The Press Box - ESPN's Chris Fowler on Sportscasting During a Time of Crisis, College Football vs. the NFL, and Calling the National Championship

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

Bryan is joined by ESPN’s Chris Fowler to discuss his career as a sports broadcaster covering both college and professional sports since 1986. They begin by remembering the unfortunate death of college basketball player Hank Gathers back in 1990, then discuss what it was like to cover a tragedy. Later, they dive into the differences between covering NFL versus college games, the impact of the transfer portal, and preparing for the upcoming College Football National Championship between Georgia and TCU. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Chris Fowler Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Chris Vernon, and me and my buddy Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O Everything, host an NBA podcast called The Mismatch. They call it The Mismatch because I'm awesome and Kevin is a gigantic nerd. No, no, that's not why at all, Chris. They call it the Mismatch because I have a brain and you're a loudmouth bozo. Good grief. Anyway, listen to our amazing NBA podcast, The Mismatch. Or don't.

We really don't care. We're probably going to win a million awards either way. Chris, we do care. So don't say that. Please subscribe and listen to the mismatch only on Spotify. Did you really call me a bozo? Well, media and consumers. Welcome to Press Box.

Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. On Monday, we've got a big college football game. It's the National Championship. TCU, the pride of Fort Worth, Texas, versus the defending national champs, the Georgia Bulldogs. And at a hotel here in L.A. on Friday, I spent some time with the announcer who will be calling that game, ESPN's Chris Fowler. Now, this being the week that Bill's safety, DeMar Hamlin, went into cardiac arrest on the field. We began there with a similar moment that occurred when Fowler was hosting SportsCenter years ago. We also talked about how calling college football is different than calling the NFL.

Some early critiques of Fowler's time in the big chair after he replaced Brent Moore. Musburger. And we talked about Fowler's career at ESPN that kind of amazingly stretches all the way back to 1986. 1986! You know, when you see that list of the longest serving ballparks in Major League Baseball, and after Fenway and Wrigley and Dodger Stadium, you're surprised to see Angel Stadium in the four-slot? Chris Fowler is the Angel Stadium of ESPN announcers. He's seen a lot. Here's Chris Fowler. All right, Chris, we're talking a few days after Damar Hamlin went to cardiac arrest on the field. I was interested to read that in 1990, you were on the Sports Center desk during a similar moment

when the college basketball player Hank Gathers collapsed on the court and died. What do you remember about that broadcast? Vividly remember it. I had been out to Loyola Marymount and done a feature on Hank Gathers about two weeks before then, I think. And he had already had heart problems. He was under medication for that. there was a problem he was having with the medication. Should he come off of it?

He was sluggish. He wasn't playing the way he wanted to. It was a big conversation point. And a couple weeks later, he was dead. I was working with Chris Berman. It wasn't a normal pairing for me at Sports Center. It was an unusual slot for me to have there. Chris Myers was out here in L.A. covering it.

And it was chilling because I knew Hank. I liked him. not supposed to see someone that young, that vital, that healthy, fall down on a court. And you knew right away it was bad. I just, it was shocking. And all of a sudden, you have to go into broadcast movement. You have to find the things to say, to frame it, to give context. I was able to give some information because I had covered him and knew something about him, which most of the audience didn't know. And so I felt reasonably well equipped to do that part of it. But you know, you can never frame the loss of a human life in the middle of an athletic event.

You saw your job as to explain to the audience who this guy was that night. Yes, to explain who he was and also provide the context that he had wrestled with this notion that this medication was preventing him from doing the thing that he loved, even though doctors had given it to him and many felt it was necessary to do it. So there was something that some athletes wrestle with and go through. and it seems like an easy no-brainer call to a lot of us, but then you look at what athletes are willing to do to get onto the field of competition, whether it's a team sport and Olympic sport.

They go to great lengths. They put themselves at risk to do that. They do all kinds of things that would be deemed unhealthy to be able to play the sport. And so these are the kind of choices they make. And I'm not saying that he made a choice that was that, because I don't know what was in his head. But I do know that there was context behind that episode that I was able to provide because I've been out in L.A. That was March 1990.

You're 27 years old, if my math is correct. Did you feel you were ready to handle a moment like that? You don't think. You don't think. You just do the job. I hadn't had much experience doing SportsCenter. I wasn't anchoring the broadcast in the way that you would have seen someone do in the Mar-Hamlin tragedy. But I just was off from my perspective and and went on about it.

It wasn't the kind of thing that. And then Chris Myers had doing great reporting out here in LA. So there was that was the breaking news aspect to it that I wasn't involved in covering. We were just passing all information. But, you know, that's a very good thing that I have not thought about in a long time until watching, you know, Hamlin collapse in the field the other night. I hadn't really reflected in that in a long, long time. But, you know, I felt okay about how it went,

but the more important thing was someone that I had gotten to know a little bit, had suffered a tragic death in the middle of a game. And his teammates, Bo Kimball and others, Paul Westett was his coach, others that I had gotten to know out there a little bit, not very well, of course, what they were going through. It went the fans, the team, the community were going through. Little bit of a very small college, as you know. So it's a tight-knit community, and that was just an awful, awful night.

When you're calling in college football game, does the idea of a catastrophic injury like the one Hamlin suffered sits somewhere in your mind? You know, it doesn't. I have the same wish before every game, which is drama for the fans, close game. It's a nice place to call. And most importantly, no serious injuries.

my wife sends me the same text before every single game. Don't say anything, which is our inside joke that would end my career, she means. But then, you know, close game and no injuries because no one wants to see someone hurt in an athletic thing. And much less a serious, serious catastrophe like that. Obviously, I've been there when the card has been brought it out, and players have been put on a board. I mean, it's every time you see it, it should be shocked. We don't want to be numb to that. I think at times we've seen ambulances on the field and players carted off, you know, far too often.

But you don't ever want to get numb to that, nor should you as a human being. And certainly not as an announcer. So I felt for the folks that had to describe it and then try to speak about it, well, the NFL was in a holding pattern, not figuring out what they were going to do. But yeah, you hope to have the right words in the moment. I think experience gives you a fighting chance and also the real understanding that less is a lot better than more in that situation. Feels to me like the way you and Kirk Herb Street call a game on Saturday night football is very different than the way most NFL announcers, for instance, call a game. What do you see is the major difference between calling a college football game and calling an NFL game? Interesting question.

The sports are different. I will say, in my opinion, that college football is much tougher to call them in the NFL. I've only done two NFL games. I'm not an expert, but the roster sizes are so different. The tempo of the offenses in college football will make it challenging. I mean, I think that NFL games unfold at a different tempo. They're far fewer plays. You have a chance to weave in a replay, a story, a graphic, an anecdote.

In college, it's very difficult sometimes to do that. You feel like you're on a tightrope trying to nash. navigate this up-tempo offense. I think also, too, if you're being realistic, the NFL is the sport at the highest level. I love NFL football. I think that the energy in a college stadium, the biggest games we have in the sport, in the most exciting moments, eclipses anything in the NFL in general.

But, and I think it gets swept away in that, like calling LSU's two-point conversion victory over Alabama and Tiger Stadium. probably doesn't feel anything like an NFL game I could think of. Okay. Obviously, there are playoff games. There are the must-win games where one team's going to go to the Super Bowl. One team's going to go home. And not to say the atmosphere is not charged up.

I've been fans of those kinds of games, but never called anything like that, obviously. But, I mean, there are a lot of differences, I think. It would sound crazy if we did our college-style call on Sundays. You see Kirk Kirby, do a very different call, I think, when he's with Al Michaels doing the Amazon Thursday. night games in the NFL. And I think if you did an NFL style broadcast on a big charged up college environment, you might be accused of being of underplaying it. I was going to say being dull, but that's a value judgment. You might be sort of accused of underplaying it because it's just a

different vibe. Being remote a little bit from the action. Yeah. There's no, there's no room to be detached in college football. I mean, you have to, you're, you're throwing into this crazy calder of noise and energy. And the other thing is, unfortunately, college football games last a lot longer than NFL games last. You got to get that clock rules fixed because I was talking to Kirk the other night, you know, and he's now straddling that world. But even as a fan, when you watch an NFL game, it goes by like that. Even the Super Bowl, aside from halftime, can go so quick sometimes. And these college games in the postseason just take forever. They unfold like, you know, a four or five act opera, you know. And I think.

It's too long for a lot of people, but you just have to sustain your energy. And we talk to the players about this. You understand how long these games are, right? Just keep fighting, keep swinging, keep playing because it takes forever to kind of get to the finish line of one of those games. And sometimes when you're announcing it, it is a test of stamina. These games are four-hour games. So you mentioned the size of the rosters. I also think there's the fans' familiarity with the rosters.

Right. Let's take Monday's game, T. Georgia. Average college football fan. How many TCU players do you think they'll be familiar with? The average fan? Yeah. Average college football fan. Well, Max Duggan, the quarterback, beyond that, I don't know if they would know Quentin Johnson. Yeah, they might not even know who the coach is. We're talking to an average fan in this sport. They're very regional. They're parochial. They don't follow teams outside of their own conference as much as we think they do when that shows up in research all the time. Now, the hardcore fans, certainly in the last month, have gotten more

familiar with TCU, but, and 22 million watched them play Michigan. So many more will know Monday the new nine days before, but it's still our job to not assume that. And I think that, the roster size, yeah, when I get my board, which is upstairs in my room and you see nine or 10 wide receivers on the board, I mean, that's not an NFL game. So that the guys who touch the ball in college, there are, you know, double the number of players from an NFL game. So preparation is is extremely different in that way. And you want to have something to say about each of those nine or ten wide receivers in case to make a big play? You do. Yeah, more than one thing. I mean, you certainly know a lot more about the star players, but then there's the defensive side too,

you know, two and three and four deep. And there's guys in a college football game that pop up that we have never seen on our board. You never talked about with the coaches. I mean, they're way down to the roster, but this is their time, whether it's, an injury or they've gotten better in the last month, they suddenly pop on the field in a big game, and you're learning on the fly. Who is this guy? We're doing a Rose Bowl game last year,

and in goes Utah's backup quarterback, and we know absolutely nothing about him. And Holly Roe was a Utah graduate. She had a shred of information, and we knew he was from a small town in Utah. He goes and throws a touchdown pass and almost leads them back to this, credible victory over Ohio State before they left the Buckeyes too much time. But that doesn't

happen in the NFL, right? Because the backup is a well-known player. He might be a 10-year veteran, the guy in the backup quarterback role, not someone who's played, you know, one game and throwing three passes in his career. That can happen in college. That's what I think is so interesting about you and Herbie's calls, because as you say, there's not much time between snaps, but between snaps, it feels like you both snap into storytelling mode. Here is who this is. Here is what this team's offense has run like all year in case you've never seen them do anything. Here's what this running back has done all year in case you haven't followed him at all. There's just a lot of handholding. I guess I'd rather, I think of storytelling as something that offers a personal texture

about a player. That's really hard. That's what gets sacrificed in these broadcasts of uptempo teams. I mean, sometimes in a championship game, a story is a line about this guy's relationship with his grandmother or what what led him to go to that school and why he was um you know sets and bennett's story for example i mean how are we going to have time to to thread all of that through the broadcast on monday in and around the plays i mean his his story is cinematic they will write movies about it and fat books about it so picking out the best way to acquaint fans who still don't know who he is, even though they won a championship last year, and he's MVP in two playoff games last year, just in case they don't know his story, we have to get that in. And his story, there's been addendums to it this season, including in the semifinal game.

So we don't have the luxury to do what was done in the era of Keith Jackson, where you could be foxy and speak slowly and spin a tale about somebody's grandma. it's really hard to do that. Broadcasts are fast. They're crowded. There's all kinds of elements that we put into a show. The technology has exploded. We think the fan's appetite for information is much higher than it ever was in those years. So, you know, sometimes, unfortunately, what gets squeezed out are the stories about these guys as people and all the folks that help them get where they are and what makes them tick.

off of the field. And we do our best, but I know that almost every big game that I work, I come away feeling a little bit disappointed and frustrated we didn't get more in. You know, there's always a lot of meat left on the bone. Like, I wanted to go do an Instagram series, like, what got left out? Like, join me live. And I'll tell you the 20 things we didn't get in the broadcast because either it didn't come up or we didn't have time. So, Georgia Ohio State the end of the night. What did you leave out? Did you want to get in? I mean, a lot, a lot of stuff about individual players. I mean, you know, there's a guy called Sunny

Stiles who was Lorenzo Stiles son. He was a linebacker back in the day. And he was going to be brought in basically out of the deep freeze to cover Georgia's tight end Brock Bowers because they couldn't find an athlete fast enough and strong enough to cover this big tight end. He's been a mismatch for defenses all season long. But here comes a guy in Ohio State. Remember, they had just been ripped apart by Michigan, okay? They had been torched by Michigan's offense. So they're looking for answers. So they're going to bring in this guy, Sunny Stiles.

And Sunny got his name, not because he was the kid of Lorenzo Stiles, but because at three years old, he had a terrible temper. And his dad was a fan of the godfather. So he got his name for Sonny Corleone, the James Con character, right? I know a huge godfather fan. I would have loved to get that in. there, but he really didn't play a big role in the game after all. I still wanted to tell the story, but it didn't work. Maybe we'll work into Sunny Dykes, who is not named after Sunny Corleone,

as far as I know. But that's just a tiny example. There's so much stuff about even the principal players in a game who are well-known stars that you'd like to get in, but it's really tough. As much as people have been told about Stets and Bennett at this point, there's layers and layers to this that they haven't heard because we're there to document an event and not storytell fundamentally. So you have to be most attended to what's going on on in the field and let the players sort of tell their stories rather than jam our stories in. And Herbie pointed out how Brock Bowers disappeared for like three quarters, but that was not Sunny Stiles's handiwork there. Or Sunny Corleone or any other Sunny. It was just they didn't feature him. And he kept asking a good question. But that that's where I think

that that's what's fun about working with somebody you've worked with for 27 years, 27 seasons together. I sort of know what Kirk's going to say and how he views a game and how he's wired. And we do almost know talking about the game plans ahead of time. People don't believe that. People in the business don't believe that. We don't sit around and have a big conversation. Hey, when TCU's got the ball, this, this, this, this of this and this. And here's what Georgia I expect to do. and then, you know, if this happens, what are you going to say? We don't do any of that. And I'm not saying it's a better way to do it.

We just have kind of our method at this point, and it's to be spontaneous and not, you know, John McConnor is like that in tennis. John does not want to know what you're going to ask him in the opening of a Wimbledon championship match. He doesn't want to go over it. He will not rehearse it. He wants to be surprised and react. Kirk's not quite that, but he's, he likes to sort of not hammer at home in rehearsal.

We're a terrible rehearsal team. I like to think we're pretty good when the lights go on, but not because we practice this stuff. It's interesting to me because you have a very finish each other's sentence as quality to your broadcast. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think that that comes from a lot of time spent watching games together. We don't talk about every game we do, but we watch a lot of football together. And so figuring out sort of how each other is wired, if you haven't figured it out by 27 years, you're not going to.

You've called every one of the four-team college football playoffs since the first one back in January, 2015. Now that we're staring at the end of this system, do you think the four-team playoffs succeeded or failed? It succeeded in doing what it was asked to do, which was end the troublesome BCS era and get four teams in there with a chance. to play forward instead of two. I mean, inclusivity was always the weakness of a, you know, lack of it was the weakness of a

four-team bracket. And I think inclusivity is a good reason to expand. But I don't know that it's going to mean that there's going to be a huge shift in the kinds of teams that win the championship. It's ironic that with only one more season after this, we now have TCU, which is the most incredible story in, forget playoff era, BCS era, going back. before that. I mean, it's the kind of thing that's not supposed to happen in this sport. You're not supposed to have a team picked seventh in its conference with a first year coach and some portal

guys and a roster of five dudes who've been in any postseason game. Forget the playoff. So it blows apart the idea that big game experience matters, the postseason experience matters, right? We were told that, and I believe it, I've thought that teams that have been in these big games, before had a huge edge. And maybe they still do, but it didn't matter for TCU and Michigan. And I think that the fact that they're within 60 minutes of a championship after being 2001 to make the playoff preseason, pick seventh in the big 12? Come on, that's insane.

Here we are. I didn't think I'd ever see it because the weakness in the sport has been it's so top-heavy. you know the same five six teams in the playoff you know and then i could have told you hey here's for 23 and 24 and it's still going to be Alabama Georgia Ohio state Michigan Clemson will get back in there you know Oklahoma's dipped but you know they were always a team that was fighting for it and and that's what people got tired of you know there's going to be Georgia fatigue pretty soon the way there was Alabama fatigue but the thing is when you go to 12 they're making it every single year.

And I don't know if people have fully processed that. You know, expansion's good. More playoff games. More games down the stretch, the impact the playoff. All conferences involved. That's great. Awesome. My team's got a better chance of getting in.

Okay. All true. But when you watch how this plays out and it begins to be apparent that you can expand the bracket, but that doesn't make it any easier to be in Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State. and the same teams still find their way into the semifinals, I wonder if people are going to be disappointed. When they doped out what a 12-team bracket would have looked like this year,

if you'd had it, and included Alabama, Penn State, Tennessee, teams that lost their most important games this year. Yeah, that'll happen every year in a 12-team bracket, every year. So do you worry it will make Saturday night games feel less important? Well, that's kind of a double-edged question. the impact of any one regular season game is diluted. That's just a fact because you can lose it and lose twice and still get in the bracket, right, depending on who you are.

But there'll be more games of importance that impact the playoff and seedings. It'll matter whether or not a team wins a late November game because they want to get one of those home field quarterfinal games versus going on the road. Okay, so the four teams that play into the eight team bracket, you know, if you're, if you're one of the seeds five through eight, you're on the road. Guess what? There's Bryant-Bennie Stadium. Good luck being a visitor winning a playoff game in there.

That's the chore. So it's going to be valuable to have those seeds and they'll fight for them and that'll make it interesting. But you know what? And if you love the NFL, you're going to like college more because it's going to be like NFL. We already do have it. I mean, the people who are traditionalists who loved the sport for what set it apart from the NFL are going to be disappointed. And they have been for years, not to get into a tangent of the portal in NIL, but you basically have free agency without a salary cap. Okay.

So it's kind of like the NFL, but with a twist because we're in the Wild West era of NIL with no regulation. And now you have an expanded playoff. So it's very much like a pro sports environment, roster fluidity. I mean, we're seeing, that's not going anywhere. So we're seeing a sport that's really been turned upside down. And I think that the 12-team bracket is an extension of it. How will a 12-team bracket affects players' attitudes of it going into the portal? Will they go to more schools?

Because I think the chance of playing in a playoff are now broadened beyond the obvious teams. who knows what will happen, but who could have predicted this seven, eight years ago. Do you like the way the sport has changed? Not all of it. No. I mean, I think that it's inevitable. I'm not one of these people that sit there and I don't get, I don't ring my hands or pound the table because I learned a long time ago that things that are beyond my control not worth stressing about, including the transfer portal. but I think that what it does is create the impression in the minds of millions and millions of fans

that the players care only about themselves and their agenda and college football is a conduit to the NFL and that loyalty to what's on the front of the jersey means nothing it's all about their name on the back and and that that's not true by the way I have defended the current generation of athletes for a long time because I believe there's much more to it than that. And I also believe that it's not their fault that they came of age in a system that showcases the individual. I mean, youth football, youth basketball, they've been recruited for a long time, man. They didn't start in college. You got kids plucked to put on an AAU team or a seven-on-seven team, brought cross town, you know, told you're great.

Come play for us because you'll be showcased. We'll make you a star. We'll get you to college, right? then you're going to be surprised when they do it that way. As a college, you're going to sell a recruit on the NFL success of your alums. Look at the salaries that our receivers now make in the NFL. Look at the salaries of these defensive backs, these quarterbacks.

That's not buried in the PowerPoint presentation to recruits. That's page one. Okay. So you tell them that. They choose a school. Then you're going to be shocked when they opt out, when they have an attitude that, hey,

the NFL was always my goal. My people are telling me I should bail on this game because it could hurt my chances of getting drafted. And you're surprised at that. That's what you enticed them to your campus with. But now you want them to have different priorities? I mean, that's not really answering your question.

I mean, I do think that there's no point in hand-wringing. I think roster fluidity makes it exciting in some ways. Look at TCU. We're saying about a team that without the portal wouldn't be where they are. Neither are lots of teams in college football, by the way. I mean, and it's not just the teams that are desperate to stock the roster. USC.

USC wouldn't be what USC is this year. But Alabama, would they have one without Jameson Williams or Henry Toto? Maybe. But they got some elite, elite guys out of the portal and helped them win a chance. championship in 20 and and and every team, um, that wants to win a championship can no longer afford to sit that out. So you were the host of college game day on ESPN from 1990 to 2014. Then in 2014, you added Saturday night football in the national championship game.

How did you get that job? That's a, let's a load of question. Which job? Game day? No, the second one. Oh, um, well, I mean, it, I, I, it didn't feel like a, like a leap of logic. I mean, I had been around for a long time. Is my stated goal to document live games is what I've wanted to do since I'm 10 years old.

It's all I've wanted to do, really. Game Day was a beautiful accident, a detour that lasted 25 years, but I didn't set out to be a pregame show host. I wanted to do what I'm doing now, both in tennis and in college football. So I think that I had done plenty of play-by-play in Thursday as I worked with Kirk before. I felt like it was not far-fetched to lobby for the job. And Brent was leaving, moving on, it was open. And I felt like I was well equipped to do it. This was the dream job when you walked into ESPN in 1986?

No, I didn't have a dream job. I was just happy to be at ESPN, but I was doing a high school sports show a year out of college. Now, keep in mind, ESPN in 86 was seven years old. It was nothing like it is now. Wasn't the worldwide leader in anything. So someone like me could get hired a year out of school. That's impossible now. I mean, even in a high school show.

So I got on the door and took several detours and made several unconventional decisions and choices that no one advised me to make, including going to ESPN. I was told you're crazy. You should never go there because it's this startup thing. And you should go read scores in a local place and work your way up. but that started me on this path of, you know, learning to listen to your inner voice and tune out the static, even of well-meaning people who tell you what you should do.

You know, you have to figure out how to listen to yourself and trying to figure out what to do, which fork to take if you're lucky enough to have options. So that's how I get into college football by saying no to a few other things that seem like no-brainers. And, you know, after 25 years, to do in game day. I felt like for me, that's about as far as I could go. I'm a big believer in relentless improvement as not just being desirable, but essential. You have to continue to improve.

I try to improve game to game to season, no matter how long I've done something. I thought it was becoming challenging at game day just because we've done it for a long time and at a pretty high level and I thought that the burdens of hosting that show and also doing play by play on a game that night often in another city were really tough. I wanted to try it for one season. It was it was tough and I if I was honest with myself, both things would suffer because if you prioritize everything in your life, nothing is really a priority. And I wanted to prioritize calling games because it was for me, the fresh challenge and also where I thought the growth could occur and it's what I wanted to do since I'm 10. So what Kirk does balancing both things is remarkable, but he doesn't host game day. So the burden that Reese Davis has at a three-hour pregame show is much different than any of the analysts. And I felt that. I felt a real responsibility to maintain what I was doing at game day, but I also had to pour myself into calling games because that's what the new challenge was.

So I hated to leave the show, but it was the right thing to do. You said this after you got the big job in 2014. I don't put a lot of thought into trying to cultivate a style. I try not to sound too anouncery. What did you mean by that? Well, because people think that we grow up emulating the people we admire or our role models. And I don't think that works. All the people that I talk to that I admire were quick to tell you that.

You know, I mean, there were so many people that helped shape the way I maybe view a sport or try to present an event, but not trying to copy them, just sort of taking certain broad concepts. Like Dick Engberg's humanity that he expressed when he covered Wimbledon, his feel for it. That's something you try to, in some way, emulate. but it's not the way he would call game set match or the way. Oh, my. I mean, I'm not going to say, oh, my. That's Dick Enberg's unique way of saying something, and only he could say that. I'd be foolish and idiotic to do that.

So what I guess what I meant is the broadcasters I enjoyed most were not the ones that tried to make it sound like broadcasting, by using a voice different than their own regular voice, and by being very formal. That just doesn't, that didn't ring with me. And I think the ones that I admire growing up certainly didn't do that. And I think also that the modern ear is different. If people listen to so many games now, there was no voice of college football. I'm not the voice of the sport.

There's many voices of the sport who do big games. The pie is divided. The inventory of games is enormous. I never aspire to be the voice of anything. and I'm certainly not the voice of this sport now. You just want to have a seat at the table. You want to be lucky enough to be able to call championship events and big games because not because it brings more eyeballs to the screen,

but just because the drama involved when a trophy or a title or at stake is just what it's about for me. So that's why I love being able to call Grand Slam finals or Championship Games and football, because at the end of the night, someone's dream is going to come true and someone's going to be heartbroken. And the essence of the attraction doing this job was never to be an announcer. It certainly wasn't money or fame. That's, believe me, not at all why I got into this. It was being able to document and be a part of a listeners or a viewer's experience centered around collective joy. It was about people being happy.

When I was a kid and listening to Blackhawks games, that's my background is in Chicago area, Blackhawks and Cubs games, you know, when the Blackhawks scored a goal, it was just the roar of the crowd and the Oregon. And I thought, wow,

there's a lot of people together in one place happy, and they're happy for the same thing. And how cool is that? And later on television, I would just watch the crowd. Jordan hits a shot and, watch the crowd behind the basket. Like that for me was powerful.

And it still is, I'm getting a little emotional thinking about it. That's what it was for me. It was sort of like being a part of those powerful emotions, whether it's collective joy or the other side of it, just pouring your heart and soul into something and coming short, you know, at the last hurdle. And having experienced many years of talking to athletes about what that's like for them, what that feels like. But it felt like for Andre Agassiz to lose a Grand Slam final.

He would have rather have lost in the first round than lose to Pete Sampras in a final. He told that to me. It doesn't make any sense to me. But to him to get to the biggest stage and fall short, which someone does every year in college football, was just devastating. I mean, you see the tears flow.

And I, you know, the other night in the semifinals, you had tears flowing. everywhere, you know, for the winners and the losers, it's going to happen again and it's going to happen in tennis and it's powerful, you know, where else can you, can you kind of sort of see that? I tried to something you said just a second ago. You think, you're talking about the modern sensibility, modern ears listening to these broadcasts. You think that pushed you in a direction artistically? Like, I want to sound, I want my sound to match up with the modern era a little bit more about what people. No, I was a viewer too, or in listener too. That's what I kind of wanted to hear.

I didn't want to hear, you know, Biff Barnes or Bob Euker doing an impression of a sportscaster, right? I mean, we all know what that sounds like. Yeah. We don't want to be that guy. And I didn't want to listen to that guy when I was, you know, a viewer or a listener, right? So it wasn't about trying to calculate what the modern viewer wants. I do think it's true that lots of things have changed about the customer. And we do this for a customer.

Let's not kid ourselves. I mean, you don't maybe let your self-esteem be attached to what the customer thinks week in, week out. But, you know, what is their appetite for this blend of stats and information versus the human side versus nothing from the announcer? Shut up and let the pictures and the sounds tell it. That's an important part. So I do think it's changed a bit. I think when you listen to old-time tennis matches, for example, commentary was very sparse because America, American TV copied the BBC, right?

And that was to say nothing. BBC, by the way, didn't take commercials. So they could talk nonstop in between the changeovers. We don't get to do that. We are expected to sell those commercials. And so we have to weave the commentary into the game. And so that's fundamentally changed. But I think if you listen to tennis broad, we probably still talk too much,

we'd be talk a lot more than we used to. And I think in football broadcasts are probably a little too crowded. We try to keep the conversation from being nonstop, but I think broadcasts are much busier in terms of graphics on the screen, the technology. You see it. I mean, you see it every broadcast you watch. And that's because I think that our sense is people can handle more. People are used to multitasking. People like to be bombarded with information and stimuli. Right. And I think that we might be dead wrong, but I think more people. are sort of, and I think video gaming influences how games are presented on TV too.

When you first got the Saturday night job and started calling the National Championship game, one critique I heard from somebody in the industry was, I really like Chris, but it sounds like he's still moving from hosting a studio show into full-time play-by-play. When you watch your games back, did you hear that in your voice at all, that you were transitioning between those two worlds? Probably. I mean, I'd probably cringe if I listened to those. I mean, the first few games were challenging for lots of reasons.

I was doing Game Day and I was doing the U.S. Open at the same time when I kind of debuted in that role that Brent had had and Keith Jackson before him. And those are massive shoes. Those guys are legends. And now you're the one. I never viewed us following them or trying to pick up the baton from them. But, you know, there's a lot of eyes on you there. And I was just sort of overwhelmed with workload. Here I am watching into this new gig. I think that that critique is probably fair because I, I did sound different than Brent. I sounded different than lots of people who do this job, and that's intentional. But I don't think you want to do a three-hour broadcast as though you're hosting a show. So I would take that as to be a criticism. But I also don't think that you need to be ultra-announcery

and yell at people. I think it's okay to be conversational. I do think that if you listen to the way broadcasts are done now, If you listen to Kirk in my broadcast, I do think that it's more conversational than many. Yes, that's what I was referring to earlier. And we like that. That's kind of what we're going for. Now, having said that, I had to learn how to do the job at a high level when I started.

And that was a process. You have to meet the big moment. You have to project. You have to sound announcery sometimes to belt through the bedlam of what's going on around you. So I think probably, you know, that that's a fair critique of the early broadcast, but thank God I don't have to listen to him. How different do you think you sound from those first times in the big chair in 2014, 2015, now? You're asking questions that I never reflect on. I mean, the reason why I'm sort of pausing is because I am just not a reflective person.

I never think about that. I never think about that. You did say you always want to get better. You always want to get better. Yeah, I want to improve. But I think there's lots of ways. I believe in relentless 1% improvement every day and everything. If you can do it, I'm a big believer in James Clear's atomic habits and everyone else that talks about incremental, consistent improvement.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm calling it differently. It just means I'm being more efficient. I'm not making the same mistakes. I'm trying to punch through an analysis. listen. I'm someone who does listen to the games back. Don't act like I don't, I do. And I'm a brutal critic on myself. So I guess why I never really bothered me is because I felt like as long as I'm meeting my standard, which for me wasn't easy because I held myself to a pretty high standard, I was pleased because I was going to be tougher on myself than anybody else was. And I tell that to

anybody who wants to do this is be brutally honest with yourself. You know, I listen back, you know, that call sucked. That series, you did not meet your standard. That game, your mind wandered. You gave up on the game. You didn't stay engaged in a blowout. You didn't think about the context. Sometimes you're so intent on documenting what you see in great detail.

Not consciously, you're not choosing your words carefully. You just want to kind of the stream of consciousness go. it's being in the zone in broadcasting, for what I call is, is relaxed intensity. And there are two different things, but they only come together when you're in the zone. In other words,

you can't be uptight. You have to be relaxed, but you can't let your mind water. You have to be intense. So being in the zone is having relaxed intensity. And listen, I mean, there's plenty of games.

Anybody sitting here who does this for a living would tell you, you can't have the fastball every game. you just can't have the 100 mile per hour heater when you need it. So you have to figure out how to work around. By that, I mean that amazing level of concentration where everything, everything you're seeing and describing is coming out just the way you want it to be. And you're foretelling things.

And you have a perfect read and the flow of a game and momentum shifts and what's going to happen next. That's more prevalent in tennis when I'm describing than in football. when you've seen 100 Nadal matches or more, you called 100 and you've seen 10,000, you kind of believe that you're equipped to have a feel for which way this might go based on a facial expression, based on body language, based on what he's done in this situation in the past.

It's harder in football. The cast changes every year in the sport, right? There's 200 people involved. So those nights when it all falls into place and you feel like your, I mean, if you listen to like a great Keith Jackson broadcast, you know, it's just a way that he had a feeling that Colorado's Hail Mary might be caught in the end zone of the big house, right? That's the genius. Al Michaels has done it for a long time. I think that there are plenty of modern younger announcers who do that too. And those are things that I listen for when I, when I listen to broadcast is, do you have a sense, a gun,

feeling for the flow of a game that comes out in subtle ways. I don't mean predicting plays. Just getting a read that, ah, that moment, that false start right there on first and goal with the two, circle that. If they don't get in, that's a four-point swing, that everything could turn on that. That's what I'm talking about. That you were in tune with the game, in some cosmic way. Can you feel that when you are in tune with the game?

Cosmic way. I mean, I guess it is. I mean, I think that you, look, they're human beings and there's an energy involved in what they're doing. I guess it's some combination of preparation and then instinct and feel in the moment. But yeah, that's fun. It's fun when you're right. It's fun when you can, you just have a feeling about the way something is unfolding that this kick return might be run back for a touchdown. And there's, if I were to think about moments in the playoff, Kenyon Drake brought a touchdown back for Alabama.

And I had seen them practice. I knew the team really well. and so you have the perspective that not even the camera can really give the viewer because there are certain kinds of things that cannot be calling off a monitor that you cannot see as a viewer but you can see better as an announcer because it's just a huge spectacle in front of you right so when he's turned in the corner and and sometimes it's just look out Kenyon Drake can fly and it's alerting people this guy's really fast you're seeing and you're bringing your voice up because you know that he sees space.

And, you know, it was just a really cool moment in a playoff game. And there's been examples of that. And those are things that, uh, now I had a call the other night where a dude is running for a touch and actually called touchdown and the turf monster got him at the 10 yard line and he did a face plan. Because he peeked back behind him. He peeked back and he tripped in the turf. Now they ended up scoring, but obviously he was really embarrassed.

And, you know, somebody asked me earlier, like, were you really embarrassed to me? miscall it. No, because the entire world thinks he's in the end zone. I do try not to jump that. Yeah. But I made the same call on my couch. You're not getting penalized on that. No, I just said, no, because that's what everybody's thinking. Like, you got to be kidding me. He tripped. He had a chance to, you know, make an incredible play in a playoff game and, you know, fell flat in his face. But, you know, it's, that's the beauty of it. That's the fun of it. It's a high wire act. And you just kind of, you know, everything is, is what they, doing out there. And then you're just sort of beholded to that. A few more before I let you go.

You talked about being in conversation with Herbie on the air for 26 years now. When you hear him call a game with Al Michaels on Thursday nights, what do you think? I'm proud of him, man. I mean, he's doing great. He's doing a phenomenal trifecta every week. I don't know how he finds the energy for it. But I think that, look, we both love the NFL. I mean, the two games he and I had a chance to do probably sounded a little different than our Saturday booth because it was just, the vibe was just different. I mean, I was proud of the work we did in those two games. I would love to call more NFL at some point.

But, you know, I think he's doing a good job binding his voice, working with a legend, working for a new company. And it's, I get a kick out of it. I just saw Lee Corso standing on a street corner here in Santa Monica when I drove in. He missed a number of appearances. There's seven punchlines that I can jump to me about. I'm not going to give you any of them. Let me turn serious here for a second.

He missed a ton of appearances on game day this year unusual for him. How would you describe the role Lee has played and continues to play on that show? He's just the driving passionate force behind it. I mean, I think the things I've learned from Lee about the entertainment business with football being the vehicle, as he describes it. But the humanity that he brings to our shows, the passion that he has. the passion that he had for coaching, the way he viewed a coach's role in the life of a player and how much of a calling it is. It's not a vocation.

He felt that coaching was a calling. And the way that he, decade after decade after decade, just showed up full of enthusiasm for the sport. When the light goes on, he's phenomenal. I mean, he and I have had quiet moments. I've shared a lot with them over the years. I've suffered along with him as his fans have suffered. when he's battled the effects of his stroke and his health problems this year.

But he continues to be someone that people grew up watching and loving from their first moments as a football viewer. And decades later, he's still doing it. And I think that that's a, he's a powerful connection with people. And I think the outpouring that he's gotten as he struggled this year reflects that. What's the most important thing Jesse Palmer ever did? host the bachelor or perform the high life. Stop, stop, stop. Before the high life maneuver on you.

I don't care about the bachelor. I would all due respect to Jessely. Bachelor in Paradise, all the bachelors that he's doing and the bachelorets. He really did save your life. That's what this was? I don't know, man. It felt like it.

I mean, here's the story. Pinstrype Bowl, Yankee Stadium. Half time. There's no food in the press box because the press box is down the right field line. So somebody got some chicken sandwiches from the concession stand. I don't like a lot of stuff. my chicken sandwiches. So I'm eating this dry chicken sandwich. I bite and the chicken is stuck at my throat. It's not going up or down. Okay. So there's about 10 people in the press box,

our little booth. No one's moving. Some are saying, oh my God, oh my God. And it's just not coming up or down. I try to drink water. That doesn't work. And I've only had one other time in my life when I was caught in a riptide in Costa Rica, which is another very different story. when I thought, you know, if anyone's had a near-death experience, but one that is like potentially absurd, like, I'm the guy that choked in a chicken sandwich. That's going to be my epitaph in this business. Fowler, oh, yeah, he was pretty good, but didn't he choking a chicken sandwich to die at halftime in Yankee Stadium? But you don't want to be that guy. But he crossed my mind, like, for a second.

Anybody, I promise you, if you've had an experience like this or anybody has, part of your brain is just like, oh, no, really? It ends like this? It could end like this with a chicken sandwich. And so that did occur to me. I mean, you know, listen, and people do die. Jesse got behind me and just about broke my ribs, you know, NFL player strength on the heimlich, but he dislodged it.

And I went ahead and called the second half with a sore throat, but alive. and yeah, I mean, I felt like who knows what could have happened. I mean, somebody else could have jumped in there, but nobody else was. So thank you, Jesse. Way more important to me than The Bachelor. All right, last one. If you ask you, I have a different answer, though. Last one, you were a proud University of Colorado graduate,

and you went there when Bill McCartney was the coach. I did. The new coach of the Colorado Buffaloes is Dion Sanders, who might be as far away from Bill McCartney as is humanly possible. What do you make of the coach prime era at CU? I'm excited as we sit here in January because the program had no pulse, no energy, no swag, no hope for being honest. He brings all those things. Ultimately, Deion's going to be judged by substance and not those things, but those things lead to a better roster, more energy, more fans in seats.

more eyeballs on TV and some wins. So I think he brings essential ingredients. I mean, listen, it's going to be the weirdest roster in the history of the sport. It's going to be a team of mercenaries for a while. And I think that that's not a good word, but there are people who come in because they are fired up about Dion Sanders, not because they are fired up about CU initially. Hopefully they'll be going to find plenty to love about the program. But it's that, think about that.

That's a shift, right? And he's got folks helping him get players who NIL perfectly legal who aren't associated with CU, but they're associated with the end. Again, that's all part of it. And I think he can coach. I think what he did Jackson State was it was an excellent coaching job. I mean, so he's gotten, he's developed players individually. He's inspired them. It's a different level.

Right now, CU, many felt, was the worst Power 5 roster. And I think it's going to be a lot better than that. So I'm along for the ride. I'm in. I mean, I'm just a grad. We don't, we're not calling CU games at this point. It would be fun to do that at some point. But yeah, I mean, I think it's, I wish him well.

And can't wait to see what happens. Chris Fowler, thanks for coming on the press box. I enjoyed it. My pleasure. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. The press box is back Monday with David Shoemaker and more luke

takes about the media. Have a great weekend and talk to you then.