(Thanks to alum and Newhouse professor Tina Perkins for editing this week's episode.)
Mike Murphy, from the WJPZ Class of 1995, has gone from Z89 sports to the face of sports in the state of New Hampshire, having called multiple sports for the University of New Hampshire, minor league baseball, and more.
Like many of us, when Mike found out he wasn't good at playing sports, he wanted to work in sports. So Syracuse was the obvious choice. Soon he was auditioning for WJPZ's sports department, landing a coveted on-air gig. He eventually worked his way up to sports director.
He got married only weeks after graduation, and he tells the story of informing his bride-to-be what his first job salary would be when they moved to New Hampshire. And yes, they are still together.
Mike takes us through his journey in the Granite State, working in radio, minor league baseball, and eventually joining the staff of UNH Athletics, where he still does play by play today.
And while our guest has some hilarious stories to share, we touch on some of the mistakes he made at the "world's greatest media classrom." Mike honestly reflects on some of the things he did at the station that he still feels badly about.
The big lessons, however, are network and say yes to anything. The latter led to a couple hilarious things that happened to Mike inside the costumes of various mascots.
Finally, if you're Facebook friends with Mike, you've no doubt seen the heartwarming posts with his grandson. We had to ask "Pop Pop" about that.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. For years, the face of the state of New Hampshire was the Old Man of the Mountain, but now in recent years that face may be one of our illustrious alumni. He has gone from member of the crazy morning crew to sportscaster to now as you've seen on Facebook doting grandfather, which might make some of his classmates feel like they're the old men and women of the mountain. But that's okay. Welcome to the show, Mr. Mike Murphy.
Mike: Jag, unbelievable intro the way you tied it into our iconic old man of the mountain. Still too soon, almost 20 years since he fallen. It's tough up here in the Granite State without him. But thank you for that introduction. Thrilled to be here on what has become my favorite podcast.
JAG: I appreciate those kind words, si., let's start from the beginning as we usually do. How does a kid from Connecticut find Syracuse and then Z89?
Mike: I realized when I got cut from my high school baseball team that I wasn't gonna be a pro athlete anymore, and I remember going to my father. In fact, this was before high school.
It was like eighth grade. Make like the, was it Cal Ripken or Babe Ruth? Who knows what it was, but I stunk at baseball. Sports was all I really cared about at the time, and my father said now what? I don't know. I want to get a job and be in sports somehow. And somewhere along the line were watching TV and the people broadcasting the games, he goes, those guys, they went to college for that, to be broadcasting sports. So then this light went off in my head. Okay, where did this person go? And that's Marv Albert. And where the, oh, there's Bob Costas. And inevitably more and more names you'd see Syracuse University was the name connected.
JAG: All right. Sportscaster going to Syracuse. One more for the tote board. We have a tote board in the studio for the podcast.
Mike: Continue. So that's how I found, cuz Syracuse was simply a team I cheered against as a kid. I was a St. John's fan growing up. Chris Mullen loved the Big East.
JAG: I would've guessed UConn. Okay.
Mike: I became a UConn fan when I realized UConn was in Big East. It wasn't like I was watching every game, but then all of a sudden Clifford Robinson and I was like, wow, I'm in Connecticut and UConn has a big East team. So like 1989, 90, I'm a big Yukon fan. They had that great run
JAG: R P to the Big Monday in Big East and Sean McDonough of Syracuse calling the games and all that.
Mike: Yeah. But then once Syracuse became the destination, I said, that's it. I want to go here. Apply here. Became a Syracuse fan, Billy Owens. We lost to Richmond. Often running disappointment with Syracuse, except for 20 years ago. That was it. Like I pretty much decided Syracuse is where I wanted to go from there.
And even though we moved from Connecticut to upstate New York and Rochester, only an hour away. Okay, this is perfect. Yeah. And then we moved to Naperville, Illinois, while I was a junior in high school, but Syracuse was always the focus. And luckily, I got in there and that's where I went to college.
JAG: So you get this campus and then how was it you find Z 89?
Mike: Yeah, listen. A lot of people have unbelievable photographic memories. I don't know how you do that. I'm guessing it was one of those, cuz Z89 back then did a great job of you post up, hey, come to this seminar about the student radio station. And everybody shows up and has a massive auditorium and you learn about the different departments.
And again, sports was all I cared about. Boom. Learn about sports. Show up at the first sports meeting. Huge auditorium again, of just people wanting to be sportscasters. The sports director was Jen McClain, so my original idol, it's unbelievable. There's Jen McClain. Wow. How is she? Because you're a freshman in college. Anybody who's above a freshman in college seems like an adult.
JAG: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. It staggered my mind to think I could try out for this, and I did. We all had to submit a tape for the hope of getting chosen for sportscast. As Z89 barely cares about their sports people.
JAG: Oh, there it is.
Mike: And so I was lucky enough with my audition tape to get the Saturday morning 7:00 AM that was mine. And what happened at seven, let's say it was 7:19, you had a ten second tease, and then at 7:49 you could do your 90 second sports cast. And it was everything to get there two hours early, write it all.
And to this day, the person who was doing news that same hour freshman year Tina Stoklosa. One of the true greats from this class of 1995. I feel so guilty, Jag, being part of the class of 95. Because I've heard you refer to it as this legendary class, and you're right. Not only was I not the most famous from the class of 95. Far from it. I wasn't even the most famous from my freshman year dorm floor. I was on Boland eight with a guy named Dion Summers.
JAG: Ah, Neon Dion. Absolutely.
Mike: Okay. I don't think either of us knew freshman year that we were at the radio station. That's how insulated you are when you're sports versus, the music folks.
JAG: It is interesting to see how sports and music have been two ships passing in the night and then intertwined and then apart and back and forth over the years, as he takes a sip of his Dunkin Donuts, iced coffee.
Mike: I'll stop drinking.
JAG: So Neon Dion is on your floor, he's doing music, you're doing sports, and then you start to rise to the ranks of the station. And what else did you do at the station?
Mike: Getting lucky was huge, like getting that sports cast at 7:00 AM. It really meant a lot cuz there's a lot more people who didn't and they would stick around just hoping to get any kind of sports. So if I remember you moved up the chain by first, the early morning weekend, then maybe an afternoon sportscast, and the big thing to get was sports wrap up.
And sports wrap up was like three minutes, at 1130 at night or something like that. And that was what the upperclassmen had. So I would hang around the station with the sports folks. There was the high school show going on at the time, Mark Kinderman, Craig Codlan. So I would kinda latch on, maybe go to a high school game and do a report that would end up on their Saturday morning show.
You get to know people, but again, an upperclassman by the name of Jeff Quebec, who I'd never met, chose me to join him on a hockey wrap up for another show called, Around the Boards or something. NHL thing, to Top Gun theme music. Record it in the studio. So I was just getting opportunities.
JAG: Hang on, Mike. You said you were lucky, but you really made an effort to hang around with people and get to know people. People knew your face, knew your name and you were around a lot and I think that's to your credit and something through 50 years of the history of the radio station is, just hanging out at the radio station. Liking the vibe at the radio station, whatever department you're in, and you hang around enough, you start to get grab to do different things.
Mike: I, yeah, I guess you're right. In some ways just by being there, people either get tired of you being around or you get more chances and yeah, it was a passion and it still a passion in many ways. But the real eye-opening for me was sophomore year when, so at the end of freshman year is when they announced the Z89 leaders for the following year.
Yeah. And Jen McClain, I told you was the sportscaster. The sophomore year sports director, she was the sports director. Sophomore year. It was Ryan Raffensberger. And Ryan was a dear friend. Still is to this day. He was the guy I looked up to the most because we both had long-term girlfriends that we brought to college.
They weren't with us at college, so we commiserated as, yeah. That's a different type of thing to have going on when you're that age. He was so poised, even though we're the same age, and he would be the leader when all the freshmen would make our way to Z89 sports meetings. But when he decided, yeah, I'm gonna run for sports director, we're like, what?
You're just a freshman. No way you could get it. And when he was awarded that sports director job, it changed everything in my eyes. Wow, anything is possible. And luckily then I got into the broadcasting of the Orangewomen. We did those games. So play by play eventually got into doing the talk show.
Which I think was Sunday nights, I forget the name of the Z 89 Sports Talk show, but it was great.
JAG: Sports Wrap or something.
Mike: Yeah. But those sorts of things. So you just, whatever, whether it was doing sports cast or the sports talk and Orangewomen games, such great memories of traveling around.
We drove to Tennessee to do a tournament went to Georgetown. Just unbelievable the opportunities that Z89 gave to me as a student.
JAG: Any stories that you can share that might be past their statute of limitations from those road trips?
Mike: There's one where Ray Curran and a great fellow, a year before us. Class of 96, so we're on this infamous car ride to we're driving from Syracuse, we went to Ohio, where Ryan McNaughton legend, his parents let us stay at the house halfway and then we drove to freaking Memphis. And as we're going across the Mississippi River Ray Curran's hat had blown off his head and he turned around.
It fell in the back seat, but we told him it went out the window and like out. Your hat's In the river! And he goes, what? My Yankee hat? It's in the Mississippi. Hey, my hat's in the Mississippi. He was so excited. He was disappointed when it ended up, back in his lap.
JAG: Oh my G-d.
Mike: But no, we jumping ahead to stories I could tell somehow I ended up on the crazy morning crew.
JAG: Yeah. I wanna hear about this because Steve Donovan and others have talked about this in previous episodes. Tell me about your experience on the Crazy Morning Crew.
Mike: Just so overmatched, I dunno why I'm on that to begin with. But Steve Donovan might be the funniest human being I've ever met and to be able to get up in the morning and hang with him, and he told some of the good stories about Scrotal face and everything else.
But I remember, this is even without Steve. I think Ryan McNaughton was certainly in the room and maybe Steve was. We used to have Rabbi Rappaport come in part of the morning show, and for whatever reason, there was a Syracuse Crunch player because the Syracuse Crunch, AHL hockey team came into existence while we were at Syracuse.
Oh, okay. So all these dumb college kids all of a sudden have a professional hockey team in addition to the Chiefs baseball team and the Orangemen. So we had all these things to cover, but there was a player named Brent Tulley. I couldn't tell you if Brent Tulley ever made the NHL, what he's doing now.
But I don't know why he did it. He'd agree to come on once a week on the phone. We'd talked to this guy and he was struggling, or the team was in a losing streak or whatever the case was. He'd come on and Rabbi Rappaport gave a blessing to him trying to snap his streak. And at the same time, we decided we're gonna eat Captain Crunch in the studio.
JAG: To help break this curse of the Syracuse Crunch, okay.
Mike: And so Rabbi Rappaport eating Captain Crunch and he got some of the milk in his beard, and I forget Ryan McNaughton saying it. Let me help you with that, right? And like wiping the milk out of the rabbi's beard will just forever be etched in my memory as a wonderful thing. All tied together. Religion. AHL hockey and whatever reason I went with the name Prince of Darkness on the radio, which is horrible, right?
JAG: So you had Abe Forman and the Prince of Darkness together on the same show?
Mike: The Sausage King and the Prince of Darkness. Makes sense, right? That's a ratings winner. And now you know why the format changed.
JAG: So I always remember. Rabbi Rappaport as having that Sunday morning show. I didn't realize he had done the morning show during the week with you guys. That's awesome.
Mike: I think what happened was he was probably recording. We dragged him in like we were that kind of crew like, and he was willing, oh yeah, that's true.
I dunno why he was willing. Maybe we were lovable then. It's strange. I remember sending Bill Abelson to McDonald's asking for the McDLT, which had been non-existent for years. So on the phone, live with the McDonalds, I'm like, insist on the, I said, put me on the phone. The Prince of Darkness wants cold side cold. Hot side hot.
And he's getting in this heated conversation with a poor kid working at 7:00 AM in McDonald's, to get a McDLT.
JAG: What was the mc DLT? What was the D? I'm afraid to ask. What was the D?
Mike: Oh, the McDLT was basically a hamburger, but the box, I think the reason it didn't last is their whole pitch was the cold side stayed cold.
In other words, you had the bun with the tomato, the lettuce. And the hot side stayed hot, and then you put the two together. And that way it was like a barbecue burger. So the McD is McDLT, right? McDonald's. Okay. The LT was lettuce tomato but it didn't last. I was insisting he get the mcd lt cuz the hot side stays hot, cold side stays cool.
Just great times my friend. Great times.
JAG: So talk to me about your illustrious journey after Syracuse and, becoming the king of all media in the state of New Hampshire.
Mike: I like to borrow a phrase that I learned from another former Syracuse Z89 alum. Phil Soto Ortiz. He once bumped into a high school classmate a couple years after graduation.
And the guy was working in a bar and Phil says, Hey, how are you? He goes as you can see, I haven't made much of myself.
JAG: Oh geez.
Mike: And that's why we think of when people ask on, as you can see, I haven't made much of myself. I'm here in the great state of New Hampshire hanging on, I told my wife, who is from Naperville, Illinois, by the way.
I told you I briefly lived there like middle of junior year. The end of senior year of high school. My father's two pieces of advice he gave me in life I didn't listen to either. Never live west of where you work and don't meet a girl, cuz we're not gonna stay in Illinois for long. Okay? I live west of work, so I drive into the sun both ways.
I did convince this woman to stick with me through four years of college when she was in Illinois. I was in New York. And then the day before our wedding, I got married two weeks after graduation. So I like maxed out in May of 95. The day before the wedding rehearsal dinner's coming up, I accept the job at WKXL Radio in Concord, New Hampshire, which on my demo tape, I said Concord, cuz I didn't know how to pronounce New Hampshire.
JAG: And don't even get me started on Lebanon versus Lebanon.
Mike: See, that's a man who knows his towns. I didn't know Jack. I still don't know much, but I remember having to say, "hold on" to Dick Osborne, the general manager of the radio station who had interviewed me, cover the phone. There was no cell phone.
Had to cover the mouthpiece. Lean over to my wife who's with her mother getting ready for our wedding rehearsal dinner in Illinois and say, can we move to New Hampshire for $13,000 a year? She cried her eyes out, but somehow said yes. And then next thing you know, we're here.
JAG: Said yes to New Hampshire and yes to you the following day. Look at that.
Mike: Both times, crying, but as I tell kids when I tell that story in college classes now, I said, don't worry, I make double that now. But that's it. Like back then, the connections with Syracuse. There was a Syracuse grad named Randy Goldberg, who worked at this WKXL radio station. And being a senior, working at the Schine Student Center, renting out fridges and TVs and selling bus tickets, and it was just a great job. But in between, how do I find work? You get your resume ready. You're sending out tapes blindly hoping somebody…
JAG: That job at Schine might have paid almost as much as the first gig in New Hampshire.
Mike: It was. I should have stayed there in retrospect, oh man. Those micro fridges were big money back then. But the idea that you go walk into the career center and just see postings on the wall. Yeah, and Randy Goldberg had posted a phone number and being lazy. I'm like, oh, I can call this station.
And it was after five, Jag. I called that one day, senior year. And the general manager of the radio station picked up the phone. Give me a break. And we, Dick Osborne and I, we talked for a while and I told him of my situation and just for some reason we hit it off and he brought me in for an interview, and this is between graduation and wedding. And as we talked, he not only was the general manager of this small radio station in Concord, New Hampshire. He was the radio voice of the University of New Hampshire men's hockey team.
JAG: Full circle. You're wearing your UNH hockey jacket as we record this podcast. Continue.
Mike: Very bizarre. Because I didn't know college hockey. I guess I knew it existed, we're Syracuse folks. Football, basketball, right? Even lacrosse. Yeah. I'm like, oh yeah, hockey. Okay. That's neat. Didn't realize how big hockey was here, but Dick Osborne became the guy who brought me in. Because of his connection to UNH sports. There was another gentleman named Jim Janot and Jim is the Rick Flair of New Hampshire sportscasters.
This guy has been the sportscaster of the year 25 times. He was the sports director. All I was doing at the time, and this is no small feat, morning radio was big. He may not have been Rabbi Rappaport, maybe didn't have the Sausage King. Chris Velardi and Rachel Sears, people I worked with through the years in the morning show. All I was doing is basically reading some sports scores, giving birthday wishes. A big time guy when there was a snow day, they had to listen to me to find out what they had school.
JAG: Oh, you had all the juice then.
Mike: Okay. It was big time because I kid you not, there's more people who knew I was then around town than do now, which is weird having some kind of quote unquote minor celebrity.
But Jim Janot was the sports director, somebody I looked up to. He knew ultimately, I wanted to do what he was doing. He was the voice of UNH football and the voice of UNH basketball. So just by dumb coincidence, the station I'm at had the three announcers who did the three big sports at the only with all due respect to Dartmouth College, the only Division One university in New Hampshire.
So a couple years in, here I am thinking, I told my wife and we moved here and she cried. Eh, we'll be outta here in a couple years. I'll go to a major market. We'll move back to Illinois. None of that happened, obviously, we're here. And Jim needed a color commentator for football in the middle of 1998 because his partner was a newspaper person, got promoted, couldn't do it anymore.
That was like my way in, just driving over on Saturdays doing football color commentary, somebody who never played the game even, trying to be Troy Aikman. But it's 25 years later and those are the reasons I even got in that. Now, yes, UNH is my full-time employer and I am now the voice of UNH hockey all these years later.
JAG: Yeah, that's quite a big jump from, 13 grand a year and worming your way into color commentary. What are some of the steps over these last quarter centuries or so where different jobs you've had, different roles you've taken on as you climbed the ladder?
Mike: You always say yes when there's an opportunity, right? That's the easy way to do it. And I think I did that a lot and my family sacrificed in some ways. A minor league baseball team came to New Hampshire in the winter of 2003, going into 2004. So by now I've been doing the radio thing for almost a decade. I'm doing the UNH sports. I added basketball color commentary some years earlier.
But this was a big deal. Like when the baseball team came in, I'm like, wow, baseball is my favorite sport. I did an Auburn Astros game, in the summer it was Z89, right between junior and senior year. And I kid you not the GM of the Auburn Astros back in 1994 was the GM of the New Hampshire Fishercats.
JAG: The Fishah Cats!
Mike: Shawn Smith. Shawn Smith had been a TA of mine in Professor Ed Spray's class at Syracuse. Did Sean Smith ever talk to me? No. Did I ever talk to him? No. But I knew of him in the periphery, and I played that relationship like we were best friends when I sent in my material. Said, hey, I'm in here.
I'm doing sportscasts. I'd love to be involved with the Fisher Cats somehow. And then the other side of it, I had talked to my station manager about, wouldn't it be great if we had the Fisher Cats on WKXL? This is gonna be huge. And so the station management said, yeah, maybe we should get the contract to broadcast games.
Shawn thought that because we were Orangemen together, we were boys. Somehow I weaseled my way in to getting the play-by-play job for the Fishercats in day one in 2004. And then a couple years later when my radio career was ending at WKXL, a senator by the name of Gordon Humphrey bought the radio station and said, yeah, we don't, he and I just didn't see eye to eye on things.
So basically, I was told I was out. I'm like, wow, I'm being fired. But he gave me, he told me on Veteran's Day I was being let go, but he gave me until March. This is 05 into 06. Had time to find work. And I told Shawn Smith, Hey Fishercats baseball broadcasting is my biggest love. Can I just work for you somehow?
And yeah, of course. Guess what? You're selling tickets. Get on the phone, wear the mascot outfit, do all this. So I got in, oh my, my first week in the job, with the Fishercats full-time.
JAG: Really? Okay.
Mike: So I think I started on Martin Luther King Day 2006, and I thought everybody there, cause I'd been broadcasting the games on the radio for a few years, so I figured all the front office employees knew who I was.
No, they didn't listen, they didn't care. It was just a separation. They were full-time people doing all the grunt work. And I would just roll in, broadcast the game, get the bus travel with the players and luxury, quote unquote. My first week on the job, they said, hey, guess what? You're Fungo. I'm like, what does that mean?
I had to put on the mascot suit. And go to Pat's Peak, which is a ski mountain in Henniker for school vacation week. We're gonna hang out with a bunch of kids at this ski mountain. I'm like, okay, I guess it's not too difficult. Have you ever put on a mascot suit, Jag?
JAG: Can't say I have. It's usually quite warm from what I understand. But I guess if you're at a ski mountain, I get in January, that's probably not the worst time to wear one.
Mike: It's warm, but it's also confining. So you are basically like horse blinders the way this outfit works. So I couldn't see much. I could see it's a little bit in front of me. Looking down was difficult. So I bring all that up because here I come walking out with an escort basically holding my arm and I'm staggering as I walk, and I'm bumping into kids and there's so many of them. But at the same time that the New Hampshire Fishercats were around, our big rival for fans in the Granite State were the Manchester Monarchs.
JAG: Okay. Yeah.
Mike: They were the hockey team that came along in the early two thousands. They came first. There was a time where, believe it or not, Manchester Hampshire led the AHL in attendance. This was a hockey mad region. And they had the coolest mascot, Max.
JAG: Max the Monarch?
Mike: Max the Monarch. He was a lion. He had his own sneakers, had his own snowboard. He's going down the hill doing tricks and the kids going nuts. We look back and they see Fungo there and they go, he's our Fishercat. And they go trying to chant Fungo and they’re pointing at the mountain and I just wave him off and all those kids booed Fungo.
JAG: Oh my G-d.
Mike: Yeah. That was one episode as a mascot.
I also was Molly the Molar once. Molly the Molar was the tooth that would clean off home plate with a toothbrush before the game.
JAG: Sponsorship money. Right?
Mike: Sponsorship money. So you know, minor league baseball really relies on the college interns. But they don't get to the team until early May after graduation. In April we're all pitching in.
So one day I'm Molly the Molar and I wipe off the plate and I'm running back to the dugout thinking I'd get back to the booth in time for the broadcast and there was a picture named Jean Machi. Now Jean was a reliever. He'd go on to the major leagues and have some success, but Jean would never talk to me when I was Mike Murphy broadcaster. I'd say hi to him. He would just ignore me. And he didn't speak English so we could never interview. He did speak English as I found out, cuz he thought Molly the Molar was a lady. And he's hey mami!, and he's blocking my way and.
JAG: Oh my G-d.
Mike: And I'm trying to show him that my arms are hairy. And he starts nodding going, yeah. And he thought it was like flirting with him. So I found out what it was like to be just the object of a man's affection, even for 10 seconds. And I used the toothbrush to fight him off and then went my way and I was.
JAG: That's a great story.
Mike: Yeah. Molly, the Molar and Jean Machi. That's it, that's wearing these mascot costumes was I learned how minor league sports works.
JAG: So you're leading me into my next question, Mike, which is, things you learned at JPZ that you applied through your career. Obviously never say no, you mentioned that.
And network and talk to everybody. Anything else that comes to mind from your time at Z89 that has served you well professionally in the last quarter century or so?
Mike: All the mistakes I made at Z89, I mean that. That's one thing. I love hearing the success stories, but I was a moron, right? But the dumb things I would do.
JAG: Oh, we all were at 20.
Mike: We are, and we were given responsibility. Some of us, I would become the sports director of that station. And it was, I'm telling you, you understand this, but for some people the auditorium is full of people who are just sports and they're looking up to me. And I would do some dumb things. I remember when we had one of those recruiting, remember I told your freshman year when I first had my meeting, it was, wow, look at all this. How do I get involved?
When it was my time to present, I walked, there was a whiteboard and I had my magic marker or whatever that was, and I wrote food, girls, sports. And I looked at the whole room and I said, those are the only three things I care about. We don't have a food department. And we don't have a girls department, so I'm the sports director of the sports department.
Come on and get involved. So that was dumb, but just some of the decisions, the regrets, we all have regrets in life and I'll share a few here. Ryan Raffensberger, already told you hero of mine because he went from colleague, great friend to the sports director sophomore year.
He became the general manager of this place and the things he dealt with that I didn't understand at the time, I'm still learning. Now hearing, Jeff Wade or Dan Austin or Jay Palladino talk about that stress that the real upper management of Z89 was going through time when I was just having a great time with the Sausage King and Rabbi Rappaport and Brent Tulley, but it's eye-opening but Ryan really wore the weight of this.
And when he was the general manager of the radio station, I was the sports director and I had this policy, if you miss a sports cast, you're suspended two weeks, right? And one day he was sick, like he couldn't get in for his sports cast. And so somebody else filled in. I found out. Oh, rules are rules. I suspended the general manager for two weeks cause he was sick. And he didn't kill me. He was obviously upset and it was a bad move, but I had that one.
Second big regret. Ryan McNaughton, unbelievable, great guy. He was in line to be the sports director after we were leaving. We were voting on the next sports director.
I should have given him that job. He earned that job, but I was trying to find some new up and coming person, trying to replicate the next Ryan Raffensberger that sophomore year. And so he didn't get the sports director job he deserved. He should have never spoken to me again.
And he was in my wedding. Still, he has opened his home to me and my son when we've traveled out to Ohio. And he's obviously gone on to much better things. And I regret that to this day. And then the biggest regret goes back to Tina Stoklosa, my Saturday morning 7:00 AM partner. Somebody else who would be great.
There was one day, I don't know why we even did it. A bunch of us were in the studio just messing around and I decided to call her just for trying to get a cheap laugh and pretended I was angry at her. And, how quickly she got upset. It was like the worst feeling. You know, guilt is such a terrible feeling.
And then I immediately ran up to apologize. I'm sure she forgave me at some point. She became the godmother to my son. But these things you never forget, Jag. All the terrible dumb things you do, you never can get over. And hopefully it influences your future decisions. So you don't put yourself in a spot where, trying to say I'm the enforcer. Only do this. Trying to be innovator and not realizing who you're letting out and then looking for the laugh, right? Steve Donovan shared that in his episode. When you're the funny guy, people laugh. That's great. You want them to laugh, but at the expense of somebody else, you try to avoid that any way possible.
JAG: I appreciate your honesty there, Mike, because you're talking about what you learned at the radio station, and we've had dozens and dozens of episodes of this podcast, of all the wonderful experiences we've had and things, and you certainly you have, and you talked about those. But yeah, we all made a lot of mistakes because we're 19 and 20.
I actually cut this out of the episode where Matt DelSignore interviewed me. I had to suspend myself once. Because we were in a jury-rigged studio in the house on Ostrom, and I was having a phone conversation with a buddy of mine in the studio about a girl I was interested in, and I described how interested I was in this girl and I'll leave it at that.
The jury-rigged wired system. The phone call bled over onto the air. So I ended up having to suspend myself for using inappropriate language on the air, and I still to this day, cringe when I think about that memory. We all talk about these things. I'm sure everybody listening right now is thinking about, oh, yep, there was a time I did that. And even though it's, 19, 20 years old, you still think about, oh man and hopefully you forgive yourself and you learn from those experiences.
Mike: I appreciate you sharing that and I did get suspended myself, so I'm not above reproach. And it was actually Neon Dion who suspended me because I thought, hey, we need a fill in for a midnight shift on a Saturday or whatever it was. And I was never a DJ. I did the sports thing, ended up morning crew. I learned the board, but never did a shift. I didn't understand music or how to program or any of that, but I said, I'll do the Saturday overnight.
And I remember my girlfriend, now wife, was in the dorm room and I said, I'll play a song that, a song I like, cuz the music wasn't my music. It's 1:40 in the morning. I threw on Billy Joel, Always a Woman To Me. And I'm like, okay, here we go. And all of a sudden, they see the light, the phone's ringing in the studio.
Z89 overnight, Prince of Darkness. Who is it? And it's Dion. He's Why are you playing this song? And next thing you know, I'm suspended two weeks. And I knew it. I didn't fight it. I said, wow, how impressive the freaking PD is locked in at 1:40 in the morning. That's how serious he took this craft. And that's why he has done so well.
JAG: Absolutely. So how did you make the transition from over to UNH and working for the university?
Mike: A car ride. In 2008 I was broadcasting football and basketball. Hadn't done hockey at all, but there was a Sunday afternoon game at St. Lawrence University, which is way upstate New York. A long distance from UNH even. So at a noon football game on a Saturday, they said, hey, we need a fill in, play by play announcer for the hockey game tomorrow. Any chance? Cause a regular guy couldn't do it. He was doing some TV work.
He had really moved on to Dan Parkhurst was the name that was doing games at ESPN and other. Anyway, the point is, I had an opportunity. What did I say before? Say yes. I'll go. I absolutely, I'll pack my car, I'll drive up, I'll do the game. Well, because UNH was worried about me driving myself. They insisted that a guy named Tom Wilkins, who was the SID, just ride in the passenger seat with me.
Tom was, he was number two in the department, a younger guy. I was working as the Fishercats' director of media relations at the time. That job that started off as wearing the mascot suit and making sales calls. Eventually I was doing press releases and writing game stories. Anyway, we're in the car together, and that's like a six to seven hour drive in October of 2008.
I remember because the Rays and the Phillies were in the World Series. That's how I remember my dates.
JAG: Yep. That's how a lot of us sports guys do it. Okay. What was the World Series that year? Okay, that must have been that year. That was the Superbowl. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Mike: It was a easier to know it happened in 1988 versus 2008, because I knew sports better then. But the point is you're in a car with somebody that long, you share hopes, dreams, talk about your careers. And along the way it's oh, wouldn't it be great if one day, At this point, I'm like, I'm getting tired of the baseball grind. I'm traveling to Altoona, Pennsylvania and Binghamton, New York and Reading year after year, I'm not getting better to be like a major league broadcaster, but the college life was really calling to me.
I liked the idea of the people I met at UNH, the athletes there four years, the coaches. So Tom and I really hit it off, became much closer friends, and it was two years later where someone left the department. He was elevated to the top role. I found out about it like Mother's Day and said, you gotta interview me, can I come in?
And he goes, the money is probably not much better than you're making now, and you get ticket commission. I said, let's talk. And he brought me in. I was so inexperienced. I remember the interview because there's a lot of design work that goes into when you're an SID or making game notes or I didn't know.
I knew how to write a little bit. But you used the Apple computers, you use Macs quite a bit. Yeah. And so during the course of the interview, one of the questions is have you worked with Macs before? And I said, I'm not familiar with him. Who's that? So I didn't know. I didn't. Computers. Yeah.
And yet they still hired me. And then I I got in here the summer of 2010. Learned that college is a lot different. And this is 13 years working in college and I love it. Ironically, I had to give up the broadcasting when I came here. You have to stop broadcasting football if you wanna work here full time.
And I said, okay it's worth it to me. The broadcasting's great. Maybe I still can do a little bit in the side. But I did give it up, kept doing the basketball, and then a few years later, the hockey, they started to realize, oh, you know what? Maybe we can use you on the air. You can do both.
And oh, we're gonna do some TV games on NBC Sports Boston. Why don't you jump on and do that? So the broadcast background came in handy because it's college sports at the dawning of ESPN Plus and ESPN3. More and more games were on television in addition to radio. So you need "talent."
Hate to use that phrase on myself, but hockey became the one that I'm able to do just about every game. I still have other commitments to football that preclude me from doing the early season road games, which is fine. And I've jumped in and done a lot of other things.
Done a podcast here. Five stars.
It's just fun. It's fun to do. Whether it's PA at a gymnastics meet I've done, or get a chance to do a field hockey game, whatever, I still enjoy that part of the business. But in order to make more than $13,000 a year, I agreed to do all the other stuff that kept me involved in the sports part of the world.
JAG: What is your official title at UNH?
Mike: All right. You ready for this? Associate athletic director for marketing and communications.
JAG: Wow, that's a mouthful. Okay.
Mike: We love our titles.
JAG: I've always been interested in play by play. I've always been a sports guy. It's always seemed to me that of the four major sports hockey's the hardest to do, cuz it seems like it moves so fast. True or false?
Mike: I'd say true. It's a struggle for me and it's weird cuz I'm, most of us are, or worst critics, right? You're like, oh G-d, why'd I say that instead of this? Radio has been my salvation in many ways because if they're listening and I have the puck in the wrong corner, They don't automatically know it.
So I try to stay on radio as often as I can, even though, hey, TV is better. And truth be told, I enjoy radio. I think you hear most sportscasters say the radio is great because you're painting the picture. Whereas TV play by play you're supposed to shut up.
JAG: Yeah. Let the picture do the talking.
Mike: Yeah. You're speaking the obvious. Yeah, of course we know the puck's at the blue line. No, we know it's in the right-hand corner. We know they cleared far boards. You're seeing it all. So you have to pull back. But it is a challenge. I enjoy the speed of the game. Part of my deal as my eyesight is getting worse, trying to identify players.
Basketball you can pretty much pick up. You're right there courtside and pretty, it doesn't take long before you know every player on the court. Hockey, it's tough to differentiate sometimes. And my running gag is when I broadcast, the leader in goals is "Rebound." Because shot, save, rebound score!
Cause I don't know who it's. And I see who's at the front of the line and I finally say, oh, goal scored by Jon Jag Gay. And you go score, and you finally see who's being front of the line and they can say, goal by. I always like to judge myself on what's, am I hitting .750 With identifying goal scorers by the end of a game?
Normally I'm not, but somehow, they keep giving me the gigs. When I find out the coach's wife likes me doing the games, that's a big thing. You meet fans who enjoy you and the players. It's just fun traveling and being part of that environment. Dick Osborn told me when I interviewed in 1995, it kept him young to be involved at in that job. And now I understand at 50 years old it is a way to live vicariously through these young people and be part of it.
JAG: And you are full circle because you've come from doing sports at Z89 to doing sports, at UNH and all this stuff. And I congratulate you on the tremendous success you've had and.
Before I let you go, I wanna ask you about being a grandfather, cuz your Facebook posts about being a grandfather with the little guy have been awesome and hilarious.
Mike: I appreciate that and I know others probably blocked me, but it is I guess I'm overstating it by saying a new lease on life, but it's a joy that I always anticipated having at some point, right?
When you have a family, you have kids, you hope to have grandkids. But it came outta nowhere when I found out, when my daughter told me that they were having, I remember I was raking leaves in the fall a couple years ago. And they came in the house and we're sitting around. I'm like, why are you all sitting here?
And my daughter, Katie calls over my son, Jason. Oh, Jason, show mom and dad the the shirt you got at the mall today. And he was wearing a hoodie. He unzipped it and it said, this is what a cool uncle looks like.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Mike: And at that moment, it hit me and I've been told it's an out of body experience. I've been told what? I said my glasses were askew on my face. I looked up and just said, "We're gonna need a crib." That's like what comes to mind, right? You say, blurt it out.
JAG: Practical!
Mike: So we finally have a crib. And here's the other thing. When they had the gender reveal, oh, it's gonna be a boy, unbelievable boy.
And I'm like, oh, I can't wait. I gotta be a grandfather. What do I call myself? That's the next big thing. And I was going through all these, do I do a Grandpa? Grampy? And I finally came up with PopPop. Okay, I'm PopPop. And I said that was the most important thing. And then him coming along, even the day he was born, June 22nd, last summer, I'm here at UNH preparing for an event.
Boom. Drop everything. I had to go to Littleton, New Hampshire and. I'm like, okay, she's in labor. I'm driving. I get a phone call with my daughter, you're a grandfather. Like that quickly. I was like, what? He's here. And so I'm driving. Okay, I'm gonna get there. I'm picking up your mother. We're getting there.
When do I find out his name? When you get here. All right, fine. So we're driving up wondering what's the name? We'd heard some names rumored. We walk in the hospital room. They put him in my arms and saying, meet Michael Gary Doucette.
JAG: Aw,
Mike: Yeah. Knowing his name, they named him after me and didn't tell me until he was in my arms.
It was it was awesome, JAG, it was, nothing beats that. Even being Molly the Molar falls to second place holding your grandson for the first time. But yeah, for those who are not Facebook friends with me, I do like to go, when I have PopPop Day alone. Sometimes because of work schedules. I can take a day off from here, thankfully.
And both his parents are working here. I am trying to figure out how to deal. Now he's nine months, but we started this like at four or five months, and they change all the time. Jag, how do I keep him upright? How do I make sure he eats something, keep him clean, keep him occupied when he is crying.
JAG: And you're asking yourself, how did I do this with my own kids?
Mike: No memory whatsoever. Somehow, we did it all those years ago and it was a blast then, but, He is. Yeah, it has been a joy and the videos will keep coming and I do hear from Z89 people a lot on the posts and that, that's fun to see. And I think there are some people who really enjoy it. Just, I know it's not TikTok, it's still old school Facebook, because my parents will, who don't travel as much as they did, they can watch and see.
What their great-grandson is doing. It's hard to believe. Yeah, that's where we are now. But it's fun and for me it'll be something to share with him as he gets older. Look what you look like at this age and at this age, it's almost like a running diary that I hope one day he'll just always have, hopefully Facebook doesn't go the way of MySpace and at least stays around in some way, shape or form when he's old enough to...
JAG: Save it to a Google Drive or Apple album, just in case for sure. So we'll timestamp this. Recording this on April 11th, so I'm sure you'll have even more stories and more Facebook posts by the time this episode publishes.
Mike: I hope so. Hopefully by the time I make it on the air, he'll be the one driving me around town. But right now it's been a lot of fun pushing him on the stroller in this tiny town of Littleton, New Hampshire. Where I don't live there, but I see the same people on the same walks all the time, and I feel like I know these folks now cause I'm the old man with the baby that sometimes they go, hey, your son's cute. And I feel like a young guy again.
JAG: You're only 50. It's possible. It could be your son.
Mike: Yeah, exactly. Or I could have kidnapped him too. I look that creepy. So you never know how these people are gonna react to you, Jag,
JAG: So you're schlepping up from Concord to Littleton, which is about an hour and a half or?
Mike: Yeah. Hour 20 hour through the Notch.
JAG: My best friend that I grew up with had a timeshare at Mittersill Alpine Resort in Franconia Notch, so I know that area quite well.
Mike: That's beautiful. Yep. Up in Cannon. I'm almost there by the time I get to that area.
JAG: There you go. Awesome. Mike Murphy, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. This has been a lot of fun as I expected it would be. Appreciate it, and we'll talk to you soon.
Mike: Thank you, JAG.