WFUV Sports – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:51:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png WFUV Sports – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Behind the Mic: An Inside Look at a WFUV Sports Broadcast https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/behind-the-mic-an-inside-look-at-a-wfuv-sports-broadcast/ Thu, 21 Dec 2023 22:34:34 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=180382 Lou Orlando and Brian Rabacs prepare to broadcast the Fordham–Lehigh football game. Photos by Kelly Prinz and Hector Martinez. Video by Kelly Prinz.

Every year, students broadcast dozens of Fordham sporting events on WFUV (90.7 FM, wfuv.org). And each live broadcast—from football to basketball, water polo, softball, and beyond—requires the work of a team of on-air talent, behind-the-scenes producers, studio hosts, and more.

It’s an experience that has helped launch countless careers since 1947, when the station was founded. That fall, a Fordham junior and future Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, called the Fordham-Georgetown football game “by Western Union wire, some three hundred miles from the actual scene,” he wrote in The Fordham Ram, providing a sense of the way “a quiet radio studio in Keating Hall” was “transformed into a beehive of activity, where at least ten men scurry busily but without sound to the staccato beat of the telegrapher’s key.”

Since then, the technology has changed but the character of the experience is pretty much the same. And the WFUV sports legacy has grown to include Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the Yankees; Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, voice of the Knicks; Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, voice of the Nets; Dan D’Uva, FCRH ’09, voice of the Vegas Golden Knights; and Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, host of Around the Horn on ESPN, among others.

“It’s incredible,” said Julia Moss, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2023 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public media at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “Words could never do it justice, what WFUV does just to get you prepared for the real world. Specifically in New York, people look for WFUV on resumes—for good reason.”

Students work in a radio studio
John Warner (right) serves as the studio host for the Fordham–Lehigh game, with Julia Moss (left) working as the studio producer.

For students like John Warner, a junior in the Gabelli School of Business, being part of a broadcast crew is a dream come true.

“I was that kid when I was very little, playing fake announcer in my head while running around with a football or running around with a Wiffle ball,” he said with a smile. “Being able to do that at the level WFUV allows us to, it’s pretty amazing.”

In October, Fordham Magazine joined Warner and his fellow WFUV crew members for the annual Homecoming game at Rose Hill, when Fordham football rallied for a last-second victory against Lehigh. Here’s a glimpse of what the experience was like behind the airwaves.

10:31 a.m. The station, located in the basement of Keating Hall, begins to fill with students who are a part of the gameday crew, which is supervised by Bobby Ciafardini, sports director for WFUV.

Will Tallant, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and the on-site producer for the game, packs the broadcast kit—headsets, microphones, and other pieces of equipment—before he and play-by-play announcer Lou Orlando, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and color analyst Brian Rabacs, a senior in the Gabelli School of Business, head across Constitution Row to the broadcast booth at Moglia Stadium. It’s a wet walk, with a steady rain coming down.

10:52 a.m. Julia Moss, the game’s studio producer, gets settled behind the board in Studio 2. “When I’m producing, I make sure [the broadcast] is going, the highlights are going, the engineering is going,” says Moss, who is also the sports manager for the station.

There’s an additional challenge this morning: Some members of the WFUV sports staff are in the main sports studio to pretape interviews for One on One, New York’s longest-running sports call-in show. That means that while the microphones are live, Moss and her gameday crew need to find creative ways to communicate with each other without making a sound.

“We do a lot of nonverbal cues—like your highlights,” she explains, gesturing to Warner, who will be hosting the halftime and postgame shows that day. “I always count him down, ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1,’” she says, “but [only] with hand signals.”

“We also go on Snapchat—black screen—and then type something and make it bigger,” she says, showing how she holds her phone up over the board to communicate with Warner and Chris Carrino, the update anchor, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill—and the son of Brooklyn Nets broadcaster Chris Carrino, who got his professional start at WFUV in the late 1980s.

Students work in a radio studio.
In the studios of WFUV, a team of students runs the Fordham football broadcasts.

Working as a Team

11:32 a.m. Orlando and Rabacs, who had already called at least five games together in 2023, go over their notes for the broadcast. “I think it helps a lot—having the same crew together, you can kind of feel each other out, know what each other’s tendencies are,” Rabacs says. “Also, Lou and I are very close friends.”

Earlier in the week, Orlando had finished his “boards,” where he keeps details about each team to reference during the broadcast. But as he starts to lay them out, he realizes that the spot where he usually keeps them is wet, as the window in the booth was slightly open to allow for the broadcast team’s “crowd mic” to capture the sounds of the fans.

A broadcast makes game notes
Lou Orlando makes some final notes before calling the Fordham–Lehigh game.

He decides that taping the boards to the booth’s wall is the best solution to keep them dry.

12:07 p.m. Back in the studio, Moss and Crinieri go through all the pieces they’ll need for the broadcast. There’s a pregame interview with Fordham coach Joe Conlin, for example, spot promos for the station that feature alumni like NBA Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, and graphics for the station’s YouTube stream.

“I’m kind of like the glue that holds the production together,” Crinieri, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, says laughing. “If there’s a problem with the highlights, I go and help. If there’s something wrong with the Tieline, I’m in communication with the on-site producer to try and help any way I can.”

12:24 p.m. With the rain pouring down, the Tieline—the device used to connect the booth at Moglia Stadium to the main studio—goes down, and Crinieri’s help is needed.

After a few minutes of adjusting the connection, and a retest, Tallant says they’re ready to go again. “Now I’m making sure all the right buttons are pressed, the right levels are adjusted where they need to be,” he says as he turns the broadcasters’ microphones back off following the test. “So, they sound good. And they sound good in the studio as well.”

After troubleshooting the situation, Crinieri discusses a backup plan with Moss. If the line goes down again, the broadcasters would call into the studio on their phones.

Student broadcasters watch the game
Lou Orlando, Brian Rabacs, and Will Tallant look on as the Rams get set to kick off.

And We’re Live!

12:51 p.m. Crinieri checks in on the student trainees who are in the studio to cut audio highlights of big plays during the game. Some of those clips will be played on the air during the halftime and postgame shows.

Moments later, Moss officially “takes over the station” from WFUV DJ Delphine Blue by playing the prerecorded intro to the Fordham football pregame show, hosted by Rabacs and Orlando.

1:31 p.m. As the first quarter wraps up with Lehigh holding a 7-0 lead, Orlando and Rabacs send the broadcast back to the studio for a “scoreboard update.” For Carrino, that means highlighting scores from around college football—and other sports—in a minute or so.

It’s a tight window to fit in all the scores he wants to share, so after the update, he works with Warner to remove a few games from the list for the next update.

1:43 p.m. The game had started slow for Fordham, with rain-soaked conditions making it hard for the offense to get going, but with 12 minutes left in the half, quarterback CJ Montes runs the ball in from the 4-yard line for the Rams’ first touchdown of the day, tying the game at 7.

For the studio crew, that means cutting the first Fordham highlight of the day. The live broadcast is fed into two computers in the newsroom, and trainees, under Crinieri’s supervision, are responsible for capturing that piece of the recording and saving it as a new audio file.

Students work at computers in a newsroom
WFUV Sports trainees cut audio highlights during the game.

2:13 p.m. With halftime approaching, Moss checks in with Warner to confirm the highlights she has ready. “It’s super collaborative because I have to make sure [the team knows] what I’m putting in here,” she says, gesturing to the audio board. “He has to narrate it and then I play it, so we’re constantly making sure the script is exactly the order that I have.”

Warner, meanwhile, has spent the game tracking plays and writing notes about some of the big moments in order to host the halftime show. “As those come in, I’m simultaneously writing one- to two-sentence scripts,” he says. “It’s fun too because it’s an opportunity to insert a little bit of your personality.”

Brandon Peskin lining up to kick a field goal.
Brandon Peskin lining up to kick a field goal.

A Walk-Off Win

4:03 p.m. With just about 11 minutes to go in the game, Fordham trails by 11 points in front of a resilient Homecoming crowd that has been cheering on the Rams through hours of pouring rain. But now, as the rain eases up, the Fordham offense really turns it on.

First, CJ Montes throws a 14-yard touchdown pass to MJ Wright. Next, Brandon Peskin kicks a field goal to tie the game at 35. With less than a minute to go, the Rams get the ball back and drive 62 yards on seven plays, including an 11-yard reception by Garrett Cody, who goes out of bounds with one second on the clock.

“Fordham and Lehigh tied at 35, Fordham looking for their first conference win of the season,” Orlando tells listeners as Peskin returns to the field to attempt the game-winning kick. “Forty-four yards out, the kick from Peskin—it’s up, it’s through the uprights! Fordham wins 38-35, Brandon Peskin the hero in the final second!”

As Orlando’s voice crescendos in the booth, fans cheer in the stands, and the Rams rush Peskin on the field before heading to the Victory Bell in front of the Rose Hill Gym to celebrate their Homecoming win.

A family cheers in the stands.
A family cheers in the stands at Homecoming.
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From WFUV to Yankees Radio: Behind the Scenes with Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/from-wfuv-to-yankees-radio-behind-the-scenes-with-justin-shackil-and-emmanuel-berbari/ Thu, 28 Sep 2023 21:07:44 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=177133 When legendary New York Yankees broadcasters John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman decided not to travel with the team for a September series in Pittsburgh, two Fordham and WFUV Sports alumni—Justin Shackil, FCRH ’09, and Emmanuel Berbari, FCRH ’21—were there to answer the call.

Shackil said that he had been told earlier in the year to keep the weekend free to potentially fill in for the broadcast, but the news came as a surprise to Berbari.

“I was at WFAN about a month before just doing a regular shift, and I went to talk to one of my bosses—I thought it was going to be a five-minute-long catchup,” he said, laughing. “Then they asked me if I had ever been to Pittsburgh. … I walked out of it like, ‘Wow, I’m going to be doing the series with Justin.’”

From Mentee to Co-Broadcaster

While this was the first time the two teamed up for a broadcast, their relationship goes back to 2017, when Berbari was just a first-year student at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, and he sent broadcasting tapes to Shackil for feedback.

“There’s a particular sort of pride that I’ve had watching him flourish in these roles at a young age,” Shackil said, “and then to share a booth that is at a really high level—it was really comfortable, because I’ve known about Emmanuel’s work, his cadence and rhythm, so there was no easing-in period. And we’re cut from the same cloth: WFUV.”

The WFUV Legacy

Both Shackil and Berbari said that their approach to calling games stems from Marty Glickman, the famous Knicks, Jets, and Giants broadcaster who became an advisor to WFUV Sports in the late 1980s. Glickman brought on Bob Ahrens, who became WFUV’s first full-time executive sports director and carried on his teachings.

“Consider the listener—that’s a Marty Glickman credo,” Berbari said. “I try to put myself in the seat of the one person that could be driving on the highway listening, and what do they need to know in this moment?”

Shackil said that he draws on lessons he learned from Ahrens.

“I’m really all about the fundamentals of describe, describe, describe, because our job is to inform and educate, and at the same time, entertain as best we can,” he said.

A look behind the scenes at the Yankees booth in Pittsburgh.

Working for the Yankees

Even when they’re not calling the games, both are involved with Yankees broadcasts. Shackil, who is the backup play-by-announcer, hosts the postgame show on the radio and fills in on the YES Network, in addition to calling boxing matches and hosting a podcast with legendary Yankees pitcher and announcer David Cone. Berbari fills in on the postgame when Shackil is calling the games, in addition to working on-air at WFAN and calling games for Siena College.

Both said that it’s been incredible to work with and learn from Sterling and Waldman.

“John, at 85 years of age, the energy stands out above everything—he’s so passionate,” Shackil said. “For Suzyn, she’s a Radio Hall of Famer, she’s a reporter at heart, she’s probably the best reporter in the Yankee sandbox—just the way she approaches the job is unmatched.”

Berbari and Shackil said that the opportunity to fill in for those legendary broadcasters—and work with each other—was an incredible experience.

“I kept thinking about how rare something like that is—not only getting to work with Justin—but I was thinking for us both in this booth, at the same time, at this level, what are the odds of that happening?” Berbari said.

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NFL Network Anchor Mike Yam Embraces a New Medium with Children’s Book https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/nfl-network-anchor-mike-yam-embraces-a-new-medium-with-childrens-book/ Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:09:55 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=175513 Football fans already recognize Mike Yam’s skill as a storyteller, but this season he’ll have a whole new audience: young readers. The NFL Network and SiriusXM sportscaster, a 2003 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill and an alumnus of WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, has released a picture book celebrating intercultural identity and cuisine. Inspired by his own life growing up with a Chinese immigrant father and an Italian mother, Fried Rice and Marinara shows kids that having a multicultural identity means having a unique, creative perspective. 

“I wanted … to have young readers see a multiethnic character in a lead role,” he said. “I also wanted to spark the thought that families with diverse backgrounds are normal. At times in my childhood, I thought I had to ‘pick a side,’ [but]  I really want young kids to be able to embrace their heritage and be proud of their background.”

Yam was inspired to write his debut book after a trip to a major chain bookstore during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. He found a skimpy few dozen children’s books featuring Asian male lead characters, an example, he felt, of the underrepresentation that persists in other media. 

In the picture book, it’s little Mikey Yam’s fourth birthday, and the menu for his party is causing a bit of a dilemma: Should he serve Chinese or Italian food? He decides he wants to honor both cultures and enlists his grandmothers to help him come up with a new fusion dish: fried rice with marinara sauce. It ends up being the talk of the town and uniting everyone.

This idea of honoring diversity yet coming together is one that Yam has shared before, in a number of op-eds on everything from immigration and racism to charting a path for future Asian American broadcasters.  

Since graduating from Fordham with a degree in communications, Yam, a former SportsCenter anchor on ESPN, has also been an active supporter of students at WFUV, leading workshops, listening to their demo tapes, and helping to connect them with internship and job opportunities.

A few years ago, as a guest on WFUV Sports’ “Off the Air” podcast, Yam told listeners that before he got to Fordham, his plan was to become a pediatrician. Chemistry turned out not to be his “specialty,” though, so he decided to switch gears. He thought back to his first year, when one of his friends got the opportunity to go cover a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden—thanks to his WFUV press credentials. So, Yam walked over to the station and met with Bob Ahrens, then executive producer and sports director at WFUV.

“I joined the radio station. … I’d argue it’s the best training ground in the country if you want to be a sportscaster,” he said. “And there’s some great programs nationally, but my heart’s always in the Bronx.”

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5 Things to Know About Vegas Golden Knights Broadcaster Dan D’Uva https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/5-things-to-know-about-vegas-golden-knights-broadcaster-dan-duva/ Fri, 23 Jun 2023 16:36:13 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=174507 “The Golden Knights are going to make that dream a reality. A devotion to destiny. Misfits to champions. The Vegas Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup in 2023!”

That was how Fordham graduate Dan D’Uva, FCRH ’09, described the celebratory moment in Las Vegas on June 13, when the Golden Knights defeated the Florida Panthers to earn their first National Hockey League title.

“The Silver State is home to the greatest silver trophy in all of sports,” he quipped.

https://twitter.com/vgkradionetwork/status/1668831546554580992?s=46&t=okpAry6fIw3763Zveyye0A

D’Uva, who has been the radio voice of the Golden Knights since the team was founded in 2017, pursued broadcasting as a high school student and at Syracuse University before transferring to Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2006.

At Fordham, he majored in communication and media studies while working in the sports department at WFUV, the University’s public media station, which has been launching the careers of sports broadcasters since the late 1940s. For D’Uva, the experience led to his first job in hockey.

Here are five other things to know about the voice of the Golden Knights.

1. He’s living out his childhood dream.

D’Uva broadcast his first hockey game in 2000, when he was just a 14-year-old student at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey. In 2018, when the Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final, he told The Record that he listened to a recording of that first game.

“I popped in that micro-cassette tape—it still works—and thought, ‘Gee, if you could have told this 14-year-old kid that he would be broadcasting the Stanley Cup Final for a team in Las Vegas, he’d be pretty pumped,’” D’Uva said. “He might not believe you, but he’d be pretty pumped.”

2. One of his mentors is Hall of Fame hockey broadcaster Mike “Doc” Emrick.

D’Uva was in high school when he first met Emrick, who was then the voice of the New Jersey Devils. In an interview with Off the Air, a WFUV Sports podcast, D’Uva said he and a friend, both aspiring broadcasters, would station themselves near the TV and radio broadcast booths at Devils games “to see who was off the air, who could we bother right now.”

That led to a relationship where “you pass along a tape and exchange some emails,” D’Uva said, noting that Emrick listened to a recording of D’Uva’s high school broadcast and generously offered some advice and encouragement.

Fast forward a few years, and their paths crossed again, this time at Fordham, where Emrick was the featured guest at a WFUV Sports workshop.

“I remember walking with Doc from Keating Hall to the Metro-North station … and I’m not sure what questions I asked Doc in that 10-minute walk, but I guess there was something in there that piqued his interest to the point where he recognized I wasn’t just doing this as a hobby and I was expecting to pursue this as a career,” D’Uva recalled on the Off the Air podcast. “And then we continued to see each other.”

D’Uva covered the Devils for WFUV Sports, including the opening night of their Newark arena in 2007. Two years later, when he applied for a job calling games for the Trenton Devils, the team’s minor league affiliate, he wrote to Emrick, who “called me right after he received the email and gave me a little bit of a pep talk.”

D’Uva got the job in 2009, the same year he graduated from Fordham.

“Doc’s just been a great person to learn from, a great friend, and I’m blessed to recognize him as a friend,” D’Uva said.

3. A Fordham alumni connection helped him gain hockey broadcasting experience.

When he was at Fordham, D’Uva got in touch with Phil Giubileo, GABELLI ’95, who at the time was the play-by-play announcer for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, a minor league hockey team.

“He would invite me to go out there, and I could see how he was doing his thing and I could sit in what was Webster Bank Arena at the time and do practice tapes,” D’Uva told the Off the Air podcast. It gave him a chance to “get a feel for the professional game,” he said, “and that was thanks to Phil.”

One of the tapes he recorded in Bridgeport helped him get the job with the Trenton Devils, D’Uva said.

Three men talk on a podcast
Dan D’Uva talks with WFUV Sports students

4. He carries forward the legacy of Marty Glickman.

In the late 1980s, Marty Glickman—the legendary New York Knicks, Giants, and Jets broadcaster—began working as an advisor to students at WFUV, coaching them while laying the foundation for the station’s current training program.

While D’Uva himself wasn’t trained by Glickman, who died in 2001, he listened to him on the radio growing up as a Jets fan in New Jersey and was inspired by his “tremendous admonition” to “have empathy” and always “consider the listener,” he told the Off the Air podcast.

D’Uva also feels a deeper connection to Glickman given their ties to both Syracuse University, where Glickman earned a bachelor’s degree and where D’Uva studied and has served as an adjunct professor, and Fordham.

“It’s great for me to have a connection to two great universities with so much history in sports broadcasting and so many alumni involved in this field,” D’Uva said. “I’m very proud of both of those places—I’ve got a section of the closet that’s dedicated to [Syracuse] orange and a section of the closet that’s dedicated to [Fordham] maroon.”

5. He supports the next generation of sports broadcasters.

D’Uva not only supports the students at WFUV through his appearances on shows, including One on One, the longest-running sports call-in show in New York City, but he also serves as media consultant for the Chatham Anglers of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

D’Uva, who previously called games in the Cape Cod league himself, helped the team create what Bryan Curtis of The Ringer has called “The Cape Cod Finishing School for Broadcasters.” Each summer, two aspiring broadcasters call games for the team and receive coaching from D’Uva. Curtis described him as “a gentle but exacting mentor, as if [Vin] Scully were crossbred with Yoda.”

D’Uva’s message to aspiring broadcasters is simple: “Don’t be a pretender. You’re not acting the part of a broadcaster. You are a broadcaster.”

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Perfect Eloquence: A Tribute to the Late Vin Scully https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/perfect-eloquence-a-tribute-to-the-late-vin-scully/ Fri, 24 Feb 2023 18:58:25 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=168447 Vin Scully, the beloved voice of the Dodgers for 67 years, and of Major League Baseball on CBS and NBC, was known for his poetic yet plainspoken approach to sports broadcasting—and for the wisdom, humor, and humility he conveyed to people on and off the air. “Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be,” he’d say, inviting listeners to “pull up a chair” at the start of each broadcast. It was the familiar greeting of a master storyteller, and baseball fans everywhere felt like they were joining a friend.

Shortly after Scully died on August 2, 2022, at the age of 94, Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci used the Latin phrase eloquentia perfecta, or perfect eloquence, to describe Scully’s gift and well-honed craft. “Freshmen at Fordham, including Vin Scully, class of 1949, take a seminar class taught by the most accomplished faculty called eloquentia perfecta,” Verducci wrote. “It emerged from the rhetorical studies of the ancient Greeks, codified in Jesuit tradition in 1599. It refers to the ideal orator: a good person speaking well for the common good. It is based on humility: The speaker begins with the needs of the audience, not a personal agenda. Vin Scully was that ideal orator. A modern Socrates, only more revered.

“He was an amazing firsthand witness and chronicler of history. … And yet never did Vin place himself above the people and events he was there to chronicle.”

Typographic Portrait of Vin Scully by John Mavroudis

In a career spanning seven decades, Scully described some of the most memorable moments in baseball. He was erudite and eloquent, with exquisite timing and an ability to frame the drama as it unfolded. He could weave anecdotes about the players, literature, and history into the flow of the game, interrupting himself to describe a pitch without losing the thread of his tale or his listeners’ attention. But he also knew when to go silent and let the magical moment—and the roar of the crowd— speak for itself.

He received numerous awards throughout his career, including induction into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 1996, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016. “The game of baseball has a handful of signature sounds,” Obama said at the White House ceremony. “You hear the crack of the bat, you got the crowd singing in the seventh-inning stretch, and you’ve got the voice of Vin Scully.”

The Early Years

Scully was born in the Bronx after his parents immigrated from Ireland. He grew up in Washington Heights and attended Fordham Preparatory School. After graduating in 1944, he served briefly in the Navy before enrolling in Fordham College at Rose Hill, where he majored in communications. In 1947, he became one of the original voices of WFUV, the University’s radio station. He penned a sports column in The Fordham Ram, worked as a stringer for The New York Times, and sang in the Shaving Mugs, a campus barbershop quartet. For two seasons, he played outfield for the Fordham baseball team.

Five decades later, on May 20, 2000, Scully returned to Rose Hill to receive an honorary degree from the University and deliver the commencement address. He told graduates that the “four-letter words” he associated with Fordham were “home, love, and hope.” And he didn’t put himself above his audience: “It’s only me,” he said, “and I am one of you. … I walked the halls you walked. I sat in the same classrooms. I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams; drank coffee in the caf and played sports on your grassy fields.”

But Scully’s favorite place to be was behind the mic. He called Fordham baseball, basketball, and football games for WFUV. And in a 2020 documentary on the station’s celebrated sports department, he joked that he would even call games to himself while playing for the Rams. He recalled listening to games as a kid and being “so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game.”

The Voice of the Dodgers

After graduating from Fordham in 1949, Scully spent the summer at a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C., before he returned to New York to speak with the network about working there. Just a few days later, he received a call from Red Barber, the legendary CBS sports director and broadcaster, asking him to cover a college football game that Saturday. By spring, the 22-year-old Scully had joined Barber in the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast booth. When Barber left to work for the Yankees following the 1953 season, Scully became the team’s primary announcer, a position he held when the franchise moved to Los Angeles for the 1958 season and kept until he retired in 2016.

The highlights of his career are too numerous to recount in full, but in 1955, he called the final out of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series victory. He described Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, calling it “the greatest game ever pitched.”

He was behind the mic for another perfect game a decade later, by the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax on September 9, 1965. That game was not televised, but Scully’s descriptive, evocative call of the last inning helped listeners see and feel the drama. “And you can almost taste the pressure now,” he said after the second strike against the inning’s leadoff hitter, Chris Krug. “Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on, and steps back up to the plate.” Moments later, Scully said, “And there are 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.”

On April 8, 1974, the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta to play the Braves, whose veteran slugger, Hank Aaron, was one home run away from breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. In the fourth inning, Aaron stepped up to the plate with Scully behind the mic to describe a drama that would resonate far beyond the ballpark. “It’s a high drive into deep left-center field. Buckner goes back to the fence. It is gone!” Scully said, then let the crowd take the mic for 26 jubilant seconds before remarking on Aaron’s historic achievement: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

A dozen years later, Bill Buckner, the outfielder who watched Aaron’s recordbreaking home run sail just out of reach, would be at the infamous heart of another one of Scully’s most memorable calls. Now playing first base for the Boston Red Sox, Buckner and his teammates faced the New York Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. They were up two runs and only one out away from breaking the so-called Curse of the Bambino, having not won a World Series since trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. But the Mets staged a gritty comeback to tie the game in the 10th inning. Finally, the Mets’ Mookie Wilson hit a seemingly simple ground ball Buckner’s way. “Little roller up along first, behind the bag, it gets through Buckner!” Scully said, his voice rising. “Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!” Once again, he let the crowd roar—this time for nearly two minutes, as viewers were shown the replay of Buckner’s error, a delirious New York crowd, the jubilant Mets, and the despondent Red Sox. “If one picture is worth a thousand words,” Scully said when he returned to the mic, “you have seen about a million.”

The ‘Patron Saint of WFUV Sports’

Scully’s iconic style made him an inspiration for generations of sports broadcasters who followed in his footsteps at WFUV and at Fordham, including Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, the voice of the Yankees for the YES Network, who called Scully “the greatest broadcaster who ever lived.”

“Every game was a master’s class as he turned an inning into poetry. And as great as he was, he was just as nice. Class, elegance, and grace were all part of his humble but regal being,” Kay wrote. “His loss is heartbreaking as his golden voice is silenced, but he will live forever as an example of what to try and be on and off mic. RIP Mr. Scully, and rest easy knowing how much you made a difference to all who met you and had the joy of listening to you.”

In the 2020 documentary on WFUV sports, Hall of Fame basketball broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, described what made Scully the best: “His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” Breen said. “It made you … [want] to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air.”

Bob Ahrens, WFUV’s sports director for 20 years before his retirement in 2017, said Scully always made time for the students. They usually interviewed him about once a year for the weekly One on One call-in show, and Ahrens said Scully hosted at least two workshops over the phone. “They can’t see him in person, and the control room is packed,” Ahrens said. “He loved FUV, he loved Fordham, and he was always willing to help out.”

In 2008, he became the first recipient of WFUV’s Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting, a lifetime achievement award that Breen accepted last fall and Kay took home in 2018. “To be given an award with Vin Scully’s name on it is beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” Kay said at the awards ceremony. “He is the patron saint of WFUV sports, he is the patron saint of anybody who does baseball play-by-play. He is the best at what he’s done.”

Mike Watts, GABELLI ’14, who calls games for ESPN, Westwood One, and other networks, said that Scully inspired him to come to Fordham. “There is no WFUV sports without Vin Scully,” Watts said. “His name gave all of us credibility. To have the greatest at anything come from your school, your radio station, your program—it’s the light that all of us were following.”

‘Smile Because It Happened’

On October 2, 2016, Scully called his final game. Before heading to the playoffs, the Dodgers and the Giants—two teams with New York roots—concluded the regular season with a game in San Francisco. In the final inning, Scully said that he’d had a line in his head all year, a common, anonymous expression often mistakenly attributed to Dr. Seuss, he said. “The line is, ‘Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ And that’s really the way I feel about this remarkable opportunity I was given, and I was allowed to keep for all these years. … I have said enough for a lifetime, and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.”

—Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15, is an associate editor of this magazine. Chris Gosier and Ryan Stellabotte contributed to this article.

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WFUV at 75: Behind the Scenes at New York’s Home for Music Discovery https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/wfuv-at-75-behind-the-scenes-at-new-yorks-home-for-music-discovery/ Fri, 24 Feb 2023 17:57:12 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=168438 There was a familiar hum around the WFUV studios in late October, one that had been slowly coming back in recent months, after COVID-19 forced hosts, programmers, and engineers to figure out a way to work from home for more than a year, leaving the station mostly empty.

In the newsroom, Maya Sargent, a graduate fellow from Fordham’s public media program, sat at a computer editing What’s What, the station’s daily news podcast on current events, cultural news, and issues affecting the New York City area. Down a few seats, Sam Davis, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, chatted with Bobby Ciafardini, the station’s sports director, about the guests they’d feature on One on One, the city’s longest-running sports call-in show. A few hours earlier, Jim O’Hara, FCRH ’99, associate director of technical operations, met with several students who would document the next day’s recording session with beabadoobee, a Filipina British artist, in the station’s intimate Studio A setting.

Elsewhere, Rich McLaughlin, FCRH ’01, GABELLI ’10, the station’s program director, met with General Manager Chuck Singleton to review the rundown for the station’s On the Record event, which would take place the following week. And music director Russ Borris was finalizing details for the station’s annual Holiday Cheer concert—a lineup headlined by venerable indie rockers Spoon and featuring Lucius, Grammy-winning blues prodigy Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and the Brooklyn-based band Say She She.

But afternoon drive host Dennis Elsas tuned all of that out when he stepped up to the microphone in Studio 1. “That is Beck and ‘Loser’ from 1994. And new before that: Arctic Monkeys, ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’—here at WFUV,” Elsas said, then quipped “I’m here!” with comic timing and a smile that traveled hundreds of miles across the airwaves. He cued up the next song, and as he hit play, said, “Member-supported and supporting each other, it’s WFUV.”

It’s the kind of scene that has played out, almost hidden from sight, in Keating Hall on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus for more than 75 years. Before Dennis Elsas, there was Pete Fornatale, FCRH ’67, who created the station’s first pop music show as an undergrad in 1964. Before Sam Davis, there was Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, who launched One on One as a student and went on to become a Hall of Fame basketball journalist; and there was Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, the late, legendary baseball broadcaster who was among WFUV’s original voices. Before Maya Sargent, there was Alice Gainer, FCRH ’04, the Emmy Award–winning anchor and reporter at WCBS-TV, New York; and Charles Osgood, FCRH ’54, former longtime host of CBS Sunday Morning.

Clockwise from left: Longtime DJ Darren DeVivo, GABELLI ’87; legendary sports broadcaster Vin Scully, FCRH ’49; Michelle Zauner, lead singer of Japanese Breakfast; Beck; Lizzo; midday host Alisa Ali, PCS ’14; Brandi Carlile; Rita Houston, the late, longtime WFUV tastemaker; Paul Simon; and Pete Fornatale, FCRH ’67, the late DJ whose mid-’60s show, Campus Caravan, brought rock music to WFUV. (Collage by Tim Robinson)

A Unique Beginning

“1947 was quite a year,” Fordham Provost Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., told the crowd of more than 200 attendees at WFUV’s On the Record event, held November 2 on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. “Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and the transistor was invented. And at Rose Hill, New York’s first noncommercial, educational FM station signed on the airwaves. The University’s 25th president, Robert Gannon, S.J., remarked that ‘Fordham in her time has seen many beginnings. Today, we mark a beginning that is unique.’”

In mid-October, the University’s recently installed 33rd president, Tania Tetlow—who had her own unique beginning at Fordham as the first woman and first layperson to lead the institution—stood onstage in front of Walsh Family Library. “We’re here to celebrate 75 years of WFUV, the coolest thing about Fordham University,” she said during a station-organized concert that was part of the inauguration festivities. The station still trains “students who are learning journalism and sports broadcasting and everything about the industry,” and now, in addition to serving the city, it reaches “300,000 listeners in all 50 states—Idaho and Hawaii listen to WFUV—and we’re just so proud of what it is.”

Throughout its 75-year history, many things have changed. For starters, in the mid-1980s, the station became a professionally run NPR affiliate, with ample training and broadcast opportunities for students. Darren DeVivo, GABELLI ’87, now the station’s Saturday afternoon and weeknight host, was working at the station as a Fordham undergraduate at that time.

Darren DeVivo, GABELLI ’87, the station’s Saturday afternoon and weeknight host

“When I got here, there was a general manager who was a paid Fordham employee. We had a chief engineer who was a paid employee from Fordham, and everyone else was students—program director, news director, music director, all student-run,” he said. “If you had some skills or had some abilities, you worked your way up.”

In 1985, Ralph Jennings, Ph.D., was hired as the station’s general manager. He brought a fresh vision to the station, working to create an authentic sound, filled with more consistent, impactful programming that would attract an audience and help the station receive financial assistance to support its growth.

“You’re bringing change to what had been a college station—there’s a mix of responses to that,” said Singleton, who started as the station’s first professional news director in 1987 and later served as program director before succeeding Jennings as general manager in 2011. “I think for a lot of alums and students at the time, there was a fear that the students would just be swept out.

But Singleton, who expanded WFUV’s coverage of community issues and helped develop its robust news journalism training program, said that WFUV strived to employ a different model. “It’s not the pure student station, it’s not the pure professional public station: It’s a professional, public station with a lot of public service impact, but one where students are a core part of this. And those opportunities [for students] are really core to the station’s mission.”

In the late 1980s, there was also a shift overall in the field of radio, according to Singleton. “You couldn’t offer a little bit of this and a little bit of that—it wouldn’t get you anywhere,” he said. “So there was new understanding that for a public radio station to attract a loyal audience, you had to be consistent in what you were offering.” Jennings and his team studied the market and found “holes that we could fill,” Singleton said, and at the time, that was primarily singer-songwriters in an “acoustic vein.”

“That format—by the early ’90s—I think it was the first sparks of what it is that we have today,” Singleton said. He noted that these efforts, in addition to technological advances like internet streaming, have paid off and allowed the station to expand its reach: WFUV went from having around 30,000 to 50,000 listeners a week in the 1980s to around 325,000 a week today. At times, the station has reached as many as 450,000 listeners.

Today, staff and students at WFUV are using new platforms like TikTok and podcasts to reach audiences beyond the radio dial. The station’s studios have even moved—from the third floor of Keating Hall to bigger, state-of-the-art studios on the lower level of the Rose Hill campus’ signature academic building. But despite all of its iterations and evolutions, WFUV’s mission and goals have remained consistent—to be a home of music discovery in New York; to be a training ground for the next generation of journalists, broadcasters, and behind-the-scenes wizards; and to provide the community with significant public service.

Allen Wang, a Gabelli School junior who is an audio engineer for WFUV, adjusts a microphone in Studio A.

Home of Music Discovery

Throughout its history, WFUV has played a variety of music—from opera and jazz in its early decades to rock in the ’60s and ’70s. But it really found its place more than a quarter century ago, as commercial radio stations began making their playlists “tighter and tighter,” according to Singleton. That left less space for DJs “who had done great creative work”—FM rock pioneers like Dennis Elsas, Vin Scelsa, Pete Fornatale, and Meg Griffin, he said. Elsas, whose legendary career has included a famous two-hour in-depth interview with John Lennon of the Beatles, said that shift came for him after working in commercial radio for more than 25 years. More and more “shock jocks” were coming in and classic rock DJs like himself were being phased out. When he heard about an opening at WFUV in 2000, he jumped at the chance.

“I felt at times challenged because while I was playing a lot of music that I was very familiar with, I was also learning on the job because we were digging way deeper into blues and some more esoteric music,” he said, adding that this allowed him to “expand my musical horizons even further.”

Elsas said that he believes the station’s tagline—Music Discovery Starts Here—fits its work in more ways than one. “You could discover new music, which you couldn’t necessarily find on any other station on the market, and I think it also gave us the opportunity to say you could rediscover old favorites,” he said, adding that he’s had his own discoveries at WFUV, including the pleasure of working with and mentoring students.

Legendary DJ Dennis Elsas hosts the afternoon drive for WFUV.

DeVivo said that he personally has enjoyed finding new music and sharing it with his audience. “A band like the Jayhawks is a good example, [or] singer–songwriter Freedy Johnston—I remember the day that the album came in, and I put it in and go, ‘Holy smokes! Why don’t we hear this on whatever commercial rock station, because these guys are great,’” he said.

WFUV’s national reputation as a home for music discovery can be traced to Rita Houston, who delighted in introducing listeners to artists from a wide range of genres—folk, blues, indie rock, hip-hop, electronica, and more—and who came to be regarded not only as a tastemaker in the industry but also a trusted mentor and friend to the stars.

For more than 25 years at the station, in her roles as a DJ, music director, and program director—and with her unerring ear for talent—Houston helped elevate the careers of countless artists, including Norah Jones, Brandi Carlile, and Mumford and Sons. When Houston died of ovarian cancer in 2020 at age 59, Carlile recalled how Houston was “the very first person to play my music on the radio.” She also helped Carlile feel accepted and welcome as a fellow LGBTQ woman. Carlile recalled a time when she was showing Houston photos, and a picture of her girlfriend popped up on her phone.

“‘Is that your plus one?’” Houston asked. “‘It’s OK to talk about it.’ She could immediately tell that I was uneasy with people in the music business knowing I was gay,” said Carlile, who was 22 years old at the time.

But Houston, who joined WFUV in the mid-1990s, didn’t stop at artists. She also helped launch the careers of WFUV employees, including McLaughlin, who succeeded her as program director, and Alisa Ali, PCS’14, the station’s midday host, who has helped carry forward Houston’s passion for supporting artists, particularly local musicians.

Houston is the reason Ali came to WFUV—and Fordham—in the first place. She was listening to WFUV, thinking about how she’d love to work there, when she heard Houston say that she was going to give a talk at the Museum of Television & Radio.

“And like any naive person, I was like, ‘I’ll just go see Rita and ask her if I could get a job there and she’ll give it to me,’” she said. So Ali went to Houston’s talk and waited around to chat with her after. “And I’m like, ‘Hi, I love the station. Can I work here?’” she said, smiling at the memory. “She’s like, ‘That’s cute. No, of course you can’t. You have no experience.’”

Ali said that Houston paused and asked her if she was a Fordham student, which was “the only way you could work at FUV” without having any experience in radio.

“I went home and looked up ‘how do you enroll in Fordham University?’” she said. “I was kind of at a crossroads in my life because I didn’t really like what I was doing. And since I never graduated college, I was like, ‘Well if I don’t get a job at WFUV, at least I’ll have a college education.’

“The day after I was accepted, I came back to the station. I was like, ‘Hi, remember me from the talk? I go to school here now. May I have a job now?’” Ali said. “[Houston] was like, ‘All right, kid. I like you. You remind me a lot of myself.’”

At that point, Houston was the midday host and music director, and Ali became a production assistant. She worked her way up to morning show producer and then host of The Alternate Side, which allowed her to discover and play new artists. More recently, as the midday host, she created a segment called “NY Slice,” which features local musicians from the tristate area.

“In New York City, we have so many opportunities to see huge bands, and I think a lot of these little bands get overshadowed,” she said, describing how she came up with the idea for the segment. “Local bands actually have it easier outside of New York City—it’s a disadvantage to be a local, small band in New York City. So I just want to support these people.”

That support has helped artists including Rén with the Mane and Blonde Otter. The two bands were featured on “NY Slice” and later chosen to perform at the October concert following the inauguration of Tania Tetlow. “I love you, Alisa Ali!” Rénee Orshan, the artist behind Rén with the Mane, said from the stage that night, adding that Ali and WFUV are the “only radio station” to play their music.

The concert also featured New Orleans’ legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which has been celebrating its 60th anniversary with a national tour. The group marched down Old Elm Road with the horn section playing the gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away.” As they reached the stage, Tetlow, who grew up in New Orleans, added her own soaring voice to the mix to the delight of the crowd. She later said she was grateful to WFUV and to all the performers for helping her “feel at home here at Fordham.”

Greater Connection to the Artists

The inauguration concert was a prime example of WFUV tying its penchant for music discovery to its commitment to live music. O’Hara estimated that in a typical year, the station hosts about 200 sessions in Studio A and 20 to 30 live concerts and performances at venues throughout the New York City area.

Jim O’Hara, FCRH ’99, associate director of technical operations for WFUV, tests the soundboard for Studio A.

“Live music really gives you a good insight [into]who the artist is,” O’Hara said. “You really get to understand a lot about them by hearing them perform their songs live,” and then listening to a WFUV host interview them in the studio. “It really presents a greater connection to the artists. I think that’s a great thing that we provide to our listeners.”

One of his most memorable sessions came in 2017, when Gorillaz, the Damon Albarn–led British band that doesn’t do a lot of live appearances, reached out to bring their “huge, full-scale tour” to Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. “When we first took the phone call about this, I was like, ‘Well, there’s no way this is going to happen,’” he said, laughing. “Along the way, I was expecting any one of a number of issues to be the deal breaker.” But those issues, ranging from bringing semi-tractor trailers onto campus to hooking up the band’s equipment to the building’s main power source, didn’t stand in their way. The session was a go.

“It was literally an all-day process—we got here, I think it was 7 a.m., and we didn’t leave until like 8 or 9 p.m.,” O’Hara said. “They took over the entire station. They brought the entire tour, what they would bring into Madison Square Garden. And I had just an assembly line of students, working the elevator out there, bringing stuff in, bringing cases back out. I think there had to be 30 members of their team. Every studio was filled up with something.”

But O’Hara said the takeover was absolutely worth it. “It was unique content—we were the one station that got to do that, so it was affirming as to who we are in the industry that we were offered that and were able to accomplish it,” he said. “It was just a really great source of pride for me.”

While Fordham students Allen Wang and Caitria Demeroto weren’t at WFUV for the Gorillaz performance, they’ve gotten their share of hands-on opportunities. The studio sessions typically range from two to four hours and include up to 10 students working on the production—three to four audio engineers, four to five videographers, and usually a few trainees—while the live performances at city venues also call for a mix of students and external contractors.

“There was a show for Phoebe Bridgers at Forest Hills Stadium, which is actually in the neighborhood I grew up in,” said Wang, a junior in the Gabelli School of Business. “So to go and be part of the backstage team, it was a very fulfilling experience. It was also really insightful to see how larger productions work in terms of production teams and sub crews and what their day is like.”

Demeroto, a Fordham College at Rose Hill junior, said she really enjoys the personal, intimate setting of Studio A, where she shot video of the session featuring Gang of Youths, an Australian alternative rock group.

“I think it’s just really authentic—and you feel very close,” she said. “And it definitely is a different sound than a recording. It’s so cool to see them, without any editing yet, and how they interact in their creative process—actually capturing that on camera is really great.”

Caitria Demeroto, a Fordham College at Rose Hill junior who works on video and audio for WFUV, sets up a camera in Studio A.

Launching Pad for Success

Paul Cavalconte, FCRH ’83, a longtime radio host, got his start as a Fordham undergraduate at WFUV before his career took him to WQXR, WNEW, and Q104.3. He came back to WFUV as a guest host in 2013.

“I owe my radio career to 90.7 FM,” he said from the stage of the inauguration concert last fall. “And this is a very, very proud moment for us. We have a unique training program in sports and journalism—some of the most famous voices in media have come through Keating Hall and out into the airwaves of the world.”

That’s a credit to the hands-on training the students receive at WFUV, which Robin Shannon, the station’s news director, described as “vastly different than a lot of other organizations.” Over the past two decades, Shannon and former news director George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, who now serves as the community partnerships and training editor for WNYC, helped to grow and enhance the training program that Singleton established in the late 1980s. Today, “we have a reputation in the broadcast world of training students in a way that is going to benefit newsrooms all over the country,” Shannon said.

A big reason for that is the work of Bodarky, who was honored at WFUV’s On the Record event in November for his more than 20 years of service to the station. From 2001 until last year, he helped train many Fordham journalists.

“The thing about George is that dozens, maybe hundreds of people could be giving these remarks right now, telling you how George changed their life, how George opened the door to what became their career and their vocation,” said one of his former students, NPR White House correspondent Scott Detrow, FCRH ’07.

Shannon said the journalism program is about giving students ample opportunity to practice their skills in a professional environment. “It’s not just opening a book and reading about microphones or reading about interviews— it’s learning the equipment, going out, and covering stories that people are talking about.” She said students are also “allowed to make mistakes” and, with her guidance, they can “explore and experiment and kind of see what works for them.”

Students work in the WFUV newsroom with Robin Shannon, the station’s news director.

For Liam Dahlborn, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, that opportunity to explore allowed him to develop his own role at the station—running the news department’s social media accounts. “That kind of position wasn’t really something that they were necessarily training for, but I was able to talk to Robin and talk to George, and be like, ‘This is something that I think we need to build on, the digital assets, now that we’re transitioning into a digital world,’” he said. “And they were really supportive of that.”

Dahlborn said that all the skills he’s acquiring at WFUV, which include writing a weekly subscriber newsletter, posting to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and launching the station’s TikTok account, will help him pursue a career in media when he graduates from Fordham.

“Being able to have this professional environment in college is something that’s very unique,” he said. “Being able to work in a newsroom that’s professional, that’s state-of-the-art—that’s something that I think you don’t really get at other universities. And to be in New York City, pretty much everyone who I’ve talked to in New York City knows of WFUV.”

Noah Osborne, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said that his experience at WFUV opened doors for him, including his most recent internship at BronxNet television.

“That wouldn’t have been possible without WFUV,” he said. “Having WFUV anywhere on a resume seems to be the big talking point. I feel like a lot of my communication skills were honed here—especially as a reporter, as an anchor, even as a podcaster.”

Osborne said that until he worked at WFUV, he hadn’t thought much about podcasting and how it can be a great way to communicate with the audience. “I feel like it’s just made my delivery of certain lines of the news just so much more authentic, a lot more conversational, a lot more relaxed. It definitely did build my confidence as an aspiring media person.”

On the sports side, the WFUV legacy runs back to Vin Scully, the late, legendary voice of the Dodgers, who is considered the patron saint of Fordham-trained sportscasters, an ever-growing group that includes NBA Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83; Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, the voice of the Yankees; Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, radio voice of the Brooklyn Nets; Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, host of ESPN’s Around the Horn; Bob Papa, GABELLI ’86, the radio voice of the New York Giants; and Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, of the YES Network and ESPN.

When WFUV shifted from a student-run station to a professional staff overseeing the students in the late 1980s, Marty Glickman, the former New York Knicks, Jets, and Giants announcer, came on board as a coach, schooling the young sports journalists in the art of play-by-play and other types of broadcasts. He hired a producer named Bob Ahrens, who took the sports department to the next level, helping them gain press access to all 11 of the New York– area professional teams.

Bobby Ciafardini, the WFUV sports director, leads a staff meeting with Robin Shannon, the news director.

It’s that tradition that current sports director Bobby Ciafardini looks to build on. “I like to think that a big part of the legacy that I’m hoping to carve out here is that we have expanded the programming to include a lot more of the video component and the streaming part of what we are doing these days,” he said.

For example, One on One, New York’s longest-running sports call-in show, was founded in the 1970s, but now, in addition to catching it on the radio, viewers can tune in to a livestream and watch video clips on social media.

“The students are … learning more now than ever because they are multimedia sports professionals,” Ciafardini said. “When Sam [Davis] goes to a game now, he’s not just going to get audio; he’s doing a standup and interviewing players in both capacities.”

Davis, whose roles include social media coordinator, Mets beat reporter, and on-air broadcaster for Fordham sports, said that he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunities WFUV offered him anywhere else. “I think that covering the professional New York teams—as far as I know, I don’t think there’s really another college in the country that does that,” he said. “With the fact that everything is video now, we’re getting a lot of hands-on experience … not just being on air … but also video editing and pushing that out on social media, learning what works and what doesn’t.”

Both the news and sports departments have grown more diverse in recent years and provided more opportunities to students, something that is a strategic goal of the station, according to Singleton. For example, the sports department, which has traditionally been mostly male, now has an all-female sports podcast, All In.

Breen, who received the department’s Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting last year, said that he’s proud of the students who are a part of the station’s legacy. “Every Fordham student who decides to join this amazing radio station feels a responsibility, a responsibility to uphold the standards that all the previous students and student broadcasters have set,” he said, noting that he and his peers certainly felt it during the 1980s. “You’ve not only upheld the standards,” he said, “you’ve raised them. And I say bravo.”

Companionship for People

Maya Sargent, a fellow at WFUV and a graduate student in Fordham’s public media master’s program, gets ready to record a podcast.

Students who work at WFUV said that they were drawn to the station—and Fordham in general—not only for the chance to hone their technical skills but also to be part of its public media mission. That certainly was the case with Maya Sargent, which is why she applied to Fordham’s master’s degree program in the field. The program led her to a fellowship at WFUV, where she gets to tell the stories of a diverse group of New Yorkers.

“I’ve always kind of had that intrigue to learn more and find out more about communities, and New York feels like the epicenter of cultural engagement,” said Sargent, who came to Fordham from the U.K. “It’s such an eclectic mix, and I think that injects a lot of life into the media that we produce.”

That connection to local communities is something that Thao Matlock, co-chair of the WFUV Advisory Board, has found especially helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s a companionship for people, and I think it’s what kept a lot of us sane during the pandemic, especially the first part when it was all doom and gloom,” she said. “A lot of us tuned in to WFUV because it was great music—we just kind of hung out; there was no anxiety. And then, the news part, the COVID news, was very calm, very sane.”

That’s been a hallmark of WFUV for decades—giving its listeners the news and music they need to find community and a reason to believe, especially in trying times. WFUV DJs received responses similar to Matlock’s from listeners in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m a nurse,” read one March 2020 message. “Today I listened in, [and] for the first time all month, danced in my kitchen, relaxed for the first time in ages. Grateful to WFUV for helping us stay safe, stay sane, stay connected in these uncertain times.” Another listener said the station’s DJs kept her company. “Now more than ever, many of us, myself included, are alone, and music means so much in our daily mindset.”

Breen, who went on to become a Hall of Fame basketball broadcaster, recalled his time as a late-night DJ for WFUV. He was on the air on December 8, 1980, the night John Lennon was killed. “The phones rang off the hook, and they were talking about what John Lennon meant to them,” he said. “One gentleman told me how he was about to commit suicide, but John Lennon’s song stopped him. Another told me he had a drinking problem, and John Lennon helped them through that. And it was the first time in my life I realized what music meant to people.”

Chuck Singleton, general manager of WFUV, said September 11, 2001, was another time when the power of music and the strength of the WFUV community were evident to the team at the station. “That day, as we reported on [the terrorist attacks], we were there for people. … I have a whole folder of letters and emails that people sent us that in their own, individual way, said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you.’”

Never Stopped Moving

Rich McLaughlin, who got his start at WFUV as an undergraduate just over two decades ago and is now the station’s program director, said putting all the pieces together—the commitment to music discovery, training young journalists, and providing a compelling public service to the community—is what makes WFUV “completely unique and dynamic.” “Not only do we take part in training that next generation of media professionals, but we really rely on our students to help push WFUV forward into the future,” he said. “And that’s one of my favorite things about working here because I find when it comes to social media, when it comes to music, when it comes to just general technology, our students, they know as much or more than some of us.”

Rich McLaughlin, FCRH ’01, GABELLI ’10, the station’s program director, chats with midday host Alisa Ali in between breaks.

One way to make sure the station remains unique and dynamic is to continue to diversify—both the musicians it plays on air and the staff it employs, Singleton said. For example, three years ago, Houston helped spearhead the station’s EQFM initiative to take on the issue of gender disparity in the music industry. It has a goal of 50% representation of women and gender minorities in music programming, events, and online features. Those efforts help the station continue to grow and reach new audiences, McLaughlin said. “Wherever there’s a platform that a WFUV listener is looking to listen to the station, or consume our content—wherever they are, we want to be.”

That spirit of innovation has run through the station since 1947, he said. “It’s really important that we maintain that heritage and the tradition that we have and take that with us as we move forward. I think you can do both—you can change and think about things differently from a content standpoint, from a technology standpoint, and still take into consideration the station’s history and legacy. I think that’s what the station has done all along.

“WFUV is celebrating 75 years—it’s never stopped changing. It’s never stopped moving. And that’s why it’s still as relevant as it is today.”

—Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15, is an associate editor of this magazine. As a Fordham undergraduate, she was a WFUV sports reporter, host, and producer from 2012 to 2015.

Correction: An earlier version of this story, including the version that appeared in the winter 2023 print edition of Fordham Magazine, mistakenly indicated that Chuck Singleton “initially developed WFUV’s coverage of community issues.” In fact, he expanded coverage that began more than a decade earlier. Thanks to John J. Robb, FCRH ’76, who served as WFUV’s founding public affairs director from 1974 to 1976, for helping us set the record straight. 

The WFUV Staff (Photo by Gus Philippas)

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Vin Scully, Sports Broadcasting Legend, Fordham Graduate, and ‘Patron Saint’ of WFUV Sports, Dies at 94 https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/vin-scully-sports-broadcasting-legend-fordham-graduate-and-patron-saint-of-wfuv-sports-dies-at-94/ Wed, 03 Aug 2022 20:04:47 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=162485 Legendary sports broadcaster Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers for 67 years, died on Tuesday, August 2. He was 94 years old. Scully was predeceased by his wife Sandra, and survived by his numerous children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

“Vin Scully’s death marks the end of an era,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham. “As members of the Fordham family, we grieve the loss of a wise and decent man who always spoke to our better natures—on the field and off. I know the University and WFUV communities join me in keeping Vin’s loved ones in our hearts and prayers today.”

Sometimes called the “Velvet Voice,” the iconic broadcaster was known for his elegant and evocative yet plainspoken approach to broadcasting. Listeners felt like they were joining a friend each broadcast as Scully welcomed them in with his usual greeting: “Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be.”

“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “The Dodgers’ Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a giant of a man, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian. He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever.”

Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the Yankees for YES Network, wrote in a statement that we “lost the greatest broadcaster who ever lived.”

“Every game was a master’s class as he turned an inning into poetry. And as great as he was, he was just as nice. Class, elegance and grace were all part of his humble but regal being,” Kay wrote. “His loss is heartbreaking as his golden voice is silenced, but he will live forever as an example of what to try and be on and off mic. RIP Mr. Scully and rest easy knowing how much you made a difference to all who met you and had the joy of listening to you.”

In a career spanning seven decades, Scully voiced some of the most historic calls in the game, including Don Larsen’s and Sandy Koufax’s perfect games in 1956 and 1965, respectively; Hank Aaron’s 715th career home run to break the record set by Babe Ruth; and Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in the 1988 World Series.

He received numerous awards throughout his career including an induction into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016.

Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, received the Medal of Freedom from President Obama on Nov. 22, 2016.

“The game of baseball has a handful of signature sounds,” President Obama said at the White House ceremony in 2016. “You hear the crack of the bat, you got the crowd singing in the seventh-inning stretch, and you’ve got the voice of Vin Scully.”

Scully’s career began at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. He graduated in 1949 and is known as the “patron saint” of WFUV Sports, getting his start at the radio station as a student at Fordham College at Rose Hill. His work has inspired generations of students to become sports broadcasters.

He received an honorary doctorate from Fordham in 2000 after giving the commencement address and a lifetime achievement award from WFUV that is now named in his honor. Scully was inducted into the University’s Hall of Honor in 2011.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president emeritus of Fordham, called Scully one of Fordham’s “greatest heroes” as he awarded Scully with the Ram of the Year award in 2014.

“From the heart, I want you to know you are for Fordham an example of a man for others, a man whose life has been a life of integrity, of service, of great devotion to the University,” Father McShane said at the ceremony. “You could not be a better ambassador for us. Everyone at Fordham loves you as much as we revere you.”

Bob Ahrens, who worked as the WFUV Sports director for 20 years before his retirement in 2017, worked with Scully for years through the station.

“He loved Fordham, he loved FUV,” Ahrens said. “He was a Fordham guy through and through. He had a love for the school. He always wanted to know how the teams were doing.”

The Early Years

Scully was born in the Bronx after his parents immigrated from Ireland. He grew up in Washington Heights before he attended Fordham Preparatory School. He graduated in 1944 and served briefly in the Navy before returning to Rose Hill to study communications.

At Fordham, Scully had a sports column in The Fordham Ram student newspaper, worked as a stringer for The New York Times, and sang in the Shaving Mugs, a campus barbershop quartet. He also briefly played outfield for the Fordham baseball team.

Vin Scully in the Fordham Maroon Yearbook

When he gave the commencement address at Fordham in 2000, Scully told the graduates that the words he associated with Fordham were “home, love, and hope.”

“Home, because I spent eight years here on this campus, and it really was my second home. Love, because I loved every minute of it, and some of my closest and dearest friends in all the world were my classmates and teammates. And hope, hope came from a five-letter word called a dream,” he told the students.

Scully told the graduates that “I am one of you.”

“I walked the halls you walked. I sat in the same classrooms,” he told the graduates. “I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams; drank coffee in the café and played sports on your grassy fields.”

But Scully’s favorite place to be was behind the microphone. He called Fordham baseball, basketball, and football games for WFUV, 90.7 FM, which launched in 1947. In a 2020 documentary for WFUV Sports, Scully joked that he would call games to himself while playing in the outfield.

“I used to be so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game,” he said in the documentary.

When Scully received the Ram of the Year award in 2014, he recalled sitting in the Fordham Prep auditorium next to his classmate Larry Miggins.

“We were talking about what we hoped to do when we finished school,” Scully said after accepting the award. “Larry said, ‘I’d love to be a major league ballplayer,’ and I said, ‘I’d love to be a major league broadcaster.’ And we both kind of chuckled.”

Scully recalled how a few years later, on May 13, 1952, he was behind the mic in the broadcast booth at Ebbets Field when Miggins came to bat for the Cardinals.

“It was so hard to speak. The Dodgers had a left-handed pitcher named Preacher Roe from Ash Flat, Arkansas. Preacher Roe was going to face my buddy Larry Miggins, and I’m going to describe whatever happens,” Scully said. “And Larry Miggins hit a home run.”

Vin Scully (middle) received the Ram of the Year Award in 2014 from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., who was then president of Fordham and Armando Nuñez Jr., GABELLI ’82, current chair-elect of Fordham’s Board of Trustees. (Photo by Jeff Boxer)

The Voice of the Dodgers

After graduating from Fordham, Scully spent the summer working at a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C., before he returned to New York to speak with the network about working there. Just a few days later, he received a call from Red Barber, the legendary CBS sports director and broadcaster, asking him to cover a college football game that Saturday.

In less than a year, Scully joined Barber on what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcasts. When Barber left to work for the Yankees following the 1953 season, Scully became the Dodgers’ primary announcer, a position he held until he retired in 2016.

During his long career, Scully recorded some of the most memorable calls in baseball history. He had been in the Dodgers job for less than five years when Don Larsen took the mound in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series and pitched a perfect game, the only one in a World Series.

“Got him! The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history by Don Larsen, a no-hitter, a perfect game in a World Series. Never in the history of the game has it ever happened in a World Series,” Scully said on the broadcast.

Vin Scully. (Photo by Avis Mandel.)

Less than 10 years later, Scully would be behind the mic for another perfect game, this time with Sandy Koufax on the mound. Scully’s call of the last inning featured his descriptive, evocative style.

“And there are 29,000 people in the ballpark, and a million butterflies,” he said, after the first batter.

As Koufax was one out away from a perfect game, Scully said, “I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.”

In 1974, the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta and faced Hank Aaron, who was one home run away from breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. In the fourth inning, Aaron stepped up to the plate and made history, with Scully behind the mic.

“It’s a high drive into deep left center field, Buckner goes back to the fence, it is gone!” Scully called before letting the crowd take the mic for almost 30 seconds of celebration.

He then remarked on the historic achievement: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol and it is a great moment for all of us.”

Bill Buckner, who almost caught that home run, would be at the heart of another famous—or infamous—Scully call.

Now playing first base for the Red Sox, Buckner and his team were attempting to break the famous “Curse of the Bambino,” having not won a World Series since trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. In 1986, the Red Sox faced the New York Mets in the World Series, and in Game 6, the Mets’ Mookie Wilson hit what looked to be a simple ground ball down the first base line.

“Little roller up along first, behind the bag, it gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it,” he said. “If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million.”

And in 1988, with the Dodgers in the World Series, outfielder Kirk Gibson had hurt both of his legs in the prior series and wasn’t sure if he was going to play. But with two outs in the ninth, a man on base, and the Dodgers down a run, Gibson was called on to pinch hit. He limped up to the plate, and then a miracle happened, which Scully captured poetically.

“High fly ball into right field, she is gone!” Scully said. “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

A Lasting Influence

Scully’s iconic style has made him an inspiration for many generations of sports broadcasters who followed in his footsteps at WFUV and at Fordham.

Vin Scully gave the commencement address at Fordham in 2000. (Photo by Jon Roemer.)

“His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” ESPN NBA announcer Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, said in the 2020 WFUV Sports documentary. “It made you … [want]to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air. You might have had two exams that day or [been]having trouble at home that day—it didn’t matter. You had to have a certain standard for WFUV that began with Vin Scully.”

Ahrens said that Scully always made time for the students and the station. The students usually interviewed him about once a year for the weekly One on One call-in show, and Ahrens said he hosted at least two workshops with the students over the phone.

“Vin’s on the phone, they can’t see him in person, and the control room is packed,” he said. “He was always generous with his time when he had it. And he didn’t have to, but he loved FUV, he loved Fordham, and he was always willing to help out.”

Ahrens remembered shortly after he took the job in 1997 he reached out to the Dodgers to try to set up a time for students to interview Scully. The Dodgers’ media team took his number and said they would try to see what they could do.

“I was in the newsroom, and we had a PA system and the [front desk manager]hops on the PA system and says, ‘Bob Ahrens, Vin Scully on the phone,’” he said, with a laugh. “You can imagine the whole newsroom turned silent.”

WFUV Sports named its lifetime achievement award after him—the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting—which Kay took home in 2018.

“To be given an award with Vin Scully’s name on it is beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” Kay said at the awards ceremony. “He is the patron saint of WFUV Sports, he is the patron saint of anybody who does baseball play-by-play. He is the best at what he’s done.”

Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, who calls Yankees games on YES and basketball games on ESPN, wrote that “Vin was truly one of one.”

“It’s impossible to put into words the impact Vin Scully has had on broadcasting, our Fordham/WFUV family, and the sport of baseball,” Ruocco wrote. “His storytelling and excellence behind the mic was matched only by his grace, generosity, and kindness.”

Scully impacted even those who didn’t step behind the microphone. Pitcher Nick Martinez, who attended the Gabelli School of Business for three years before he was drafted in the 2011 MLB draft, had the chance to meet Scully in 2015.

Martinez said he was “awestruck at first.”

“And then once we got talking, I thought it was extremely cool just being able to talk about our campus and our school, and some of the other guys that came before me. He was sharp, naming some of the guys that were on the [Fordham] team currently, and how we just had a couple guys drafted. I just thought it was extremely cool that we had that connection,” he recalled.

Mike Watts, GABELLI ’14, who calls games for ESPN, Westwood One, and other networks, said that Scully and his legacy at WFUV inspired him to come to Fordham.

“There is no WFUV Sports without Vin Scully,” Watts said. “His name gave all of us credibility. To have the greatest at anything come from your school, your radio station, your program—it’s the light that all of us were following.”

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Fordham Graduate Earns Prestigious Keith Jackson Eternal Flame Award https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/alumni-news/fordham-graduate-earns-prestigious-keith-jackson-eternal-flame-award/ Fri, 13 Mar 2020 18:34:02 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=134016 It was the early 1970s when Malcolm Moran first fell in love with college basketball, thanks to a Fordham men’s team that was among the best in the nation.

“On a personal level, I grew up with the game,” said Moran, a 1975 Fordham graduate. “Digger Phelps was the coach and the [Fordham] Rams were 26-3. They really took over the city for the last few weeks of February and into March [1971]. That team really had a lot to do with inspiring my involvement.”

Moran’s passion for college basketball sparked a career in sports journalism that has spanned more than 40 years. This year, the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) will recognize him with its 2020 Keith Jackson Eternal Flame Award.

Named after longtime ABC broadcaster Keith Jackson, who was known as the “voice of college football,” the award recognizes individuals for their lasting contributions to intercollegiate athletics. Past recipients include Pat Summitt, the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach who died in 2016, and ESPN broadcaster and former college head coach Dick Vitale.

In selecting Moran, CoSIDA praised him as an “award-winning reporter and columnist” who for more than a decade has “turned his attention to directing sports journalism programs” and “enhancing relationships between media, coaches and athletic communications professionals.” He has also served as a frequent panelist at CoSIDA conventions and as part of the group’s continuing education programs, presenting on topics such as media relations and crisis communications.

Moran got his start in sports journalism as an undergraduate at Fordham. He wrote for The Fordham Ram, and at WFUV, the University’s radio station, he started One on One, now the longest-running sports call-in show in New York. He went on to write for The New York Times, USA Today, and other newspapers for three decades before joining Penn State University in 2006 as its inaugural Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society. Since January 2013, he has been the director of the Sports Capital Journalism Program at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. He also serves as the Executive Director of the United States Basketball Writers Association.

In both of those roles, Moran said he tries to address changes in the industry from “both sides of the fence”—the journalists on one side and sports teams’ communication staff on the other. He said that his goal as an educator is to help students become “standout journalists” in an era when many writers spend too much time “behind the screens,” and not enough developing personal relationships.

“If you want to stand out among your peers, as far as your relationship with the people you cover—you go the extra mile to show your curiosity and go places you don’t need to go, show up for a practice where there’s no scheduled availability, show that you’re serious about [understanding]how things work [in an organization, and]… ask informed questions in a smart way,” he said. “That’s how you build up credibility and trust—that’s going to increase your chances of doing this.”

This isn’t the first time Moran has earned national recognition for his work. In 2007, he received a Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for his lifetime coverage of basketball.

Still, Moran said this latest recognition from CoSIDA left him speechless.

“I’m still speechless—it’s not the kind of thing that you ever expect. I got a phone call about two weeks ago and I was just dumbfounded,” he said. “I just want to keep doing what I’ve been doing, especially when there are opportunities to be involved at future CoSIDA [events]or even in the planning process—if I can help brainstorm ideas for sessions to reflect how the industry is changing—anything that I can contribute along those lines ultimately, that’s the best way to say thank you.”

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In New Documentary, a Look at the Legacy of WFUV Sports https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/in-new-documentary-a-look-at-the-legacy-of-wfuv-sports/ Fri, 21 Feb 2020 19:33:44 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=132881 Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers. Mike Breen, the voice of the Knicks. Michael Kay, the voice of the Yankees.

Each of these announcers shares a common heritage. They all got their start at WFUV, Fordham University’s public media station, which has been launching the careers of sports broadcasters for more than seven decades. Now, some of the history of the station has been preserved in a documentary titled Off the Air: The Legacy of WFUV Sports.

Evan Jaenichen, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior and the video coordinator at WFUV Sports, came up with the idea for the documentary and pursued it as the capstone project for his new media and digital design major.

“I had started at WFUV last year and loved it so much,” said Jaenichen, who brought the idea to Bobby Ciafardini, the station’s sports director, and to Bob Ahrens, who retired in 2017 after two decades as sports director.

Ahrens helped put Jaenichen in touch with some of the most recognized voices to come out of the station, including Scully, FCRH ’49; Breen, FCRH ’83; Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, the host of ESPN’s Around the Horn; Bob Papa, GABELLI ’86, the radio voice of the New York Giants; and Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, radio voice of the Brooklyn Nets.

Vin Scully, the Dean of Fordham-Trained Sportscasters

The story of the station’s sports legacy begins with Scully, who said he used to call Fordham baseball games to himself while he was playing in the outfield at Rose Hill. He later called Fordham sports games on the air for WFUV, which was founded in 1947, his sophomore year. Scully says in the video that he was always enamored with the game.

“I used to be so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game,” he says.

Scully retired in October 2016 after 67 seasons as the voice of the Dodgers. He was inducted into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, and has received many other accolades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has inspired generations of broadcasters who have stepped up to the mic at WFUV.

“His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” says Mike Breen, who recently became the third Fordham graduate to win a Curt Gowdy Media Award from the basketball Hall of Fame. “It made you … [want]to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air. You might have had two exams that day or [been]having trouble at home that day—it didn’t matter. You had to have a certain standard for WFUV that began with Vin Scully.”

New York’s Longest Running Sports Call-In Show

In the years after Scully’s graduation, the sports department continued to grow, particularly during the 1970s, when Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, introduced One on One, which has become known as New York’s longest running sports call-in show.

“It was so much fun because I think for a lot of sports fans around the tri-state area, they had no way to express themselves like this,” Breen says in the video.

In the late 1980s, broadcaster Marty Glickman, who was best known for calling New York Knicks, New York Giants, and New York Jets games on the radio, became an adviser to the students at the station.

“I knew of Marty Glickman—at the time he was the Jets play-by-play announcer—[but]I didn’t know how impactful he would be on my life at the time,” Carrino says. “Marty’s voice is in my head every broadcast that I do. His mantra was ‘consider the listener.’”

Making It to the Major Leagues

After Glickman, Ahrens took over in the late 1990s as WFUV’s first full-time executive sports director.

“We were so fiercely and proudly student-run that we weren’t sure exactly what to make of a professional executive producer,” Reali says in the video, joking that when Ahrens told him he could cover Yankees’ games, that was all it took to convince him of the benefits of learning in a professional environment.

“I thought if we’re going to do this the right way, we should go to the major league games and train the students how to be broadcasters and how to do interviews,” Ahrens says. “I called the Mets and the Yankees. The Mets offered us one game, no clubhouse access … and [in]what was probably stupid at the time but became a very bold move, I turned it down.”

He followed up with a call to the Yankees and, after a discussion with the team’s media relations director, WFUV was granted a credential.

“We went from there to the Giants and the Jets. The following year, we went to basketball and hockey on an as-available basis and then a year later we had everything,” Ahrens says.

Current students say working at WFUV provides invaluable experiences—such as covering the Super Bowl, interviewing legendary players and broadcasters, and hosting live shows—not available to students at traditional college radio stations.

“It’s a real broadcast that’s actually going on at 90.7 FM to the entire tri-state area, so that’s one of the biggest audiences that any radio station can reach,” said Brianna Leverty, a Fordham senior.

Jaenichen said WFUV has helped him develop his love for storytelling. While he’s not sure exactly what professional path he wants to pursue after graduation, Ciafardini, his current sports director, thinks projects like this could be in his future.

“I think Evan is amazingly talented and the work that he has put out is a prime example of what he’s capable of doing,” Ciafardini said.

Jaenichen said it’s inspiring to know that the broadcasters he interviewed for the documentary were once in his shoes.

“It was a huge thrill to talk to people I’ve looked up to my whole life,” he said. “You realize that they’re just like you and they came exactly from where you are.”

Watch Off the Air: The Legacy of WFUV Sports

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WFUV Sports Sends 6 Students to the Super Bowl https://now.fordham.edu/university-news/wfuv-sports-sends-6-students-to-the-super-bowl/ Wed, 05 Feb 2020 16:12:24 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=131972 Four shows, one week, nearly three dozen interviews, one game, and countless memories.

For six WFUV Sports reporters, that’s just a snapshot of what their Super Bowl week looked like.

“I’m really proud of the hard work the six of us put in for this week—a lot of prep and a lot of research,” senior Charles Maisano said.

The team of students, which included Fordham College Rose Hill seniors Maisano, Dominic Capone, Brianna Leverty, and Artemis Tsagaris, as well as Gabelli School of Business seniors Devin Clementi and Peter Houdek, spent the week in Miami conducting interviews with players, coaches, and other media members; producing multiple shows; and covering the game itself.

WFUV Sports Director Bobby Ciafardini said sending six students to cover the week was one of their largest groups ever.

“Their hard work and dedication to not only producing impactful content, but also working diligently to extract every last ounce out of the experience, speaks volumes about each of the six themselves, as well as the type of students both WFUV and Fordham produce year in, year out,” he said.

Memorable Interviews

WFUV Sports students interview NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport at Radio Row before the Super Bowl.

“I think it was 34 interviews in total,” Leverty said. “We had a lot of work to do. Essentially we would get to Radio Row [the media center for Super Bowl week]—we had the same table every day—and we would just put ourselves out there.”

Leverty said two interviews really stuck out to her—one with Ian Rapoport, a national breaking news reporter for the NFL Network, and one with Quinnen Williams, a defensive lineman for the New York Jets. Being able to get Rapoport, a huge name in the media industry, was one of their highest profile guests of the week, while Williams helped them connect with their New York audience, she said.

For Capone, the most memorable experience was interviewing a former high school classmate, Jason Cabinda, who now plays linebacker for the Detroit Lions.

“He was there doing something for the NFL and their player engagement—he was interviewing players as well. We got a chance to talk to him, and it was one of our best interviews,” Capone said.

Off the Ground and onto the Airwaves

Each of the students had their own role in helping to get their coverage off the ground and onto the airwaves—both on 90.7 FM for the Saturday show and streaming online throughout the week. Maisano, Capone, and Clementi hosted the daily sports-talk shows, Leverty and Houdek worked primarily on production, and Tsagaris handled video duties.

WFUV Sports students covered all aspects of the Super Bowl, including the game itself.

The students were one of about five college radio teams that had tables at Radio Row. But to simply call WFUV a college station would be a misnomer. The NPR-affiliate is based at the Rose Hill campus, but includes full-time, professional staff members including on-air DJs, a news director, and a sports director. Students have the opportunity to train and then do on- and off-the-air work in a variety of departments, including news and sports.

Three of the six students—Maisano, Capone, and Clementi—went down early in the week to attend Media Day. And Maisano and Leverty attended the Super Bowl game as credentialed members of the media, an opportunity few college students get to do.

Treated Like Professionals

Leverty said that the opportunity to cover the biggest sporting event of the year as a college student really made an impact on her.

“It’s kind of your first real job in the media and I’m doing things that most full-grown media members and adults don’t get to do until they’re very well established,” she said.

For Maisano, this was his second time being around the leadup to the Super Bowl, but his first time actually experiencing the game itself.

“I went as a sophomore to Minnesota [with WFUV],” he said. “I was a producer as a sophomore, so being able to host and talk to these great people [now as a senior]  was unbelievable. As a 21-year-old, checking that off my bucket list, doing it in college, was just incredible.”

WFUV Sports, which has produced legendary talents such as ESPN’s NBA play-by-play broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83; YES and ESPN’s Michael Kay, FCRH ’82; and Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, carries significant weight, allowing the students to be treated as reporters rather than student press, Maisano said.

“Being looked as a professional in college is just incredible,” he said.

WFUV sent six students to the Super Bowl this year.

Working Alongside MadDog

Capone said the experience gave him a chance to work alongside many of the industry leaders he grew up idolizing.

“Just being able to be there with the professionals in the industry—you’re set up next to affiliates from San Francisco and Kansas City and then you have SiriusXM where you look over and Chris ‘MadDog’ Russo is doing a show, Adam Schien is doing his show, and you get to talk to these people and it’s not like you’re below them, you’re on their level,” he said.

The students said WFUV Sports is also helping them prepare for their future careers.

The view from WFUV Sports’ seats at Super Bowl LIV after the Kansas City Chiefs won and confetti rained down on the field.

“I came into Fordham thinking I wanted to do play-by-play and be the next Mike Breen, but I tried it out and it wasn’t for me,” Maisano said. “I leaned toward the production aspect and I found my niche there.”

He credited Bob Ahrens, WFUV’s former sports director, and Ciafardini, with helping him find his calling. Because of their help, Maisano has already interned at SiriusXM, CBS Sports, and Westwood One radio.

“Without WFUV, I never would have been able to get all these internships,” he said.

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