Welcome And Meet Matt Schumacher

Blake Elsner 0:24

Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner. Today we're sitting down with someone whose voice has become part of the sports world. Matt Schumacher is a St. Louis native who turned a passion for sports into a career as a national broadcaster with the SPN and the SEC network. But what makes Matt's story interesting isn't just where he ended up. It's everything that it took to get there. Before the national television broadcast, there were minor league baseball games, long hours, small paychecks, and the uncertainty that comes with chasing a career where very few people reach the top. Today we're going beyond the microphone to talk about perseverance, preparation, rejection relationships, and what it actually takes to build a career doing something you love. This is Elevate with Helsner, and today we're getting to know Matt Schumacher. Welcome to the show, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Thank you, brother. Good to be with you. I don't think me and you have like really chopped it up since like fifth grade baseball. So here we are.

Blake Elsner 1:24

I know, right? Maybe maybe

St. Louis Sports And Early Dreams

Blake Elsner 1:27

20 years later. Yeah. Well, take us back. What was it like growing up here in St. Louis? Do you remember a lot?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Loved it. I mean, I lived there obviously until I was about 18 and then moved away for college and came back briefly after college, which is where I kind of got my broadcasting start, actually. But um grew up in Webster Groves, uh, you know, played for all the local church teams and went to Slough High, which was an awesome experience. Still my best friends to this day. I'm in a group chat with them, like uh are from Slough High. So loved St. Louis. I honestly miss it a lot just because I have so many friends there. But now being where I'm at, is it's the right place for me to be at this at this time of my life, just with family nearby and travel and everything else. But great memories growing up in St. Louis. And I also, you know, it was like when we were in second and third grade, it was peak St. Louis sports with with like Maguire. The Blues were good, the Rams were Super Bowl contending. It was a it was a good time.

Blake Elsner 2:36

So true. And then Pools came on the scene and stuff like that. I mean, yeah, it's it's incredible. And I just saw obviously all your buddies from Slough, and you just you were just with the Sandstones, great people, yeah. Um down there at the Mizzou game, obviously calling that. We'll get to that. But um did you play sports growing up? You played baseball, soccer, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Played a little, I mean, dude, I played a little bit of everything. My favorite sport growing up was basketball, and my wife always gives me a hard time. I I told her this in a weak moment that until I was a sophomore in high school, I thought I was going to the NBA. Uh I think it, yeah, I was delusional, obviously, but um, I just loved basketball and then got cut sophomore year, and a mutual friend of ours, Colin McGee, convinced me to go run track at SLU. And then I fell in love with track and ended up running in college. And so it's just funny how life works out, you know, like one door closes, another one opens, and that ends up being the door that leads you down this path of many, many, many years. Um, so but yeah, basketball was the sport I grew up loving the most. I still love it.

Blake Elsner 3:50

That's funny. And then to be honest, like I guess in a way you kind of made it, you know, to that. You know, you didn't make it playing it, but you're you're here calling it, right? So I feel like God's like this guy, we gotta get this guy to the show somehow, like some some way. Um, so clearly you've done that. That's pretty awesome. Um, and when did you realize, like, though, like as you kind of got older? I know um, you know, in 2015 you got into first calling your games. Obviously, I think it was with the minor

Job Hunt Rejection And $35 Gigs

Blake Elsner 4:17

league cardinal team. Is that right? Take us back to that.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, so I I mean I graduated college in 2014, didn't have a job, and uh in your intro, you talked about rejection and little paychecks. I'm gonna tell you a story that ties both of those in. So, my buddy Nico Sansone, who you referenced, he was just at the game with me. We both graduated college around the same time, and we were both job hunting around the same time. And we would go to Caldi's Coffee and Kirkwood like three days a week together and spend like two or three hours there together pursuing jobs. Now he was pursuing it in real estate and I was pursuing it in broadcasting. But, anyways, we would send email after email, call after call. I must have applied for like 300 jobs, and most I would say like 290 of them, I got no reply. The other ones were no's. So that was like a three-month deal. And at the end of those three months, I'm starting to get real worn out. And I find out about this thing called Prep Cast Sports. I don't know if that's still a thing in St. Louis, but in the time at the time it was, it was an all-online high school sports network, and they would televise local high school games, anything from you know, football to soccer to basketball. So, anyways, the guy hired me to do sideline reporting for 35 bucks a game, and uh that's where we tie in the little pay to the rejections. Um, he said if I could sell ads though, I would make like something crazy compared to the 35. So I was trying to sell ads, I never sold any. Um, but yeah, that's kind of how I got started in TV, was just doing like sideline reporting for prep casts. Then one day he asked me if I could call a slew football game, actually. And that was the first time I really called play by play, and I fell in love with it, and then that kind of led me into minor league baseball and so on and so forth after that.

Blake Elsner 6:19

Shout out to Coach Cruz, right? Shout out to Coach Cruz, yeah. The man, the man right there. Um, yeah, that's that's pretty, you know, that's neat, and obviously 35 bucks a game. You're you're kind of at that point, obviously searching for that long for a job. Like, that's probably you're probably like, I gotta take this. Like 35 bucks is better than nothing. So um that's you know, that's interesting. You know, I feel like everybody's gotta start in a smaller spot. So from from there, what did that lead to?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Well, um, I uh I applied for a bunch of minor league baseball jobs, but the one I really wanted was the St. Louis Cardinals rookie affiliate at the time. It's no longer affiliated, but uh in Johnson City, Tennessee. And I got it, not because I was the most qualified, but I had some connections through the Slew High Alumni Network that helped me get an interview. And I I learned after I got the job, Blake, that I was one of 250 applicants for a job that paid $500 a month.

unknown 7:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah. So that's just like, you know, and these teams don't make a ton of money, but they also know they can they can get away with, I hate to put it that way, but they can get away with charging or with paying so little because there's so many people that want it. And there's so many people that are willing to say yes, myself included, just to get the rep, to get the opportunity. So, anyways, I did that for a summer. And right around that time, you know, timing is such a big part of uh how where life takes you to. Um, the Big East conference had realigned two years prior, my senior year of college. And the Big East was developing this thing called the Big East Digital Network. And going into 2015-16 academic year, they were expanding the footprint and they needed

Minor League Baseball Grind Stories

SPEAKER_00 8:17

somebody in the Midwest. And so from my time at Butler, I become friendly with people in the athletic department and one guy in particular in the broadcasting side of the department. He called me and said, Hey, do you have a job? And I was like, No, I don't. He's like, Well, you need to reach out to the Big East because I think you'd be perfect for this role. You could come back to Indianapolis, blah, blah, blah. So I got that job as like a digital correspondent, writing and producing feature stories, doing sideline reporting for all the Olympic sports. Um, and I ended up doing that for about five years. And that would be my off-season job once minor league baseball was over.

Blake Elsner 9:52

Wow. So, like from like listening to all this, clearly, like you kind of said, like, the guy with you know the most talent in the beginning might not win. Like, it's the guy that keeps putting the effort forward, you know, keeps building relationships with people. And from what I'm listening to, I mean, it's very similar to minor league sports, right? I mean, you have all these people that are trying to make it to the to the top, to the pros, etc. And it seems very similar to this broadcast live, this journey.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

That was one cool thing about minor league baseball, is that uh everybody involved in it had this goal of getting to here umpires, managers, the clubhouse person. There's a guy named Tyler Stokes, who I think is still the visiting team clubhouse manager for the St. Louis Cardinals. He and I were in Johnson City together. So there's like this camaraderie that gets developed in minor league baseball that's unlike a lot any other experience I've really had outside of playing a sport and being on a team with somebody. There's all we may have individual paths and everything else, but there's kind of this common goal that we all want to get to the show. And uh that makes it a really cool environment because nobody's making money in that in that enterprise. Like the umpires aren't really getting paid, you know, the managers aren't making much, the clubhouse managers aren't making much, the broadcasters sure aren't. But we all have this vision of where it could take us. And so that is a pretty cool aspect of minor league ball.

Blake Elsner 11:29

That is special thinking about that. Like just see thinking about like the Grizzlies, like the the guys that are putting in the time across and gateway grizzlies, yeah, the the broadcasters, even the you know, like the guys that are working the DJ booth or or you know, stuff like that, the infield, you know, on the field entertainment. Oh, I think it's Dr. Dre, I forget what his name is, but Draco, I think. But um, stuff like that. You see these guys, they're they want to make it and they they care the passions there. And so that's that's interesting when you kind of frame it like that. Um, and it's just show you like it doesn't really matter like what team you would land on, right? It's it's more the passion of getting there and just providing your value for whatever team or frame uh you know organization you would land with.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

I mean, dude, the players were in the same boat. Very few of the players at that level had like big signing bonuses. You know, there may have been a few, but they spent just a couple of weeks in rookie ball before they got elevated to you know short season A or regular season A ball. For the most part, the guys in rookie ball were late-round draft picks or weren't drafted, you know, you know, non-drafted free agent, and they were carpooling places, they were staying in host families houses. So it's very the contrast from that level to the show, or even like double A, triple A, it's pretty stark, and everybody's just kind of in this, you know, we're here to grind mentality.

Blake Elsner 12:57

Yeah, I bet. And I'm sure even your your side, I'm sure you notice, you know, walking into a a broadcast booth um at a at a single A and then walking into a broadcast booth down at uh Ole Miss, I'm sure the snacks are a little different, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Everything's different. Uh my first year calling games in the Appalachian League was very eye-opening. I mean, some of these, one of the booths I'll never forget, if you could call it that, the vantage point was up the first baseline, which is terrible, of course, for calling a game. Like, how are you gonna know if it's a ball or strike, right? Um, it was a wood shack, and you had to swing open the door or whatever to see onto the field and latch it to the roof. So I swing it open and I latch it to the roof, and there's a wasp nest. So the whole nine innings I'm doing this calling the game. Trying to write in my scorebook, wasps are flying all around. Uh, yeah, calling SEC football is just a little bit different.

Blake Elsner 14:02

Too funny. As a realtor, you're like, those are wood-destroying insects right there. That's that's crazy, though. It's almost like you're back there making lemonade, too. That's right. But oh man. So what was it like? Like, walk us through the moment um that like ESPN and obviously ESPN SEC network are owned by the same right entity. Okay. So how did that you know, walk us through when that moment like became a real possibility?

ESPN Promotion And SEC Prime Crew

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Um I mean, there's so many different moments of of like breaks, if you will, throughout my career. But to speak specifically to this football package that I'm on now, which is calling SEC every Saturday, you know, that came two years in, or I guess going into my third year at ESPN. Uh the last couple years I was on, you know, a package calling um a variety of leagues. American, Mac, sometimes we get Big 12, sometimes we get ACC. Um, but going into the summer, I knew that there was gonna be a possibility that I would get a promotion, so to speak. I just didn't know exactly what it would look like. And uh I got a call. Actually, I was on my way to St. Louis to visit my mom with my wife and kids, and I got a call from my boss at ESPN, and she told me she's like, We're gonna put you on the SEC Prime crew, and here's who your partners are gonna be. And I mean, I muted the phone and was like just screaming at the top of my lungs, man. Like, let's go. Um, oh yeah. It was an awesome up uh moment for me, one that I've like thought about a lot, you know, and envisioned a lot as I'm driving from this place to that place, making no money, you know, all hours of the night. And I, you know, my story is not unique in that way. Like in in broadcasting, most people start out calling games that they're not really getting paid for and nobody's paying attention to. And then in any business, you know, like in your business, for example, in real estate, like you don't start out selling the million-dollar house, you start out trouncing through some flip that costs 65k because you're working with an investor and you're like knee deep in SHIT and it sucks. And you're like, man, when is it gonna get easier? And so, you know, in that sense, like it's not a unique story, it's just you know, how I ended up where I am, and I'm really grateful for it. Of course, there were times where I thought to myself, man, is this worth it? You know, um, there were many times where I where I asked myself, is it worth it? And now I can definitively say absolutely, yes, it was worth it.

Blake Elsner 16:49

I love that. That that's so true because you're probably, you know, you're missing your family, you're on the road, you're like, yeah, you're you know, you're at the time, you're like, okay, is the money worth it? I could I could see how, yeah, you're like, but then the consistency, the passion, the just the you know, perseverance. It's just like that type of stuff you just can't really teach in people um unless they really have a drive. So props to to go to making it there. So um do you remember like the first time you saw like a big broadcast, and you're like, you know, you see the the preview and you're like Matt Schumacher and whoever your partner was, and you're just like, let's go. Like, I'm I'm sure that that hit.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Oh, for sure. Yeah. But I I thought you were gonna ask me, do I remember growing up watching games thinking like, man, that's what I want to do? No, but I do remember watching religiously the 330 SEC on CBS game growing up with Vern Lundquist as the as the voice, yeah, Uncle Vern of Legend. And just that music, you know, when it comes up and it's like doo doo doo doo doo, and you're like, welcome to Tuscaloosa, and it's just like I got chills, yeah. You know, now to be in that chair in a way, like I'm not at CBS, whatever, but like I'm I'm I'm at those stadiums, you know, teasing the the game of the week on our on our network anyway, and um yeah, it's it's a little bit surreal to be honest with you. Even still, I'm halfway into my first season, and I'm I'm just super grateful to be doing what I'm doing.

Blake Elsner 18:35

Yeah, you're great. It's great to listen to you. I mean, you crush it, it's it's informative, it's funny. Um, it's really good. Thank you. Yeah, no, I I I I really enjoyed it, and uh not the score of the Mizu game, but that was tough. Well, yeah, yeah, that was tough. What what's like the state of you know, uh as much as you could comment on um, you know, NIL and all this stuff, this like chaos of you know, people coming back for a year after they've been in pro sport, like just this like this like chaotic, um, you know, I guess portal stuff. Like, what's your

NIL Portal And A New Rulebook

Blake Elsner 19:08

take on all this?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

I think we're coming to a tipping point. I don't know if you've ever read that book, Tipping Point. Uh who wrote it? Was that Malcolm Gladwell? I believe so. I think it was anyway. It's a great book, and I think um we are in that or reaching that right now in college sports, in particular football and basketball. And I think what comes after the tipping point is gonna be a much better environment, ecosystem as a whole for all of college sports, because right now we basically because football is what makes the money, and then some basketball programs, men's and women's, make money, but football is the main driver. The decision makers and the leadership of college athletics is making decisions based on the one and a half, we'll say, revenue-producing sports. And then the rest of them are sort of just at the mercy of what decisions are made based on that one sport. And so, like for me, I ran track in college. Nobody, nobody is watching track and field, right? It's not it's not a revenue-producing sport. In fact, it most places it's losing lots of money for the athletic department. Um, there's no reason that a track and field team should be, you know, at at Stanford should be traveling to a conference meet at Ruckers, right? Or something like that. So it just doesn't make any sense. That's one in many examples of why the current model does not make sense. You know, the transfer portal thing, the NIL thing, there's this, there's a bill that's that got passed through the Senate and it's now in front of the House called the uh Protect College Sports Act. And it's not perfect by any means, but I think what it does is it it starts to put some guardrails back on this thing in a way that is um more equitable for all and creates some level of accountability at the top, where right now you've got the NCAA that's trying to make rules, but they're not enforceable because they get sued every time they make a rule, and that lawsuit ends up, you know, winning for the person who who brought it to court, and then that creates this cascading effect. And that's what we saw with you know, last year Diego Pavia getting a six-year of eligibility, and this year players trying to come back after going and being in NFL mini camps, you know, thank goodness there was a stop put on that. Um, I think it is chaotic right now, but I do think that we're moving in the right direction because the the the pendulum swung way this way uh after so long kind of being over here. And now it's starting to swing back. I think absolutely players deserve to to to profit off their name, image, and likeness. You know, it's no secret how much how much money is being made because of the product on the field or on the court. Um we have to get there, we have to get to this end result in a way that's that makes more sense. Because right now, like you've got teams whose rosters cost $50 million. There's no salary cap. There, I mean, it's just it's crazy. Players can transfer whenever they want, and that's one of the things in the in the Protect College Sports Act. It goes back to a one-time transfer rule. And then after that, there's penalty. You have to sit out a year. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, my take on it is probably the same as your take, which is that you know, we just want some consistency and some transparency throughout. Um and right now there's none.

Blake Elsner 23:06

Yeah, I would agree. Like there's just so many, so many branches that just branch off, and I feel like, yeah, it's just completely just there's just not a lot of flow. To it, I guess you would say. And I feel like anything though, it's gonna take time, you know, to iron everything out. Um, and I guess when you look at the MLB, it doesn't look as bad now when you when you think about their, you know, thinking about the Dodgers and all that and that fun stuff, even though they're not even in the World Series, and people, you know, thinking about the money and all that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Um well, it's why everybody wants a 24, or not everybody, but coaches and boosters and people want a 2014 playoff because you've got all this money now flowing into football, and you've got you know, somebody like Oklahoma State as an example, um, you know, spending an unbelievable amount of money to put a winning football team on the field. And if they don't feel like that investment is going to result in them making the playoff because the Big 12 only gets one team in a year, now all of a sudden you're gonna lose investors, as crazy as that sounds. And then you're also gonna start losing games on the field. So to have to have more access to the college football playoff continues this trend that we're on of investment continuing to come into the sport.

Blake Elsner 24:29

That seems like a pretty like reasonable and I would say easier fix, I would think, than you know, a lot of other maybe things.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, I think the opposition to it is uh from fans who think two things. One, it's going to diminish the meaning of the regular season, which you know, I see both sides of that argument. Obviously, when we were growing up, there was a thing called the BCS, and you had to be undefeated to play for a BCS national championship. And if anything short of that, you weren't going to be a national champion. Now, obviously, we've got teams making the playoffs with two losses. I think this year will be the first year we see teams with three losses make the playoff. If we go to 24, you might see a four-loss team make the playoff. And so in that way, when you compare it to what used to be uh compared to now, I do see fans' argument about it diminishing the meaning of the regular season because now all of a sudden a three-loss team still has a chance. I still think, however, that the passion for the sport and the buy-in from fans in the sport will continue to make regular season games really, really impactful. The other argument is that you look at the first round last year and none of those games were competitive. You know, Tulane got beat by 24 or JMU got beat by 30. And so the argument is: well, if you continue to expand the playoff, you're gonna have more and more games like that. Possibly. Um I could see the other side of it too, where if you continue to have access, which drives more investment, perhaps that helps increase the parity in the sport because now that the the you know, let's say the the 13th team to make the playoff, who never would have sniffed it 10 years ago and therefore never would have gotten players 10 years ago, now can recruit people and say, we made the playoff last year as the 13th seed. Our NIL contribution is higher. Come play with us, you'll start right away. And by the way, you'll have a chance to go play Alabama in in December and January. Okay, now all of a sudden, like that that school is getting three and four star guys, whereas before they were getting recruits with zero stars. You know what I mean? It's very interesting. I don't think there's one one answer. We could talk around and around and around about college sports and football in particular, but it is an interesting time, no doubt.

Blake Elsner 27:07

Yeah, it is kind of a double-edged sword, right? Like you're you're kind of falling on each end, but like you think about like basketball kind of I mean, has done it in a way, right? I mean, you're gonna have some playing games, then they play, you know, the the high seed and the low seed, and then a lot of times, I mean, some of them are close, but some of them are blowouts too, right? Um, so I guess, but football's obviously a different animal um when it comes to uh you know the the physicality, etc. Um, but obviously NBA, you know, uh basketball's like one of the what one of the sports where you get hurt the most, I think, odds wise. Um so yeah, that's that's interesting to see that all uh come out. So um is there I appreciate it kind of talking on that. Has do you think like social media has changed like the pressure of like on you?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh uh as weird as that sound. Yeah, I don't know if it's changed the pressure so much as it has

Social Media Noise And Self-Critique

SPEAKER_00 28:03

changed like um how I feel about myself after a game. Uh like if you make a mistake, exactly. Like I'll go weeks without checking Twitter because I just don't want to see it. I'm like, I got enough going on in my life, man. I got a wife, kids, real estate business. Like, I don't I don't need your commentary about how Aaron and I should have said this instead of that. Like, it's four hours of live TV. People are gonna make mistakes. There's Vern Lundquist said in his book, like, there's never he's never called a perfect game. There's never been a perfect broadcast. And that's true. It doesn't mean you don't strive for perfection. And every week we are self-critiquing. Like I watch every game back and I'm taking notes, like, man, I could have done this, or in this situation going forward, I think the better way to approach it is you know, X, Y, or Z. But um, like I know guys in the industry that don't have social media because they just they don't want to see, they don't want to see the the comments.

Blake Elsner 29:06

Um there's so many trolls out there.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

There's so many, but but I thought you were gonna say the players, and yes, I mean I would have hated to be somebody like Arch Manning in today's era, you know, like imagine that dude 10 years ago or 15 years ago, like when we were in college, and those social media platforms were just becoming popular. Um, but people on Instagram just posted pictures of the food they were eating for dinner, yeah. And mom and two other people liked it. Like it's just such a different thing now, and he's he and players like him are under such high scrutiny, and at the end of the day, like all the money they're making, yes, but he's still a 21-year-old kid. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's just it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.

Blake Elsner 30:01

Because yeah, like you know, mental health of of things is is real, and like, like you said, they're 21, still, you know, their brains still developing. Um, and to yeah, I'm sure like with the Manning stuff and with Texas just um losing like that to what they lose to Florida at home. Um that that I'm sure, yeah. If he got on Twitter, I mean that that'd be horrible, I'm sure, to read some of these trolls.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

He's he's gotta be off, I would guess. If I'm him, I am off. Yeah, completely.

Blake Elsner 30:32

Yeah, no, I uh yeah, I don't blame you. I I mean so that's interesting though to hear that you go back and watch film. It's kind of like the players, right? You you gotta kind of it's like your preparation and your post-game um work, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, like I I think it's really important, and you know, I think I learned this through playing sports growing up and in high school and then collegiately, is critique is not a bad thing. And I you know, I think there's a way to critique someone else, there's a way to critique yourself, like in a way that's uh constructive and not destructive. Um, and so for us, it's like at the end of the day, we're calling football games, you know, somebody's life isn't on the line based on how I call a touchdown. Um, but like it is my craft, I'm super passionate about it. I'm obsessed with it, actually. I I I love what I do and I love the aspect of continuing to improve, and there's always a way in which I can improve. I love that aspect of it. So kind of approaching my review sessions with that mentality, as opposed to what did I do wrong this week? You know, versus like, man, how can I get better? This is exciting. I'm picking up ways that I can improve. Now I can implement that the following Saturday.

Blake Elsner 32:01

Yeah, you got to be your own caddy in a way, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah, I like that. Yep. Be your own caddy.

Blake Elsner 32:06

I love that. Yeah, that's right. So tell all right, so before I let you go, I know you got a lot of things to do. Just tell tell somebody out there,

Advice And Weekly Preparation System

Blake Elsner 32:13

if you know, a kid that's listening, he's like, Man, I want to be a I want to be a broadcaster. Like, hey, what would you tell him? Like, don't give up. Like, I mean, there's a it's hard, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yeah, I mean, I would say, first of all, um, if you want to be, it's like with anything, but if to say specifically, if you want to be a broadcaster, like you got to say yes to every opportunity to put your face in front of a microphone. It doesn't matter if it's radio, TV, sideline, play-by-play, badminton or football. Like, you just gotta do it. You gotta get the reps. I mean, I called every sport under the sun, you know, coming through the ranks, so to speak. Um, and it's how you grow, it's how you get better, it's how you develop your voice and your style and what have you. And then, yeah, the other piece of it is just, you know, some people, everybody's story is different. You know, my story is different than 10 other people who are at the same level as I am. Some of those guys, it only took them a couple of years to get to where they were. For me, it took, you know, the better part of a decade. Um, and so just understanding like your time will come when it's time. And um, to just really, it sounds cliche, but just you know, be where your feet are and fall in love with the process. Early in my career, I was really overly focused on when the next, where's the next thing? When is the next thing? Why is that person getting that job? I think I'm better than that person, worrying about way too much external instead of you know, rechanneling my focus within and just worrying on my own journey and processes. And once I started doing that, ironically, the external just has a way of figuring itself out. Um, so that would be my two pieces of advice.

Blake Elsner 34:05

I love that. That's that's great advice. And I think uh anybody that wants to follow, you know, following his steps is is like you said, you gotta you gotta show up, you gotta put yourself in front of a microphone. And like you said, if it's badminton, you gotta get out there and call it. Get out of here. I gotta say, I was looking at your uh sheet too. I think people forget, you know, there's a million football players on that field at once, it seems like, right? And you gotta you gotta know 79, you know, 74. And I looked at that sheet you had, um, and you're walking with it, and it's got highlighters, pen marks. I'm like, so obviously you have some type of method that you keep, right? In your pregame that you create some sheet that cheat.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Yeah, well, there's a company that makes the shell. It's called Tony Britt Spotter Charts, and they are a game changer because I don't know how long it would take me to prepare for these games if I had to do that by hand. So, like, I'll go to FedEx today, pick up my charts, and it's you know, too deep, sometimes three deep at a position, depending on where that team's at, depth wise, for both sides of the ball. And then it's got you know kickers and special teams, people long snapper, holder, all that jazz. And over the course of the week, I'm going through and handwriting in the notes that I think are most important about each one of those players. And that, you know, I get to that point kind of in a funnel approach. Like at the beginning of the week, my funnel is real wide. I'm gathering as much information as I can. And over the course of the week, through talking with coaches and players, my team, production people, my partners, Aaron Murray, who's my analyst, like what's most important to him. Now all of a sudden, like I start to funnel that information down to the point where it's more digestible, not only for me, but for a fan who's watching the game on Saturday. Um, and that's what ends up on the sheet.

Blake Elsner 35:56

That's really good because that's a lot of work that obviously you're doing for the person listening. Because, like you said, you have such a wide base, you dwindle it down to you know the very important stuff that takes work from somebody else that has to think about trying to figure out it out, and they just get to listen to you and hear the most important tidbits, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:14

No doubt. Yeah. But I but I think that work too is like it's as much for the fan as it is for myself. Because in the process of doing all that, it is becoming ingrained in me to the point where I rarely look at that chart during the game, to be honest with you. Uh so much of it is memorized, but then the minute that game's over, I forget all about it. Like you could ask me about something from last week's Mizzou Ole Miss game, and I may or may not recollect because I'm now on to the next game.

Blake Elsner 36:44

Because you're planning for like you, like you said, you're you're printing out where do you go this weekend?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Kentucky.

Blake Elsner 36:50

Kentucky. Uh so you'll be in Kentucky. Who's Kentucky play?

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Vanderbilt.

Blake Elsner 36:55

Oh, that'll be a good matchup, another SEC matchup.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, another SEC matchup. And there's, you know, on paper, Kentucky's heavily favored, but shoot, last week there was a lot of teams heavily favored that lost. I just think that league has so much parity. That's part of what makes it so fun to cover.

Blake Elsner 37:11

That's so true. Yeah, because it really is definitely the one of the hardest leagues out there. And definitely a grind, like you say. I I think part of like seeing some of these doll underdogs winning is is like you're saying, like, I think what did like a couple of like the top ten went down last week, was it?

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Like, yeah, five of the top seven teams lost.

Blake Elsner 37:31

Yeah, that's it's crazy. And what's Miami sitting at one?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

They're at one now.

Blake Elsner 37:36

Wow, yeah. I'm I you know, I I didn't see that coming. I mean, they're good. I just feel like that offense sometimes can be a little streaky, but maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

I can go through lulls. I think they're a national championship caliber team. It'll be interesting. I think just like March Madness with basketball, as this playoff continues to expand, more and more I think it becomes about your path. Who do you have to go up against to get to the championship game? Um, so it'll it'll be interesting to see where their seeding ends up at the end of the year and who they end up matching up against. But I do think they're one of a few teams right now that have shown the ability to be national champion-esque.

Blake Elsner 38:18

Uh yeah, that's uh well, they're they're in one, so you're they're they're in the number one. They're in the spot right now, but as we as we know, that that probably could shift around. But so no, I appreciate you taking the time um to come on here and talk about your journey and talk about college football and kind of the whole process of being in the broadcast booth.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Absolutely, man. Appreciate you having me.

Blake Elsner 38:40

Absolutely. Obviously, uh, I know people hear your voice on ESPN today, they hear you on you know the SEC network, but I feel like they don't always see the journey um that made it possible. So, you know, listening to the the the minor league cardinal stuff and the long hours and and little pay, like, hey man, that that shows you put in the work consistent and props to you. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. Absolutely, and thanks, thanks for being part of uh Elevate with Elsner. Till next time, one love.