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A Look At Bill Roth’s Journey

Jason Barrett

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The delivery has changed, from the piece of furniture to the transistor to satellite signals and the internet, but the intimacy of radio is as intoxicating as ever. It is a disembodied voice, speaking in your ear, taking you somewhere that you would be otherwise unable to go.

The marriage of radio and football Saturdays is nearly as old as the medium itself. If intercollegiate athletics is the front porch of a university, then the play-by-play announcer, “The Voice of the (Your Team Here),” is the guy sitting in the rocking chair, pouring iced tea and inviting you to take a chair.

Bill Roth went to work at Virginia Tech at 22 in 1988 — yes, the Reagan Administration. That was the second season in Blacksburg for head coach Frank Beamer, who may have been the only man more closely identified with Hokie football than Roth. For 27 seasons, Roth served as “The Voice of the Hokies.”

He began every broadcast by saying, “From the blue waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the hills of Tennessee, the Virginia Tech Hokies are on the air.” He ended every regular season with the cross-state rivalry against Virginia. Roth called a Cavalier game again Saturday, but it was against UCLA. Roth is the new Voice of the Bruins.

He sat in the press box of the historic Rose Bowl for the first time and called the remarkable debut of UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen, who threw for 351 yards and three touchdowns in the Bruins’ 35-17 defeat of the ‘Hoos.

It’s a safe bet that Roth is the only Pac-12 announcer who would easily slide into calling Virginia “the ‘Hoos.”

And so now the Bruins, knocking on the door. First down and goal to go for Rosen. From the left hash mark, the 18-year-old rookie, in his first game, takes the snap, flips it into the end zone. It is caught for the touchdown and the Bruins have taken the lead as Fuller scores the first touchdown of the season.

That voice intensifies the emotional connection that an alum has with his alma mater, that a resident has with his state university, that a young boy growing up in Pittsburgh has with the Pirates. That was Roth, who as a 9-year-old would watch the Pirates and do his own baseball play-by-play, cassette recorder in his lap, feet hanging over the edge of the couch, nowhere close to reaching the floor. He employed his 78-year-old babysitter as his color analyst.

“Well, Mrs. Donagan,” Roth recounted in a pre-adolescent squeak, “it looks like the Phillies are going to leave Steve Carlton in the game to pitch to Willie Stargell.”

“Um, Billy,” Mrs. Donagan replied, “would you like another Pop-Tart?”

Roth arrived at Virginia Tech a year out of the Newhouse school at Syracuse, where his buddies included Mike Tirico and Sean McDonough. And he stayed there, chronicling the rise of Hokie football from an independent to the Big East to the BCS Championship Game in the 1999 season — when Michael Vick and No. 2 Virginia Tech led No. 1 Florida State in the fourth quarter — through four ACC championships.

Roth won the state Sportscaster of the Year award 11 times. He has been elected to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. He became an institution. And then, with gut wrenched and tears emptied, he left.

“Virginia will always be home,” Roth said. “The people there are my closest friends.”

He left because most of his living relatives are in the Los Angeles area. He left because he didn’t want to wake up at age 70 and wonder about the opportunity he didn’t take.

“This is the winningest program in the history of college sports,” Roth said of UCLA. “This is the Yankees of college. It’s an unbelievable city. It’s a global market. I could have coasted to the finish in Blacksburg. I wasn’t ready.”

He no longer has to string together a network of 60 stations and tend to the care and feeding of each market. There are 180,000 Bruin alumni within the sound of his voice. UCLA games are broadcast on one station that reaches 20 million people.

That station is KLAC, home to the Bruins and the Dodgers. Roth is working on the same air as Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers who just announced he will remain with the team for his 67th season in 2016. Roth still has the cassette tapes he recorded of Scully’s NBC call of the 1979 World Series, when the Pirates beat the Orioles in seven games. But he doesn’t need them. He slips immediately into Scully’s musical cadence:

“HERE’s Wilver Stargell and, of course, he always makes the opposition a bit uneasy, especially in a situation like this. Game is tied in the eighth inning. McGregor rocks and throws. There’s a high drive, deep right field. Singleton at the track, at the wall, way back, it’s GONE! Pops has done it. Stargell homers. The Pirates have the lead.”

Roth, sitting in a restaurant near his new home in Marina Del Rey, snaps his fingers.

“I remember that like it was yesterday,” he said.

Bruins leading 7-6, going at warp speed. Rosen back to throw, fires, end zone, it is caught for the touchdown! TreMENdous throw by Rosen as he hooks up for the touchdown midway through the second quarter. Duarte, over the shoulder, a yard deep in the end zone and in a crowd. Spectacular catch!

The pace of Roth’s speech picks up with the pace of the play and slows down when the whistle blows. There is a musicality, a rhythm in his delivery, which is slightly nasal. His goal, he said, is to keep it conversational, as Scully still does, as Red Barber did before him. It is a one-sided conversation between announcer and listener, a bond that stretches as far as the signal. A generation ago, that signal needed a clear night and 50,000 watts of power.

To read the rest of this article visit ESPN where it was originally published

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Jason Puckett Launches PuckSports.com

“I am super motivated right now and I can’t wait. I have probably been busier now than I’ve ever been in the last 48 hours.”

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Logo for PuckSports.com

Jason Puckett, who decided to walk away from a contract offer from iHeartMedia’s KJR in Seattle after finding out his partner Jim Moore had been laid off, has launched a new venture – PuckSports.com. ‘Puck’ has a baseball opening day show posted on the Puck Sports YouTube page and also posted an introductory message about his new venture and what led to creating it.

“I wanted to talk to you guys, the listeners out there, the viewers out there, sorry for all of this,” an emotional Puckett said. “Sorry for what has happened and what has taken place. Thank you for all of the comments and the well-wishes and what you have said about myself and Jim.

“It has been a whirlwind of a last few days, for sure and I do want to say that I feel for the people that we used to work with. “I know it’s not easy to go through that, I have been on that side of it many, many times in this industry when someone is let go and you have to sit there and answer all the questions about them and for them…It’s unfortunate and it shouldn’t be that way, but the reality of this business is it’s like that.”

Puckett then told his fans that PuckSports.com and YouTube are where you will be finding his content along with Moore. “I am going to take what I have learned over the years and apply it to a new age of media,” he said and noted this was a direction he had been thinking about for a while.

As for what took place that led to his decision to not sign his contract and talk away, he said, “I just want to take you briefly back to last week. I don’t want to get too much in the weeds, I’m not here to lay any blame or point any fingers at anybody…there’s too many good people that I have worked with that I don’t want to drag into this. It was a process that was at times handled fine, handled perfectly, and at other times it got to a point where it just went on too long. But that’s corporate media and that’s what happens.”

Continuing on Puckett said, “…I had been without a contract since about January…when I was away from the station that was something that we and the station agreed upon…to see if we could get something done and we were all hopeful that we would…I was only supposed to be gone a couple of days…unfortunately as these things sometimes happen, it just went a little bit longer…We received the deal and it was what we wanted, but unfortunately with that news a few hours later came the news from corporate that Jim had lost his job. Obviously there was a mix of emotions with that from me.

“I wrestled with that and the decision and what I would do. It was hard for me to move forward…I couldn’t fight the perception more than anything that I had received a new deal while at the same time, my partner and good friend, guy I love to death, who I grew up reading…it was a hard reality…The loyalty I have, I couldn’t live with myself even though Jim knew what the truth was.”

Puckett said he was aware Moore was planning to step away from the radio show at the end of the year and was looking forward to the nine months they would have left to work with one another. Then, when iHeartMedia made the decision to make Moore a casualty of their latest round of layoffs, Puckett knew he needed to revisit the idea of starting his own venture.

He said, “It has kind of changed my timeline as far as what I wanted to do and where I felt I was at…I am super motivated right now and I can’t wait. I have probably been busier now than I’ve ever been in the last 48 hours.”

Puckett said several of the show’s regular guests would stay with the show and he thanked several sponsors who he said would remain supporters of the show with the new venture. ‘Puck’ noted that starting next week, “…We get underway in full force…I’m going to continue to try and make people laugh and entertain you and talk about sports…and all of the other things you have become accustomed to with this show.”

As he started to wrap up, Puckett said, “I’m jumping into the deep end of the pool and I am going to see if I can swim or sink.”

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Kirk Minihane: WEEI is “Going to be Andy Gresh and Rich Shertenlieb in Afternoons”

“It’s going to be Andy Gresh and Rich Shertenlieb in the afternoons, which is going to be so awful.”

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Photos of Kirk Minihane and Rich Shertenlieb

As the speculation continues on where Boston sports talker Rich Shertenlieb will end up, one former WEEI host said he has the scoop on what is going to happen. Kirk Minihane, now with Barstool Sports, said, “What I heard was, initially, was they were moving Rich Keefe from nights to middays, moving Adam Jones from afternoons to middays and keeping Fauria there, and moving Andy Gresh to afternoons…But now it appears Rich Shertenlieb is going to do afternoons with Andy Gresh.”

On Wednesday, Boston Globe sports and sports media columnist Chad Finn put out a post on X, saying, “Didn’t think Rich Shertenlieb would end up at WEEI after leaving Sports Hub. I do now, most likely in afternoon drive. Audacy management has been telling people to expect changes.”

Minihane continued commenting on the matter, saying, “It’s going to be Andy Gresh and Rich Shertenlieb in the afternoons, which is going to be so awful. Maybe the two most sensitive c***s in the history of radio. That’s a show we are going to ruin…we haven’t done that in a while, we are going to take that show down…Once that show starts, we are just going to blitz them with phone calls because Gresh can’t handle that.

“What they don’t understand, because they are so dumb, is that…Rich Shertenlieb has no fan base…no fan of [Toucher and Hardy] in the morning is going to be like ‘I’m not going to listen to Felger in the afternoons, I’ll now listen to Andy Gresh and Rich Shertenlieb.’ It’s going to be dreadful.”

Recapping what he has heard the rest of the WEEI lineup will be, Minihane said, “…And then in middays you have Adam Jones, failed afternoons. Rich Keefe who has now failed middays, drivetime, nights and is now going to fail again in middays… and Christian Fauria who has never drawn a rating in his life.”

WEEI has not commented on any of the speculation. BSM will have more as the story unfolds.

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Former 670 The Score Host Tommy Williams Has Died

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Photo of Tommy Williams
Courtesy: Lakeshore Public Media

Tommy Williams, who was heard for a decade on 670 The Score, died on Wednesday at the age of 66.

Williams began his broadcasting career in his hometown of Gary, Indiana in 1982 at WLTH before moving on to The Score. In 2003, Williams became the PA Announcer for the Gary Southshore RailCats of the American Association where he had his signature call to get the attention of the fans, “People, People, People.”

A story in The Times of Northwest Indiana said, “The longtime RailCats public address announcer and Lakeshore Public Media sports journalist was known for broadcasting countless games, interviewing countless athletes and covering Region sports at all levels. The Gary native and co-host of “Prep Sports Report,” “Prep Football Report,” and “Lakeshore PBS Scoreboard” often signed off shows saying, “Gary, Indiana, you know I love you.”

“The cadence he had in his voice echoed across the Region in a way we may never see again. He was widely known and widely loved,” Tom Maloney, vice president of radio operations at Lakeshore Public Media told the paper.

“He’d want to be remembered as the voice of Lakeshore sports,” his Regionally Speaking co-host and producer Dee Dotson told The Times. “Most people will remember him for covering prep sports all the way up to semi-pros. He’ll be remembered for treating each of his subjects like they were world champions. His depth of knowledge of sports at all levels is commendable. He was a walking encyclopedia of stats.” 

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