The Olympic Man: Interview With Jerry Massey from ISP Sports Jerry Massey started his broadcasting career in the simplest of ways – he just asked. Things have grown a little more complex for the Radford graduate since building his early roots as the play by play guy for Radford High School football. Massey now does play by play for the Virginia Tech women’s basketball team, as well as many other Olympic sports throughout the year. Massey is doing what he has always wanted to do and enjoying every second of it. “How can you not love this job?” says Massey. Planet Blacksburg recently sat down with Massey who was more than willing to take a break out of his busy schedule. Below is the interview. Q: Growing up, did you have the same aspiration as most little boys of becoming a professional athlete or a sports broadcaster? Massey: “I wanted to become a sports broadcaster at a very young age because I kind of got the hint that chances were pretty good that I wouldn’t make it as a college or professional athlete, and what better is there to do than to have the opportunity to travel around the country, watch sporting events, talk and present them on the radio for people to listen, and get paid for it. It’s a great, great job. I don’t even consider it working for a living.” Q: Did you have a particular person that you looked up to in the broadcasting field? Massey: “It was an array. I grew up listening to Warren Swain, the radio voice of the University of Virginia. Also, after Swain left to go to Nebraska, I started listening to Bill Roth a little bit more. So those were my two main radio influences as far as college sports are concerned because I like following college sports more than pro sports. When it comes to television, I always liked Jim Nantz from CBS. He was always conversational…and Dick Enberg when he used to be on NBC with Merlin Olsen.” Q: Did you start in media while you were at Spotsylvania High School? Massey: “Not at all. I just played ball and worked. I didn’t start sports broadcasting until when I started attending Radford University. I wanted to get into college sports broadcasting somehow, some way and I just didn’t know how to do it. In order to work in college athletics I thought a good way to do so was to work in sports information, so I worked over in sports information for a couple of years over at Radford. I approached the director of broadcasting at the time who is now the current broadcaster at Oklahoma State, Dave Hunziker, and said “Hey, I want to break in. I want to get some work.” During my first year of working in sports information, he was able to take myself and another sports info student down to Conway, S.C., and we took turns calling the Big South Conference baseball tournament. On top of that, in the fall before, there was an opening at the local radio stations to do color commentary for Radford High School football, so I jumped all over that as well. So I went in a years’ time from having virtually no experience whatsoever to at least having a minute bit of college broadcasting under my belt and some high school football experience as well.” Q: You also worked in television along with your radio work at Radford, so did you prefer one over the other? Massey: “I enjoyed them both, but I realized that radio was more or less my calling because I started to do more in radio and I thought I’d enjoy the opportunity to travel a bit more in radio as well. Back in my second year at sports information, that’s when I started to call some women’s basketball games over at Radford and this was when they only did a few select games. In 2003 they called me in and said they wanted to put all of the games on the radio so of course I said yes. Having the chance to travel during that first go around really opened my eyes as far as being something I really wanted to pursue for the rest of my career.” Q: How did you get from Radford to Virginia Tech? Massey: “I was at Radford for two years until the Tech job opened up in September of last year. They weren’t too happy with me leaving, but it was a no-brainer to come here to Tech. To work under somebody that you listened to while you were growing up; a lot of people don’t have the chance to do that. In business, how many people admire a CEO and then eventually get the opportunity to work right underneath of him? It never happens, so I think you put that in perspective and I’m lucky to be working under Bill (Roth). Bill gives me some great advice.” Q: What are all of the sports besides women’s basketball that you cover for Virginia Tech? Massey: “In the fall I do men’s and women’s soccer and volleyball, and then basketball consumes my life from November through early March. In the spring I do softball and lacrosse and I may try my hand at wrestling this winter. It’s a lot of fun. I wish that I could broadcast three hundred days out of the year and just travel from city to city and stay in hotels.” Q: How do you prepare for all of your Olympic sports’ broadcasts? Massey: “I kind of prepare for it just like women’s basketball. I’ll just keep an eye on stories in regards to the upcoming opponent and then I will just take the highlights or points of those stories and that way I can just drop them in to my broadcast. Of course, look down the rosters and get the correct pronunciations and find out their stats and then just really go from there. I’ve found that even though you can never over-prepare, I don’t use nearly as much of the stuff in my broadcast as I prepare for. I might have a whole list of bullet points that I want to hit during a basketball game and I just won’t have time. I just will not have time, whether it be a story of a transfer and how someone ended up at a certain school, or what happened in a previous meeting between the two schools, or like a streak of 10 straight games in which this girl has scored 15 points in a game. I have notes that I’ve researched and I won’t even use them, but I think it’s definitely better to go into an event over-prepared than under-prepared. I also found out that especially here at Tech, the fans want to not only know what’s going on with your school, they want to know what’s going on around the conference, and I try to keep people informed of what else is going on in the ACC.” Q: Is it tough to stay unbiased and show favoritism when calling the games for Tech? Massey: “Yeah, it is. I think you have to be on an even keel, but in some instances I don’t think that there should be something to stop you from voicing your opinion because not only are you there for the fans as far as play by play is concerned, you’re there to also provide analysis. Just like in real life, sometimes things just don’t go your way, so you have to try to convey that in a sense where you’re not publicly bashing the program that you work for. That would not be good from a PR standpoint or for your job’s sake. You have to present it in a way that is conversational and real to where it’s just like you and me talking back and forth. If it looks like there’s a sinking ship in a game, you have to give credit where the credit’s due. It’s not always the team that’s getting beat; you have to give credit to the team that’s laying the hammer down.” Q: What was it like doing different sports talk radio shows around the area? Massey: “Talk radio was so much different than anything I did for TV or that I do for play by play because with talk radio I had about two hours to fill for one show and three for another and when it’s a slow sports day, it can really, really drag on you. Now when it was a busy sports day and something happens, that’s fine. Those two or three hours will just breeze by quickly. A lot of talk show hosts believe that they have to be homers. They believe that they have to go for the home team or otherwise they’re not going to be liked and it’s like a popularity contest. I disagree with that. I think that you have to be real. I feel like I’m real when I’m doing my play by play. I can grab anybody from the stands to sit down beside me and in a conversational kind of tone, relay what’s going on and they would easily understand it. Sometimes you have to be blunt, too, even if it goes against the home team. I think that a lot of times talk show hosts miss that and that was something that I really tried to do, was express my honest opinion. It may not be popular, but it’s at least honest and that’s why you want to tune in. If you tune in to just hear nothing but rah-rah and a mutual admiration society then I’m sorry but you might want to change the dial as far as talk show hosts are concerned.” Q: Have you ever thrown in an old tape and listen to how bad you were back then? Massey: “I did that probably about six months ago. I found an old tape that was probably my first or second game that I ever did play by play for women’s basketball and it was Radford at Coastal Carolina. I just laughed. I was so terrible, and to think that if I thought I was good back then, to put portions of that on a demo tape, which I never did, that I would’ve never gotten a job in broadcasting. I was that terrible and that’s a humbling experience. When you go back and listen and get brought down to reality. Even back then you might have thought you did an alright job for starting out and then you listen to it and you’re like “Whoa!” Obviously I’m better now and that’s with repetition.” Q: What are your goals for the future? Massey: “I want to be the voice of a university. I can go around and talk to booster clubs, do football and men’s basketball and help groom people that do want to aspire to be sports broadcasters. They may have to start out as a women’s basketball play by play broadcaster or do Olympic sports which I currently do right now and I’m just having a blast with that. I also would love to work overseas. I follow a lot of international sports and that’s really not a market that has been tapped into by Americans. I think it would be so awesome to call rugby, or cricket or Australian Rules football; so something along those lines. If I can’t work domestically, I’d love to work overseas.” Q: What are some words of wisdom that you could offer an aspiring broadcaster? Massey: “I would say take the first thing; take the first opportunity that is offered to you or that you ask about. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you see someone that you look up to in the field, ask them to give you some advice. Like I just said, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Take the first opportunity that you get because that’s your foot in the door. Make as many contacts as possible because in sports broadcasting, just like a lot of things in life, it’s not necessarily what you know, but who you know. Do as much as possible and be a multi-tasker. I wrote for the Roanoke Times, and I did TV, and I do radio, so I’ve done all three. Be diverse and then after some time in all three of those, if you can manage to do them all at the same time, then you’ll have a better understanding of what fits you, and then you can narrow your focus toward a given medium and go full speed ahead.” Q: Any other tricks of the trade you can offer? Massey: “Don’t always assume that your audience has followed you through the entire broadcast. Don’t be afraid to recap. Recap every 10 minutes. If you’re in sports, do a game reset. You see a lot of news broadcasts these days that will come on at the top of the hour and tease what stories are coming up. Then at the bottom of the hour, they’ll recap the top stories just in case you missed it. I think that bodes well and holds true when you’re trying to translate that to play by play. Also, don’t be afraid to do things for free. It’s a good way to get your name out there and it’s also a favor so people will remember you.”
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