Media Credentials

The word "producer" has many different meanings in sports media. ESPN and Golf Channel veteran Chris Datres has worn many hats as a highlight producer, graphics producer, and field producer — the last of which means he's the eyes and ears for news on the road. He's also worn many chest protectors and whistles as a longtime high school baseball umpire and basketball referee. We cover his beginnings...

Longtime golf announcer Lisa Cornwell joins the podcast with thoughts on the current state of the professional game -- which, she says, is a very different answer between the women and the men. A former pupil of David Leadbetter, Lisa won the Arkansas Women's State Championship four times, and played college golf with an eye towards a pro career. We trace her pivot from playing golf to broadcastin...

Will sports fans continue to search for their favorite teams on streaming services behind paywalls? What are the LIV Golf broadcasts doing to improve or change sports TV? Will Tiger and Rory's TGL work? Will Tiger play the PGA Tour Champions when he turns 50? Jack Graham is the man to ask. A former VP of Live Tournaments at Golf Channel and a longtime veteran of ABC and NBC, Jack has produced nume...

Grant Boone works as a golf announcer for NBC and Golf Channel, primarily on the LPGA Tour. His prior experience includes coverage of Amen Corner for the Masters on CBS, plus work in dozens of sports for ESPN, Turner and Fox. In this episode we discuss the 2024 US Women's Open, the state of the LPGA, what the LIV Golf rift has done to the men's game, and get some detail on Grant's uncle Pat.  

In 1975, a cinematographer from New Jersey named Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam -- a wearable rig with counterweights that enabled camera operators to create shots that were never before imaginable. Nearly 50 years later, Steadicam shots are everywhere in movies and TV. The Steadicam revolutionized sports television. My guest on this episode is one of the best in the business. Mike Germond m...

The month of May brings the onset of college golf's postseason. The men's and women's fields for the 2024 NCAA Golf Championships were announced on Golf Channel at the end of April; with regional play beginning May 6, Steve Burkowski joined the podcast to handicap the fields. "Burko" has been with Golf Channel for over 20 years, and has carved out a niche as the go-to resource for college and amat...

Dave Mishkin has been the radio voice of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning for over 20 years, and recently published a fiction novel called "Blind Squirrel." As he tells it, the book is hockey-adjacent, and tells the story of Noah, a former pro hockey player who deals with mental health issues. As an aspiring writer myself, I was interested in hearing about Dave's process in writing. In this episode,...

Ann Liguori wears many hats: sports journalist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. She was the first woman to host a call-in show on New York's WFAN, the original sports talk radio station in the US. She's covered multiple majors in golf and tennis, has reported from the Olympics, Ryder Cups, and Solheim Cups, and is perhaps best known for the long-running cable series "Sports Innerview wit...

Ethan Ritz is one of the smartest people I know. Grew up in Virginia, played college lacrosse at Tennessee, worked for Golf Channel for many years as a graphics producer and now holds a similar role at LIV Golf and farms himself out as a production manager. He's been there and done that, including the Olympics, the Ryder Cup, and all of golf's majors. We are a killer team at bar trivia nights. Nob...

Cy Cyr (pronounced 'sigh sear') is an acclaimed photographer based in Orlando. His sports credits include Golf Channel, NBC, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, and ESPN, and he's a go-to photog for the PGA Tour. Beyond sports, Cy is highly regarded in editorial, commercial, and portrait work, with clients like Mitsubishi, Yamaha, and Discovery Channel. He's been at this for over 25 years, a passion...

Dave Revsine is the lead studio host and a play-by-play announcer for the Big Ten Network. He's one of my oldest friends in the business, going back to the days of ESPN and the original launch of ESPNEWS. In this episode, we talk about his path from Chicago to an investment banking job he hated, his return to broadcasting, and how ESPN and the Big Ten Network changed his life. He describes his fam...

LeslieAnne Wade has enjoyed a remarkable career in public relations and communications, much of it in the sports space. After working in sports information at the college level, she moved to USA Network, where she handled PR for a variety of events, including the first Ryder Cup to be televised live from Europe. She is perhaps best known for her tenure at CBS Sports, where she rose to the level of...

Todd Wright is one of my oldest friends in the business. He's known for "All Night with Todd Wright," a national show on ESPN Radio that he started in 1996. He was also on nationwide on Sporting News Radio, and made frequent appearances on local radio in Tampa, where he still lives. We worked together for several years at the old Sun Sports, where Todd was a panelist on our talk shows. Now in semi...

For an Englishman, Gary Christian has an All-American story. Coming from a working class background in Britain, he learned to play golf with a set of cut-down, hickory-shafted clubs. A successful amateur career led to a scholarship at a junior college in Alabama, where he played well enough to transfer to Auburn. Turning pro at the age of 28, he played minitours all over the US, eventually graduat...

In 1988, a new regional sports network was launched in Tallahassee, Florida. Called 'Sunshine Network,' its first property was Florida State University, and the first announcer for FSU sports was Paul Kennedy. 36 years later, Paul is still broadcasting Florida sports. He was on the mic when the Orlando Magic played their first game; same for the Tampa Bay Lightning. He's done play-by-play for the...

Jerry Foltz is a golf lifer. He picked up the game as a kid in Las Vegas, was an All-American in college at the University of Arizona, and then (in his words) "backed into" a career in golf broadcasting that started at Golf Channel and now continues with LIV Golf. In all, he's had well over 20 years on a microphone. In this episode, we trace his path to television and get right to it about his dec...

Mike Soltys spent 43 years at ESPN -- as he puts it, 98 percent of the company's history. Originally hired as an unpaid intern by ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen, Mike rose to the very top of the Worldwide Leader's public relations department, documenting the biggest sporting events in the world and managing the explosive growth of the ESPN brand. He departed ESPN in June of 2023, part of cost-cutting...

If it happened in golf in the last 40 years, Ron Sirak probably saw it, and wrote about it. He's a former senior writer and executive editor for Golf Digest and Golf World magazines and a longtime contributor to Golf Channel. A champion of the women's game, he might be the only media member to cover all of the men's and women's major championships in the same year -- a feat he's accomplished multi...

Joe "Stapes" Stapleton is a star in the poker world -- as he once put it, he's "poker-famous." He's a longtime poker commentator with credits that include PokerStars, The World Series of Poker, The Big Game, and Poker Night in America. In a wide-ranging and thoughtful conversation, he outlines his path from upstate New York to Hollywood, where he's also a stand-up comic and host of the popular "Po...

In 2018, the US Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited sports gambling outside of Nevada. In the years since, more and more states have legalized sports betting, and sports media has fully embraced 'the line' as content. Steve Rubenfaer, CEO of BettorTakes, walks us through the trends in the industry and outlines his BettorTakes app -- a product that analyzes your betting history to make...

The video game industry did $235 billion in revenue in 2022, and that number is expected to jump to $321 billion by 2026. Six of the 20 best-selling games in '22 were sports titles, and two of the top 7 in sales are produced by Electronic Arts, or EA. Ray Almeda, a former gaming journalist, is now the Global PR Lead for EA's sports portfolio, overseeing the NHL and PGA TOUR franchises, among sever...

You're watching a tournament on Golf Channel, and a celebrity drops by the booth for a visit. Maybe you're watching Live From early in the week at a major championship, and Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy joins the announcers on set. Ever wonder who sets that up? Alex Russell is part of a two-woman team at NBC / Golf Channel responsible for contacting and booking those guests, as well as maintainin...

Dan Ballister is a Naval Academy grad and former Surface Warfare Officer who has diverse experience in business. He oversaw digital media for the NBA as part of 20 years in digital media and internet advertising. He tells the story of how a compliment at an Army-Navy tailgate turned into The General's Hot Sauce, a brand that creates employment opportunities for Veterans and donates a meaningful pe...

As a kid growing up in Miami, Alex Gimenez dreamed of working in baseball. That dream carried him to Cornell University, where he faced a crossroad: pursuing a career in broadcasting, or choosing a path that would lead him into a front office. Now the Manager of Major League Operations and Professional Scouting for the Boston Red Sox, Alex recounts how his love for the game developed and how his e...

My guest on this episode is a 7-time Emmy winner as a sports journalist. A three sport star in high school, he played college football and later had a brief stint in minor league baseball. Today, he teaches media and production at the college level while also hosting a nationally syndicated podcast and running youth sports camps, and is prominently featured in a recent Netflix documentary. By any...