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Sports Broadcasting Celebrates 25 years at Western during Homecoming Weekend

September 19, 2017

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MACOMB, IL – As alumni gather at Western Illinois University for Homecoming weekend, Friday-Saturday, Sept. 29-30, the University's sports broadcasting program will celebrate its 25th anniversary on campus.

A celebration is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, in Q-Lot, next to the alumni tent. Those attending will receive a sports broadcasting t-shirt, complimentary lunch, tours of the broadcasting truck and/or the broadcasting and journalism department in Sallee Hall, and a free football game ticket (for the first 20 alumni to register).

"We have a great history of broadcasting WIU sports that began with Sharon Evans and Sam Edsall in the early 1990s," said WIU Broadcasting and Journalism Chair William "Buzz" Hoon. "Over the past 25-plus years, we have been fortunate to have some really talented and enthusiastic sports broadcasters who have contributed to our legacy. Today, we draw students from across the country because our sports broadcasting major is so unique and provides students with terrific hands-on experiences. They continue to announce, shoot and direct all types of athletic events to a national audience thanks to ESPN3."

Evans, the former associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication (COFAC), said she and Edsall started doing broadcast sports production in Spring 1990. Former Athletic Director Helen Smiley granted the pair permission to broadcast WIU women's basketball.

"We started the live newscasts in Fall 1989, and Sam and I decided to challenge ourselves with live-on-tape sports productions," said Evans. "We decided to start with basketball because the court is smaller than a football field and we felt it would be easier for our students to follow the ball and the action and tell the story of the game to our viewers. Beginning in the fall, we added football and men's basketball. In Spring 1991, we traveled to Green Bay to record the first two rounds of the Mid-Continent Conference men's basketball tournament. As student interest and equipment capability increased, we added men's and women's soccer, swimming and diving, volleyball, baseball, softball and track."

Evans, who retired from the University in May after 33 years of teaching and serving as an administrator, said her favorite part of working in live sports production was working with the broadcasting students to cover events at Western.

"It has been wonderful watching the sports broadcasting program grow over the past 25-plus years," she said. "Many talented students have come through this program."

Sports broadcasting was added as a major in 2011, and has been named one of WIU's signature academic programs. WIU's major is the only sports broadcasting program in Illinois.

Western Illinois University broadcasting majors have a long tradition of winning awards at the state, regional, and national levels. The WIU Department of Broadcasting and Journalism has an internship program to provide students with learning opportunities in professional broadcast settings around the world. Alumni work in the varied fields of broadcast, cable, satellite, advertising, post-production and sports.

Among those are graduates who say their WIU education gave them hands-on training that put them far ahead of their peers from other schools.

• Brittany Baumann, a 2007 broadcasting graduate, is current a news producer for KSTP-TV in St. Paul, MN. She was one of the first sideline reporters for the broadcasting department.

Baumann said the "Western Advantage" prepared her to "solve problems in the real world," by giving her the "opportunity to try and fail in the safety of the academic world."

"I gained valuable hands-on training that prepared me to solve problems in the real world," said Baumann. "Now that I am a news producer in the 15th largest market in the country, failure is not an option. Throughout my career, I have met graduates from other universities who didn't allow students to fail, and those employees are the first to panic when things don't go as planned."

Baumann credits the WIU broadcasting faculty for giving students room to "create, plan and run our own newsroom.

"I am forever grateful for an education that allowed me to learn and grow from failure," she said. "It not only helped me build a resume, it built my character."

• Mike Nobler, a 2001 broadcasting graduate, is now the video director for the NFL's Miami Dolphins. He said he has no doubt he would not have achieved the career success he has without his WIU education.

"The faculty allowed me to experience and experiment with all facets of the department," Nobler said. "I was able to host my own radio show, produce other radio shows, be in front of a camera and even behind a camera. All of those experiences allowed me to get to the highest level of my profession 15-plus years after I graduated."

Nobler recalled a humorous story about his nervousness for his first day of classes at WIU, which resulted in him arriving in Sallee Hall at 7:15 a.m. for a 9 a.m. class.

"I remember being so nervous, even two days ahead of that class, that I would walk my path from Henninger Hall to Sallee Hall just to make sure I knew what I was doing; I had it down by about the fifth time," he said.

It was in that class that he sat behind former WIU student Gerek Fritz, who was a manager for the WIU football team and a friend of Nobler's roommate. This acquaintance, Nobler said, set him on his current career path.

"Gerek told me there were no positions open that season, but he would certainly keep me in mind for the following season (1998)," said Nobler. "Sure enough, Gerek didn't forget and called me after the season ended and asked if I wanted to work with the football team; and the rest is history. Here I am 15-plus years later still doing the same thing, but now I am doing it for the Miami Dolphins in the NFL. There is no chance I will ever forget my first college class on the second floor of Sallee Hall."

• Eric Frey, a 2004 broadcasting graduate, is the senior production manager for the SEC Network at the University of Arkansas. He oversees SEC Network operations and produces and directs network broadcasts and the ESPN family of networks for Arkansas athletics.

"I have been at Arkansas for three years, and this is my 10th year in the industry as a full-time professional," he said. "After WIU, I was a graduate assistant at Virginia Tech. After that, I spent three years at the University of Illinois, where I helped launch the Big Ten Network. I also spent four years at Florida State University, where we were one of the first institutions in the country to produce sports broadcasts on the ESPN3 platform, which at the time was emerging into the mobile platform it is today that we see most content being displayed and where others have followed."

Frey credits WIU with preparing him for everything he has experienced in his professional life.

"As a student in the broadcasting department, I was given many opportunities and, most importantly, I was given ownership of those opportunities, whether it was going out on my own to shoot news stories, preparing for play-by-play opportunities or editing content for the football program," said Frey. "We were taught from the beginning to try new things, to raise the bar and continue to grow as the technology and the business grew. The professors were great about giving us the tools we needed to learn and grow, and then letting us go out and both succeed and fail, which was the biggest learning benefit to me. Even more importantly, the staff was always generous with their time, opinions and feedback. They truly valued their role as mentors to us and took a lot of pride in teaching us the right way to do things."

• Andrew Bacon, a 2015 graduate of the broadcasting program, is the assistant director of advanced media at the Atlantic Coast Conference. He said he still considers his decision to attend WIU one of the best he has made.

"For me, the opportunities at Western were the big reason why I went there," he said. "Once arriving, I was able to seize these moments because WIU gave me the tools and mentors to make the most of it and lead me down a path that would show me my true passion: sports broadcasting. Because of the people guiding me and the ability to use these tools I was able to essentially be a professional for four years; most schools you can't do that until the last year or two."

Bacon said the education he received at Western has helped him work at "a power five conference in the field I love before I turn 25."

"I don't know how often someone can make that jump and it's because of what Western provided that allowed me to reach my full potential as a student and begin my career ahead of most graduating seniors at other schools," he said. "From my freshman year to my senior year I was able to travel and shoot every football game and travel to multiple Summit League basketball tournaments. I was able to host and produce the football coach's show, 'The Pigskin Preview,' and work in Athletics producing most of their videos for online purposes and for the first ever video board for football and basketball. The amount of memories I have from all the experiences from both broadcasting and athletics is incredible. When looking back it blows my mind with everything I was allowed to do at WIU."

In his current position with the Atlantic Coast Conference, Bacon shoots several of the ACC championships and regular season games along with editing content for social media, in-venue content, and various other platforms.

"During football and basketball season I will travel to a game almost every week, sometimes more," said Bacon. "Besides shooting live games I will also contribute in a variety of roles at our football and basketball media days. Recently I obtained my drone license and now I am the drone pilot for any shoots that require such coverage. Working at the ACC I see how a lot of schools are trying to produce their live events and get their students involved and it amazes me because what some of the schools are looking at doing or recently have started doing is what Western has been doing for years."

• Joe Roderick, a 2007 broadcasting graduate, was most recently an on-air radio host in St. Louis, MO with 590 The Fan, CBS Sports 920 and insideSTL.com. He has worked in sports radio in St. Louis since 2009, covering everything from Super Bowls, to Cardinal and Blues playoff games, and many other major sporting events in between.

Roderick said the WIU broadcasting department allowed him to be hands-on in the world of television and radio from the first day in the classroom.

"I have talked to alums from many different universities over the years, including the Mizzou J-school, and no one had the opportunities as a freshman like I had at Western," he said. "The staff, from top to bottom, did all they could to make sure that every student was prepared to go out in the real world after graduation and be ready to succeed in whatever field they chose. I have recommended an education from Western Illinois University every day of my professional career and will continue to do so."

For more information about the Homecoming event, or to RSVP, email Hoon at wg-hoon@wiu.edu. For more information about the WIU Department of Broadcasting and Journalism, visit wiu.edu/bcj.


Posted By: Jodi Pospeschil (JK-Pospeschil@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing