’d like to watch the entire Jerseys For Social Justice series, links can be found to each video at the bottom of this press release.

The First Two Months Of Quarantine

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve written here. The rumors are true, I suck.

There is good personal news, however - I’m now less bad at a few things I’ve been able to work on while many of us have been cooped in quarantine.

One of those things is getting creative with my surroundings. For instance, here at ETSU we’re tremendously fortunate to have a radio studio just a short walk from my office from which our broadcasts emanate. My office, the studio, and our entire campus has been locked down since mid-March, so without access to our facilities, here’s a look at what I created in my closet:

One of the few times I’ve been happy about being so tiny.

On the video side, we’re also lucky to possess a green screen and university-themed backdrops at our ETSU offices, but with the aforementioned lockdown, my dresser filled in admirably:

On the top left you can see where things started, on the top right the setup along the way, and finally what things looked like on screen for viewers that watched our GameTime Tour features that would usually be done in person with donors around the state, but were instead delivered virtually on social media to the public this spring.

Thankfully, the middle portion of the above graphic “this took longer than I’ll admit” alludes to the setup in my room, not the graphic I made to illustrate it. That’s because my biggest strides during this quarantine have been in the Adobe programs, specifically InDesign and Photoshop. I was able to create a new, five-page Quick Facts sheet via InDesign for our women’s basketball program that we’ll use in the upcoming year, and also put together a wide variety of graphics for the same team that I’m particularly happy with. Here’s a couple of samples:

In addition to the strides in areas I wasn’t so comfortable, there’s the usual - plenty of audio and video features that kept me busy in the first two months of isolation. An 11-part recap of men’s basketball’s 30-win season complete with the biggest moments of the historic campaign was the most cumbersome of the tasks, but looking back, I still believe the time was worth it, because the team deserved to have their season immortalized. Here’s the 11 parts, dubbed Sounds Of The Season, slammed together to give a convenient, half-hour recap of an NCAA Tournament qualifier:

Of course, the five seniors that played for that team never got the NCAA Tournament appearance that they earned thanks to COVID-19, so it seemed fitting that they get a special sendoff. It doesn’t replace The Big Dance, but hopefully it lets them know how appreciated they were by ETSU and its fans as they move into the next step of their lives:

Another notable audio feature allowed us to connect with alumnus from ETSU, some of which are playing a key role in helping their region, and our nation, move through this unparalleled time:

A project that took up a lot of the first two months of social media content for our department was a fan vote to determine the top moment of the athletic year. I helped put together the video and voiceover component of the three-season (fall, winter, spring) feature, then interviewed the winner from each season leading up to the final, penultimate vote in which the top moment was awarded. An example of each:

.@ETSUFans, we will begin releasing the four quarterfinal polls of the Top Winter Moments presented by Appalachian Orthopedics today at 11am...

Take a look back at the moments that'll be up for vote #ETSUTough @ETSU_WBB | @ETSU_MBB | @ETSU_TF_XC pic.twitter.com/p6biePwHcC

— ETSU Athletics (@ETSUAthletics) April 14, 2020

.@ETSU_MBB captured the Top Moment of the Winter with its dominating run in Asheville, resulting in a SoCon Championship@Mike_Gally21 caught up with @ForbesETSUhoops to look back on it

Voting for Top Moment of the Year presented by @AJBank_TN begins Saturday at 3p#ETSUTough pic.twitter.com/jUd1dxhdxM

— ETSU Athletics (@ETSUAthletics) April 29, 2020

There are tons of sad and unfortunate things about these last couple of months, the loss of life obviously being at the top of the list, so I consider myself even more lucky than usual to have been able to not only stay healthy, but stay busy and productive in this time. Fingers crossed that we get back to some semblance of normalcy soon, because I can only spend so many hours in Closet Studio. That mini-cooler is not comfortable.

Be safe, healthy and well! I’ll try to churn out more than one blog between now and next May. #Goals.

A World Series Week

I grew up wanting to play in the World Series. Of course, at that time, the only World Series that I knew existed was the one I had seen on TV with the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, etc., and tiny little me had big giant dreams of wearing a Major League uniform and playing in THAT one.

Needless to say, those ambitions did not come to fruition, as I topped out as a 5’9”, 155-pound bench player at an NCAA Division III school, probably a bit more than a couple of tweaks away from achieving my goal.

As my career was whittled away one junior varsity at-bat at a time, I learned a few valuable lessons, including the fact that if I wanted to be around a World Series, I was going to have to find another way.

Knowing that, I started writing, recording and talking about sports, and it was something I had a lot of fun doing. As I continued to work at it over the latter part of college and early in my professional life, I saw progress, and began to pursue sports media as a career path.

The journey has led me from high school and small college sports coverage to Division I athletics, with plenty of stops in between, and this past week, it led me to a World Series.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, since it’s May, it obviously was not THAT World Series, and in honesty, much like many of the players I covered this past week, I’m far from reaching the goals I have set out for myself in sports. But every experience is a valuable one that deserves your best effort, and I believe it’s always important to treat it as such.

That’s why I was thrilled to be at the NJCAA Division III College World Series covering the Rowan College at Gloucester County Roadrunners, who were in pursuit of their eighth national title. The tournament started Saturday at Pioneer Park in Greeneville, Tenn., eight teams vying for the crown, with the Runners as the No. 1 seed.

When I was contacted by athletic director Brian Rowan about the opportunity, he was essentially looking for a game recap with a couple of quotes on each contest. Easy enough, right?

Well, not exactly, because I apparently have a self-loathing complex and like to make things much more difficult than they need to be.

Sure, I could write the story, but it felt like there was more that needed to be done to provide the coverage the World Series stage demanded and RCGC had earned.

Below are some of the ideas I presented to Brian, and inevitably carried out:

A preview of the winner's bracket final between @rcgcbaseball and @gocccdukes baseball from Pioneer Park as the Runners and Dukes battle to move within one win of a national championship!#ExcursionToEight#NJCAABaseball

Mike Gallagher reporting from Greeneville, TN. pic.twitter.com/nA6AZExAqT

— RCGC Athletics (@RCGCAthletics) May 28, 2019

B8: ALEX GATTINELLI CAN NOT BE STOPPED!!!!! A three-run home run has tied the game and he now has five RBI on the night and eight on the World Series!

A big time player delivering the biggest play of the tournament!

RCGC 9, Brookhaven 9#ExcursionToEight #NJCAABaseball pic.twitter.com/wF1Fm1wBJg

— RCGC Athletics (@RCGCAthletics) May 29, 2019

B9: Alex Gattinelli had the three-run homer to tie it one inning earlier, WHY NOT THE WALKOFF TOO?!?!?

FINAL: WE ARE GOING TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

RCGC 11, Brookhaven 10

The #ExcursionToEight continues!!!#NJCAABaseball @NJCAABaseball pic.twitter.com/XMeZTutQBz

— RCGC Athletics (@RCGCAthletics) May 29, 2019

⚾️| Post-game with Alex Gattinelli after one of the greatest comeback wins in Roadrunner history.@RowanCollege #RoadrunnerPride#ExcursionToEight
On to the National Championship Game!@NJCAABaseball @NJCAATV #njcaabaseball pic.twitter.com/unJIXKoHMc

— RCGC Athletics (@RCGCAthletics) May 29, 2019

Runners Battle to the End but Fall Short in World Series Final https://t.co/XC5pCXJ7Jz

— RCGC Athletics (@RCGCAthletics) May 30, 2019

Doing game preview standups, live tweeting the action complete with photos and videos, doing postgame interviews and also writing the final story on each game ended up being the direction I took things, and I was ecstatic to have the creative freedom and control to do so. Thanks to Brian for allowing me to take this project and run with it.

RCGC didn’t end up where they wanted to be, finishing as runners-up to Route 55 rival Cumberland County, who earned their first national title in their athletic department’s history. Many of the Roadrunner players haven’t ended up where they want to be yet, chasing Division I scholarships and professional baseball dreams. I haven’t arrived at my dream of reaching the Major League Baseball World Series in one capacity or another. But not being where we ultimately want to be didn’t stop us from giving our all in the moment and making some great memories in Greeneville. I sincerely believe head coach Rob Valli and the Runners will keep pushing for that national title and his players will continue to work towards getting to their bigger goals, while I’ll keep driving towards where I want to be, while stopping to appreciate the steps along the way to getting to there.

Thanks to Valli’s program and AD Brian Rowan, I now have a taste of what reaching that peak may be like one day.

Two Years in Tennessee

It’s difficult to fathom that two years have passed since I made the decision to move to northeast Tennessee to take a big step in my broadcasting career and attempt to earn a Masters degree. With Saturday marking the final day of the educational journey, and Sunday culminating my broadcasting work in my graduate assistant position at ETSU, I felt that sharing some of what I’ve done would help me process everything that’s gone on since June of 2017.

In the summers, I broadcasted Elizabethton Twins baseball, the High Rookie affiliate of my hometown Minnesota Twins, and had the chance to call roughly 115 games over the two seasons, both ending in Appalachian League championships. During those years, I was able to visit with nearly every player that came through Elizabethton as they attempted to move up the minor league ladder, many of those individuals experiencing professional baseball for the first time. I also put a bow on each campaign with the Story Of The Season and final highlights of the big games the team played down the stretch. Below are links to the 2017 and 2018 season capsules:

E-Twins 2017

E-Twins 2018

During the school year, I served as play-by-play voice of ETSU women’s basketball, baseball, men’s/women’s soccer, softball and volleyball. In addition to play-by-play duties, I acted as internal multimedia journalist for the athletic department, executive producer and co-host of Sandos & The Sidekick, the only Monday-Friday athletic department-produced podcast in the country, and sports information director for women’s golf, triathlon and men’s/women’s cross country. The 2018-19 athletic year was a particularly busy one, as I took on more extensive creative duties within the athletic department as well. Some of the above tasks resulted in a busy year on social media:

COLLEGE GAMEDAY CAMPAIGN

Hey @CollegeGameDay, check out our pitch to host your @NCAA_FCS stop on Saturday, Nov. 17 in Johnson City when @ETSUFootball takes on Samford for the @SoConSports Championship at Greene Stadium #ETSUTough #GameDayInGreene pic.twitter.com/Ae5uYofCLE

— ETSU Athletics (@ETSUAthletics) November 5, 2018

.@ESPN tells great stories. What if I told you @ETSUFootball has a great story to tell… @CollegeGameday, just one final thing to think about before decision day! #ETSUTough #GameDayInGreene pic.twitter.com/p1JV1WZqpy

— ETSU Athletics (@ETSUAthletics) November 8, 2018

FIRST NCAA FOOTBALL PLAYOFF APPEARANCE SINCE 1996 - RADIO MONTAGE INTRO

NCAA PLAYOFF INTRO: "Thanksgiving marked 15 years since @ETSUFootball was left for dead...Today marks the day it's more alive than ever"...A long & winding road to the Saturday that once looked like it may never come, presented in 5 exhilarating minuteshttps://t.co/lqdt7UZ2U7

— Buc Sports Network (@BucSportsRadio) November 24, 2018

VIRAL SENSATION BRITTNEY EZELL

UNCA 27, ETSU 14 at the half - head coach Brittney Ezell didnt mince words at the break pic.twitter.com/Ia53dL2Pqr

— Buc Sports Network (@BucSportsRadio) December 12, 2018

FIONA DODGE MIDFIELD GOAL

Ummm....WHAT!? 😱#NCAASoccer #SCTop10
(🎥: @ETSUWSoccer)pic.twitter.com/8M6LNO24Nn

— NCAA Soccer (@NCAASoccer) October 13, 2018

Finally, and most unexpectedly considering my meager academic resume during my high school and undergraduate careers, I was awarded the ETSU Department of Media and Communication’s Outstanding Graduate Research Award for the work done on my 143-page thesis “A Better Predictor of NFL Success: Collegiate Performance or the NFL Draft Combine?”. Did I get a bit carried away on the length? Considering the page count, I wouldn’t begrudge that opinion, but I’m so thankful I was given the opportunity to throw so much effort and detail into an academic product, and believe me, those are words I never thought I’d say.

Of course, along the way, I had to have a bit of fun academically, too:

The assignment was to create a kids cereal and make an ad about it, and it's obvious now that I've gone completely insane #FinalSemester #HappyStars #MagicBlendOfYourFavoriteFeelings @Grad_SchoolProb @adage @Nielsen @businessinsider @Forbes #CONTENT pic.twitter.com/6kOLF4zvLt

— Mike Gallagher (@Mike_Gally21) February 21, 2019

All the content from the College GameDay campaign on down was within the last eight months, so needless to say, it’s been a challenge, but one I’m glad to say I was able to meet head on in that timeframe, and over the last two years since I arrived. Overwhelmed with joy, and overeager for my next chance to tackle a task the size of this one, whatever that may be!

From Ruins To Reclamation

When lightning strikes like it did in Johnson City this year for ETSU Football, bottling that bolt, and creating a full-fledged firestorm with it, is the only way to go.

In a tale made for Hollywood, the Bucs, just four years after bringing their program back following its demolition 12 years earlier, plowed through the regular season to a Southern Conference championship and their first NCAA Playoff berth since 1996.

But that narrative barely scratches the surface of the story ETSU had to tell.

The Bucs did it behind 11 players that had been with ETSU since day one of the program’s reformation: Cory Colder, Dylan Dockery, Alonzo Francois, Austin Gatewood, Asley Haynes, Austin Herink, Keanu James, Adam Mullins, Matt Pyke, Mike Scates and Dylan Weigel. Those 11 came to ETSU when winning was nothing more than a glimmer in the eye of those behind the sport’s return, and they suffered through losses to Division III teams, blowout dismantlings by FCS teams, and two seasons of off-campus home games at nearby Science Hill High School. Today, they see the program they helped mold boast an on-campus stadium that led the country in stadium capacity percentage in 2018, an indoor practice facility featuring brand new turf complete with the Bucs patented “E” and Blue and Gold as far as the eye can see, and the program’s first conference championship in 50 years.

One of those men, Herink, had started all 33 games at quarterback that ETSU had played since football’s second iteration opened. That streak would come to an end September 1, as the redshirt senior lost the quarterback battle out of camp to Temple transfer Logan Marchi in August, forcing Herink to sit, wait, and hope his chance would come to reclaim the spot he had worked so hard to earn over his many years as a Buccaneer. In fairy tale fashion, and fitting of the Bucs season, that time arrived with ETSU trailing 27-6 to Furman in the third quarter at William B Greene Jr Stadium in late September. Herink was called upon to replace Marchi and promptly led the largest comeback in school history, throwing for 202 yards and a touchdown in the last 20 minutes of the game on the way to a 29-27 win.

The drama didn’t end there. In fact, it was an every Saturday occurrence.

ETSU made a living off of nail-biting, heart-pounding wins, going 6-2 in the SoCon with those victories coming by just 16 combined points, including a triple-overtime 45-43 triumph over Western Carolina after trailing by 15 points with more than half the fourth quarter gone. Every one of ETSU’s league wins came by three points or less, no other team in ETSU history ever winning more than three games by that slim of a margin.

So after winning just 11 combined games their first three years, how did ETSU pull eight total victories together and make the postseason out of nowhere?

Many thanks, undoubtedly, are due to first-year head coach Randy Sanders, though it wasn’t the smoothest of starts.

A two-time national champion assistant coach at Tennessee and Florida State, Sanders was suspended in April for making contact with a player during an offseason drill. But rather than tear the team apart and pit staff v. players, it united the unit following Sanders admission of guilt and apology to his team, allowing them to grow together and become closer than ever before. Sanders would win Southern Conference Coach of the Year, and the player who was involved with the incident, Tyree Robinson, would flourish into an all-conference performer.

A first-year head coach. 11 from the first recruiting class since football’s return. The first quarterback for ETSU Football 2.0. The first Southern Conference championship in school history.

Those many firsts for this football community helped heal many painful memories for those hurting from the scars of the past.

Source: Bristol Herald-Courier

A program left for dead, now reaching unseen heights.

Lightning doesn’t get much brighter than that, and it needed to be seen, heard, and spread, because it’s not every day that a program does something this miraculous.

So while Randy Sanders and his team were trying to do something that had never been done at ETSU, we figured we better do the same, and in a big way.

The only schools ESPN’s College GameDay had ever visited at the FCS level were perennial No. 1 squads North Dakota State and James Madison, as well as Harvard on a weekend one of the oldest rivalries in all of college football was taking place as the Crimson took on Yale.

To get them to ETSU was going to be a task, but we were sparked by Kennesaw State, the nation’s FCS No. 2 team, who pitched GameDay to bring their show to SunTrust Park (home of the Atlanta Braves), where the Owls would be playing Jacksonville State.

Seeing as we didn’t have a venue at our disposal like SunTrust Park (let alone Yankee Stadium where Notre Dame and Syracuse were playing that weekend), we felt like we had to make some waves to compete. We planned on those waves coming in the form of an alternate ending that was MUCH different than the one we ending up using (at the urging of a few that are about as high up in the university’s pecking order as you can get). While we were disappointed with not being able to use the original ending that we felt would’ve sent shockwaves through the collegiate landscape, we had made this video and the story on the field, at the very least, deserved its release.

Two days after the video was published, we got a call from an ESPN producer who told us we were in the top three candidates for the weekend of Nov. 17.

That was all the motivation we needed to keep pushing.

When the time came for ESPN’s decision, they didn’t go with Yankee Stadium, SunTrust Park, or ETSU’s own William B Greene Jr Stadium, instead opting for the University of Central Florida, who were carrying a 21-game win streak into their matchup with Cincinnati. During that streak, GameDay had not been to UCF, and tensions surrounding ESPN’s supposed snubs of UCF during that time regarding recognition and coverage often seemed to boil below the surface. The time was perfect for the sides to bury the hatchet and UCF get the stage that they did.

While it stung not to get GameDay as our campaign had hoped, it didn’t dissuade one final piece of content made specially for their trip to the NCAA Playoffs.

To be the face, voice, and creative lead behind telling this story was unexpected and one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had as a professional. Special shoutout to Mike White for handing me the reigns on this, and to Steven May for making sure these looked as good as they could and also steered me back toward the right track when I wandered astray. The most talented and hard-working co-worker I’ve had, Steven can do anything.

And of course, a big thanks to the 2018 ETSU Football team, who gave us a great story to tell. What a group, what a year, what a ride. If this story came about at Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State or any FBS school for that matter, it would be a box office smash in a second. That it was at an FCS school doesn’t diminish it one bit in my mind, and it’s a three months I’ll never forget.

14 Months Later

I know, I know, what kind of website entrepreneur am I?!?!

Well, the easy and obvious answer is the type that posts when it’s convenient for him. In this case, the easy and obvious answer is the right one.

Terrible, isn’t it?

In all partial seriousness, apologies to the zero of you that were waiting on the next edge-of-your-seat post since August 6, 2017, I have failed you, but I have a feeling your life has gone on, as has mine.

Why has it been so long? I’ll chronologically summarize so it doesn’t take you 14 months to read:

-School started! Has working my way through a Masters program been as difficult as working my way through an undergraduate program? In my opinion, they’re very similar. The only thing that gets more difficult is the increased number of competing priorities getting in the way of school work, but those do make it a tougher time to traverse. I mean, think about this - instead of going out and drinking six nights a week during undergrad, you have to fill that time during your Masters program with responsibilities like work and making food for yourself so you don’t get fat. Unconscionable.

-I got a second job in the summer! In addition to my work with the Elizabethton Twins, my second summer with the Minnesota Twins High-Rookie affiliate here in northeast Tennessee, I decided it would be smart to pile more on top of, what is essentially, a 10-week full-time gig in the summers. That add-on was Bristol Motor Speedway, the Last Great Coliseum, the World’s Fastest Half Mile, the 4th-largest sports venue in the country, a massive circle. Along with Elizabethton going on to win their second consecutive Appalachian League title, BMS consumed all the time I would’ve used to focus on keeping this site fresh, instead of letting it become the stale doldrum it has.

-ETSU has blown my face off! The graduate assistantship I moved here for, which of course requires me to maintain good grades in my Masters program, started fall of 2017 as simply a three-pronged position: play-by-play for five sports on two digital platforms (ESPN3 & Southern Conference Digital Network), studio operation on the radio side for football + men’s/women’s basketball and acting as the internal media reporter for the athletics department in which I produced video and audio packages for fan consumption.

That was already plenty, demanding at least 40 hours per week, but since, there’s been a bit more tacked on.

I’ve been given the responsibility to set up and take down many of my video broadcasts, serving as the engineer on top of my broadcasting duties, we’ve started a daily podcast that runs one full hour, a show for which I serve as executive producer and co-host and I also have been thrust into Sports Information Director duties for women’s golf, triathlon, and both cross country teams.

Great skills to have, great experience to gain, but I am quite sure after this is all said and done, to quote Jackie Chiles, I’ll be nothing more than a shriveled head.

Anyway, while I know you are SO happy for how busy I am, I promise I write all this not to bore you with the chaos that is this life, though I’m certain I’ve already done that, but to qualify why I have given you nothing when I promised so much. I am the website-owner version of JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, or, more applicably to those of you reading this in Minnesota, Troy Williamson.

Can I guarantee I will be better now that I have owned my issue and come clean as a fraud? No. Am I likely to try? Probably not thanks to all of the above. Am I writing this post simply to make it look like I have been keeping up with MGMedia.Online for prospective employers since my time in Tennessee is almost done? How dare you suggest such a thing, this is a completely legitimate update with no ulterior motive other than to INSERT COVER HERE.

Well, that may be a small part of it.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, continued support, and for checking in, you are great while I am merely mortal at best. Check the other tabs for new content as I am attempting to update everything not ONLY because I am back on the job hunt.

At least I'm kind of honest?

E-Twins Update

Oh hello, didn't see you there. 

I'm kidding, I'm definitely not going to start this off with the off-the-cuff-pretend-I'm-walking-by-and-we're-getting-in-a-casual-conversation intro, people that do that in writing or comedy or whatever are the worst and it makes me want to stop paying attention no matter what comes next. The winners of every NFL game this year so I could bet on them and win a bunch of money, the codes to the nukes, the meaning of life, not a chance I'm still around to find out.

So if you've made it this far and not fled in terror like I wanted to after that first line, deets on the last month-and-a-half since I last came to you are your reward. I know, crappy reward for putting you through six words of hell, I can feel your excitement from here.

It's been a wild six weeks! The travels during Elizabethton's season have taken me from Virginia to North Carolina to all parts of Tennessee to West Virginia and back again, and there's still plenty more to go over the final four weeks of the year, with Bluefield (VA) the next two days, then the final two stadiums we haven't seen around the Appalachian League quickly after that, as series with Johnson City and Bristol are coming next week.

As far as on-the-field goes, the E-Twins are legit, leading the West division and almost assuredly heading towards a playoff berth and a chance for just their second league title in the last 10 seasons. I say "just" because they won five during the 2000s, a decade-long dynasty, with their only league championship this decade coming in 2012. It's cool to be a part of and exhilarating to be at a ball field every day, makes me feel like I'm back in my playing days that involved very little actual playing in games thanks to a severe lack of skill. Ahh, the good old days.

If you haven't had the chance to listen to a broadcast, it's OK, sitting down and listening to something is a big commitment, especially when it's at night. There are a trillion things you could be doing that involve pictures or, even better, moving pictures, rather than the lack of pictures and moving pictures provided by our radio broadcasts. What I'm going to give you now is a chance to actually get something out of listening to my coverage of the E-Twins - an excuse not to do work! Imagine how much time you can kill IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY AT YOUR JOB by checking out the SoundCloud page I made for our pregame interviews (called the Pregame Pep Talk because without alliteration everything would suck) found here. There isn't an archive for the games themselves, but I'm going to be going back after the season to put together a compilation of season highlights, so then you won't have to listen to three hours of rambling drivel just to hear one exciting moment. I'll post it here when that's complete. If you have gone out of your way not to listen to games, will continue to do so in the future, and laugh at the idea of clicking on that SoundCloud link to listen to the interviews, the jokes on you because I'll only cry a little bit about that later. You cause me only mild amounts of pain, HA! 

(A live shot of me, crying now instead of later...with a beard too)

For those still looking to catch a game as summer winds down, here's the remaining schedule:

August 7 & 8: @ Bluefield Blue Jays, WBEJ and MILB.com

August 9-11: Home v. Greenville Astros, MILB.com

August 12, 14 & 15: @ Johnson City Cardinals, WBEJ and MILB.com

August 17 and 19: @ Bristol Pirates, WBEJ and MILB.com

August 20-22: Home v. Johnson City Cardinals, MILB.com

August 23-25: Home v. Bristol Pirates, MILB.com

August 26: @ Greenville Astros, WBEJ and MILB.com

August 30 and 31: @ Kingsport Mets, WBEJ and MILB.com

There were a few changes since the original schedule came out, but this one is up to date. Just making sure you don't try to tune in to a game on the old schedule that we are no longer doing only to be disappointed (secretly excited) when you learn you won't get to (don't have to) take in a broadcast (give away three hours of your life). 

There's the update on what we are calling Project 2 (E-Twins) here on the site, but I've been continuing work on Project 1 (ETSU) over the last six weeks as well, and while there haven't been any games to call, there have been notable events on campus, including the first day of football practice, which gave me the chance to do my first significant work shooting, editing, and producing video late last week. You can see the final product here. First project like that I've done, only positive feedback will be accepted, I'm fragile.

That's all from here, I'll check in again towards the end of the month after we've gone through 3 more White House Communications Directors.