Today's guest is play-by-play man David Resnick, a 2010 WJPZ alum. He reached out to us because he wanted to make sure we recognized the All Star sports department he worked with at Z89 - many who have gone on to great success in the sports industry, as you'll hear.
As David says, the "Cold War" between WJPZ and WAER had thawed by the time he got on campus, and he got involved in everything he could - working simultaneously at both radio stations AND Citrus TV. He emphasizes that being willing to try different roles and work for multiple outlets allowed him to gain a well-rounded skillset and learn from a variety of mentors.
David also highlights the unique camaraderie and bonding that occurs among sports broadcasters, especially during road trips to cover games. While many of us spent hours and hours together inside and out of the station, there's nothing quite like the bonding that happens on those sports road trips. These experiences helped him build lasting friendships and connections within the industry. You'll also hear how then-women's Coach Q made sure to give WJPZ as much content and time as possible.
Since graduation, David has been a freelance play-by-play broadcaster, based out of New York City. You'll find out why he refers to teams and networks as "clients," as he discusses the challenges and rewards of freelancing, including the need to constantly network and seek out new opportunities. He also shares some valuable advice for aspiring sports broadcasters, emphasizing the importance of building a strong reputation, being adaptable, and considering alternative roles within the sports media landscape. With the advent of streaming, there are more video play-by-play opportunities than ever!
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Sign up for email alerts whenever we release a new episode here: jagindetroit.com/WJPZat50
Want to be a guest on the pod or know someone else who would? Email Jag: jag@jagindetroit.com.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
Jag: You mentioned earlier, being at Homecoming, you were telling me offline a great story about bringing your wife to campus.
David: Yes, so we were there. It was after the football game and we were just spending some time on campus. It was uncharacteristically a beautiful sunny fall day in Syracuse, and we just walked in to the media center with JPZ in front of me and CitrusTV to the right, and I just walked in and just stood there for a second. My wife, who has been with me on the Syracuse campus before, and she knows my involvement with the student media stations and she kind of gets it a little [laughter] just saw something come over me. It's just the feeling you get when you're around it and in the room and talking to fellow alums and just being in that environment again. It all just comes rushing back.
Jag: She saw on your face, didn't she?
David: She did. I'm usually a bit stoic, so this was a dead giveaway that something was going on.
(PRODUCED OPEN)
Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. Hi, I am Jon JAG Gay. What's been really cool about this podcast among many things, really, is that I've gotten to know so many people in our alumni association better, and that would include today's guest who I may have been in the same room with, but neither one of us can recall having conversation with each other and I'm excited to introduce him to you. That is from the class of 2010, one of our many, many sports guys. David Resnick, welcome to the podcast.
David: JAG, I appreciate being here. Yes, we could have been in the same room, but I don't think we knew it at the time, so glad to share this virtual room with you now.
Jag: Perfect. Well, I'm really glad you reached out about coming on the podcast so we can get to know you better. Let's start with your Marvel origin story, where you grew up, and how you found out about Syracuse and then the radio station.
David: I'm a New York kid, grew up in Westchester, just outside the city. I think Syracuse was always on my periphery as a New York sports fan, as a college sports fan, I think it's kind of a part of the sports landscape, but not a serious part because of the pro sports and the following that way, my parents grew up in the city and they went to small city colleges. I don't have some origin story about growing up in a Syracuse onesie and always hoping to become an orange myself.
Jag: [laughs]
David: When it came time for college, I was a bit unsure of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. I'm one of those kids that did the broadcasting thing in high school. We had a really great football team and a basketball team with future pros. My first time in the dome was back in fall of 2003 for New York State High School Football Championship. I don't know if that planted a seed or not, but when it was time to think about colleges I was aware of the Syracuse Broadcast Program, of course, and it was just one of those places where I considered going to and ultimately ended up there as both a broadcast journalism major and also a management major at the time.
In terms of finding the radio station, I just remember having a bunch of really great senior mentors that laid everything out for me as I was trying to understand what my place in the student media landscape could be. Knowing what WAER presented, what JPZ presented, what CitrusTV presented. Listening through a lot of the other podcasts, I realized that I entered Syracuse at a time where the Cold War had really thawed [laughter]and it was okay and acceptable, and you weren't considered a traitor if you worked in multiple places.
Jag: See, I was going to ask you that question, but I thought to myself, "Gosh, I've asked that question on too many episodes already," but you volunteered the answer, so which did you find first, I'll ask you that JPZ or WAER.
David: They were all really at the same time for me. I remember being a first semester freshman and just going all the general interest meetings and just trying to understand what each place had to offer. When I started I had this mentality of just try everything and figure out what you like. CitrusTV had the TV aspect, which was unique from the two radio stations.
Jag: Sure.
David: WAER had more of a sports legacy, but Z89 provided a more immediate opportunity and the talk side of things that I didn't know if I wanted to pursue, but I at least wanted to dabble with. I built this early portfolio of working at all three places to try to take advantage of what was unique of each place. I did both the 5:30 AM WAER sportscast, but then I also did the writing for Z89 and showing up Friday Nights for Friday Night football and helping out where I could. I started both simultaneously and again in an era where that was okay and you didn't [laughter] get side stairs, and so I really started both plus CitrusTV from day one.
Jag: You get there fall of 2006, you walk into JPZ. Who were some of the first people that made that first impression with you in station leadership or otherwise?
David: Sure. The sports director at the time was Todd Robbins. He was one of those Z89 diehards. He always talked about it as WJPZ, there was never Z89 that came out of his mouth. He was such a formal guy in some respects, big personality, and really was the first person that showed a love at the station to me. You could really tell that it was important to a lot of people just based off of his leadership and and enthusiasm. One of the ways that I started to follow him was that he invited me to his Saturday morning at 8:00 AM talk show Talkin' Smack.
It was him with a bunch of other people, Adam Shinder, Noah Levitt, Sal Maneen,and I got to sit in and produce and take calls and cut highlights. It was just another way to get involved and understand what the station was always about. There were juniors at the time that were just so super talented like Steve Wanzek and others who invited people to tag along and see what they were doing in terms of interviewing people midweek, or cutting packages or getting ready for a game. It was just a great environment to come in right away and get started and learn.
Jag: Obviously that enthusiasm you mentioned is contagious and that legacy of teaching with JPZ. Who came in with you? Who were some of your contemporaries that you formed good relationships with over four years?
David: Yes. That first semester at the time it seemed important, but now it's like silly to think about like who's first cleared or who's first on the air. I guess, the competition friendly as it was, is good to keep you motivated, but some of the early people in the room sports department-wise was Alex Silverman. That's before he turned to the dark side and went to the news side of things.
Jag: Before he took over the world.
David: Yes. Humble beginnings in the sports department of Z89. Andrew Africk was one of my early friends at Z89. He's somebody that did minor league baseball and IMG for a while before becoming a communication specialist. Andrew Allegretta, somebody else who's now the Voice of the Vanderbilt Commodore after some other stops in the college world. Erik Elken, who's been a long time sports and news anchor. Those were some of the first people like really early on, the go-getters and the overachievers that walked in first semester freshman year and wanted to get on air and wanted to get cleared as quickly as possible.
Jag: All right. Two part question. I'll let you answer whichever one you want first, which is tell me about what you did at the station and how you rose to the ranks and also significant moments in the station's history that you were present for. I'll let you take either one.
David: Yes, I'll do that in order. I was heavily involved with the sports department, both in, they weren't really siloed, but they were kind of considered separate in terms of both the play-by-play coverage of high school football in the fall, women's basketball college, Syracuse in the winter, and women's lacrosse in the spring and so we would do everything from top to bottom in terms of calling the games and producing it, and being in studio, and cutting highlights, and writing blog posts, and sending out audio snippets on the early stages of Twitter.
Then also on the talk side of things where I'd be involved with after Todd and Noah and Adam had graduated, I was in position to work on the show the next year with Tim Swartz who became the sports director and somebody who's been very prevalent in California coverage, including Stanford. Sal Mineo, who's back in Houston after sitting in Syracuse as a TV producer. Zach Schonbrun would come aboard a long time contributor to the New York Times sports section.
I would constantly do that show, ended up doing it with my cousins for a year. Alex Brewer was a producer at the time, somebody who I just saw at Homecoming weekend or in Central. Really doing everything that I could with what the station had to offer, both in the play-by-clay sense and the talk sense. In terms of the pivotal moments I thought about where my years lie in this linear history of Z89.
Jag: I appreciate all the study and the podcast and the show prep, by the way.
David: Yes. Many hours of listening to your questions, JAG.
Jag: I can't think of a curve ball I can throw you at this point, but go ahead.
David: Oh, I know it's coming. I don't know if there was a big seminal moment while we were there, and my lens is definitely through the sports department as compared to the station as a whole. I can't remember if we changed our tagline or our logo, but I do think that, especially from a sports department standpoint, we really acted as a bridge, I think, from what was built in terms of the things that we covered and the way that we did things into that new era where the manpower was much more because people could work in multiple places, and also just like guide the station into the place where it needed more room and it needed the renovation and everything that they were doing required more space.
Our Friday Night Football Coverage went to covering one game a week to covering two games, full-broadcasts. Choosing two games at different starting times, so that when one went to halftime, we could go to another game. It involved sending reporters out to four or five different places to get whip around coverage. It was both the combination of, I think of emerging technologies and being able to do things more digitally and to cover more, and also just a stronger desire to make it bigger and better.
A big seminal moment, I think was when Quentin Hillsman took over the women's basketball program. This is a guy that gave us a post-game interview after every game after stopping by with Brian Higgins and the professional station. It's a guy that gave us unfettered access, and it's somebody that came in pre-season and did an hour long in-studio preview show with us.
Jag: Wow.
David: Just getting that feel of covering a team and getting just a certain amount of professional respect, I think really drew the interest of the department to work harder and do more and think about ways that we could improve our coverage. On a women's lacrosse perspective, we were their flagship. We traveled with the team, we were embedded with them on trips. If somebody wanted to listen to their match to the final four, they were tuning into us.
I think that gave us a certain level of ownership over the coverage in a similar way that we felt in the fall, where I always think there's this balance between learning as a student and experimenting and then also providing a service to the community. What we did for Friday Night Football not only made us better as professionals and broadcasters, but was a real service to the community and something that to this day I'm really proud of that I was a part of.
Jag: In looking at your LinkedIn profile, you've had quite a journey since Syracuse. Let's pivot to your time after Syracuse. Tell me about some of the things you've done in your career path since graduation.
David: Yes. After all those different radio and TV producing, talk, play-by-play behind the scenes, I followed a play-by-play path and a freelance path in that where I both work for companies that send me out to do games that they own, that they have the rights for, and also working for teams. It just so happens that I've found myself doing a lot of basketball in the winter. That has been where a lot of my opportunities have come from. I work in the G League, I do division one basketball for Iona, Rick Petino's previous stop and a lot of high school championship events throughout the Tri-State.
Every year has been different. Some clients stay the same or some vendors stay the same. Some are different. There's been some great continuity in my career over the last decade, and there's always just new things that pop up that I'm sure a lot of the listeners and a lot of the fellow contemporaries can relate to.
Jag: You're based downstate, right? You're based in the city?
David: Yes. I live in Manhattan and really cover everything in a 200-mile radius in terms of places that I've traveled throughout the New York Metropolitan Tri-State.
Jag: Is it the Westchester Knicks you've been with for a while?
David: Yes. The Westchester Knicks, is the New York Knicks G League affiliate Minor League team. They started back in the 2014/15 season. I think people have goals or thoughts of teams they want to work for or places they wanted to be. Growing up and coming out of school, they didn't exist. It was really hard to be aspirational, to be the voice or to be a broadcaster for a team that wasn't in existence. I was really fortunate to get that opportunity to get that job. I had the right experience and the right age. They were looking for somebody of my profile at the time.
That's led to other really great freelance opportunities with a production company that does their games. It's led to some national work for ESPN's G League coverage was really a big springboard for me professionally.
Jag: The life of a sports play-by-play man is hard. It's a little bit of a journeyman existence. You just mentioned 200-mile radius. It seems to me, as somebody who was a wannabe sportscaster at one point and then gave up on the dream. Half the people I've talked to on this podcast, seemingly, you got to really want it and really have a passion for it to stick it out and put all those miles on, right?
David: Yes. I think the freelance world has some positives and negatives and one of the negatives is not being quite sure when the next game or the next gig could be. It's doing two games in two different locations for two clients, because you don't want to say no. That's also the fun of it. Having something different to do most days, being open to try new things and new endeavors because your schedule allows it.
For a long time during the school year, September to June, I've worked as a play-by-play broadcaster. Then in the summer, in college I was in management at WAR and CitrusTV or the exec staff. I worked at a overnight summer camp in the summers at Kutcher Sports Academy. I bring that up because one of the earlier episodes included Mitch Reiter, who talked about the early days at WJPZ and how he integrates his radio background into his Camp Towanda to this day.
He's somebody on like the other side of my professional life that I've met and spoken to, and I ran into him right after his podcast had aired. He was somebody that I knew a little bit, but had no idea of his Syracuse background, and recently actually visited his camp as part of a conference.
Jag: Oh, that's awesome.
David: You could see the Syracuse banners all over his home and areas. That was a great JPZ connection.
Jag: Well, I was going to ask you about that because you would get that connection. Now we have somebody from class of '79 and the class of 2010, both involved with camps in the summer. It's a sports camp. Tell me a little bit about the camp you're work at and what you're doing.
David: It's co-ed elective sports camp, and it's had a really long history with an association with the NBA. It was the site of the former Maurice Stokes' game that used to get NBA All Stars and NBA Hall of Famers to gather once a summer in honor of Maurice Stokes. It's a place where Kenny Albert went to the famous sportscaster. It's a place where Lindsay Gottlieb who became the first college to pro assistant coach for the Cavaliers went to. In some ways an incubator for sports and people that love to play and people that love to be involved with it.
There's so many examples of people going on to not only a career in their sport, but broadcasters and producers and coaches and otherwise. I'm not so much in the radio game anymore. A lot of what I do play-by-play-wise is more TV or streaming, but part of the ethos of our camp, because we know that we have a bunch of sports lovers, is that we announce ball scores every morning. It dawned on me this past summer that while I no longer have to do casts or write sports updates, I do actually write the copy for our director for the morning announcements. I caught myself in the moment thinking about, "Where did I start this skill? Where have I previously written down ball scores or looked for story angles?" I guess, ultimately the JPZ cast writing was helpful to me.
Jag: I love that you are such a knowledgeable listener of this podcast because you're segueing me into my usual question so perfectly. My next obvious question is, besides that, what other skills and lessons did you take with you from your time at Syracuse that you've applied throughout all these different things you're doing now, David?
David: I didn't realize at the time how much my real life was going to mirror what my professional life has become. When I was in college and dealing with the academics and then the responsibilities of these three different places that I worked at. You couldn't say like, "I was late to my talk show because I was busy at Citrus TV, or I didn't show up to my WAR game because I was busy working on a different assignment for Z89."
Jag: I've got to jump in here for a second because you talked about the Cold War having thawed, I would imagine if you went to JPZ or AER late because you were at the other place, that would've gone over like a fart in church.
David: Well, I think it would've been one of those things where people taught me that you owe it to the people that you're working for in that moment to be sure that you're doing everything that you can to do that assignment to the best of your ability. It just caught me in this professional life that, I can't tell one client that I didn't produce the way that you expected me to, or hired me to because I had this other thing going on, or this other job.
I didn't quite realize or anticipate how much my professional freelance life would mirror essentially being this college freelancer. Where I was working for all these different places and having these different professional responsibilities. Also the relationships and just the people, the life of a freelancer can be lonely at times. Not working in an office, not being in a newsroom, not being in the incubator that Syracuse University and the student stations are. Just being able to bounce ideas off of people and just to be in a place with other like-minded people, I learned later how valuable that was.
I have found that it might not be my current colleagues who I rely on for that feedback or advice, but a lot of times it's my college friends and colleagues that I end up bouncing things off of or talking through a situation or try to learn from them because I think one of the great thing about the Z89 network is that anytime that I've faced something in my career that was new to me, it wasn't new to somebody else and I was able to rely on a friend, a past colleague for that advice to help me through whatever situation I had at the moment.
Jag: That's really good. Any names of folks you still stay in touch with either that were classmates or other alumni that you haven't mentioned yet?
David: Well, I reached out to you originally to thank you for what you were doing and just let you know that there was somebody else out there that was downloading and subscribing.
Jag: Which I really appreciate, so thank you.
David: It really crystallized a lot of these urban legends that you would be told while you're in school. The people that are telling you the story might have had it second or third hand, and it's a game of telephone, so the details are a little off. To really learn and understand that history and where things came from and know that it was Howard Deneroff that started the Friday Night Football coverage and all these different things has been a great listen, but also really educational. It has made me feel closer to the station.
Part of my motivation to then agreeing that this conversation was just to highlight and spotlight the lineage of the sports department. Even from my four years there, the type of people that I worked with and knowing that I was coming on, I just went through some old emails. Thank you, Gmail ,being a hoarder that I am. Just looking through different production sheets and seeing some of these names like Jag Jastremski who's made it huge in New York City talk radio and Danny Parkins who does Drive-time talk radio in Chicago, and Nick Wright who's on Fox Sports, and Andrew Filip Pony who's afternoon drive in Pittsburgh.
Connor Orr, who writes for Sports Illustrated NFL, and Joel Gadet, who is a longtime play-by-play guy of Ball State. Matt Ehalt who works for the New York Post, and Paul Gallant and Kevin Brown and my cousins, and just Alex Perlin, who's an ESPN guy too. I hate naming names because inevitably you leave people out but again, part of the motivation was just to spotlight. The station as a whole has done a lot of really great things and the station has, I think, a really maybe underground and not so vocal sports department that has accomplished a lot.
In that room at that time, even seeing another name, Bill Spalding who's now the voice of the New Jersey Devils, or Chris Lewis who's doing NFL games for CVS this year in addition to his college work, I'm really proud to be part of that group and to have worked with these people and to see where their careers have taken them. I think a lot of times you see pictures of old football staffs. There's like 30 of them, and then they highlight each person to see where they've gone.
That's the way that I feel about the people that I was at college with and my colleagues knowing just how many of them have gone on to great careers in the sports world in part due to their experience and their time at JPZ.
Jag: The present company included. I'm really glad to hear you say that because we joked at the top about the Cold War thawing between AER and JPZ, but internally throughout the history of JPZ, there have been ups and downs as far as where the sports department fit into the rest of the station. There were many times where sports and music butted heads over how much sports program was there going to be and such. That's a piece of it.
I do feel like there have been times in the station's history where the sports department felt like the proverbial redheaded stepchild. Is that PC? I don't know if I can say that anymore, but I'm really glad that you reached out and I'm really glad you came on and I'm really glad that you've run through this impressive Rolodex of JPZ sports people that you were contemporaries with because the JPC sports department really does have an incredible legacy.
One of my goals with this podcast was to really highlight everyone I could in the podcast, be as inclusive as possible, whether that's gender, race, decade you graduated, what you did at the station, and I really want to make sure the sports department gets there due. I do really appreciate you coming on and making such an effort to include so many of those names in the podcast today.
David: Yes. I appreciate your openness with that. Even thinking to 2014, I know you had Andrew Scaglione on and the behind the scenes texts that were going on with my friends rooting him on. We didn't know him. We didn't meet him but we knew that it was just such a great opportunity for the students to be covering a team that was playing in the national championship game.
Jag: Yes.
David: I know there's a lot of talk of text change and group chats and just feeling a part of it even though we had nothing to do with it I think is a great link and lineage that the station has really created.
Jag: I've invoked this many times and I probably will going forward too. The first interview I did with Scott McFarland and he always said, "That's my friend from school. Doesn't matter if you graduated in '72 or '22 yet, that's my friend from school." It really is JPZ family. Before I let you go, I have to ask for any funny stories you have from your time at the station. You knew I was going to ask you this, right?
David: Yes. I think my friends from that time would say that I'm involved with no funny stories. [lauhter] I just remember the late nights. I just remember the trips to Kimmel. I just remember all the different things that we had to do about running an XLR cable to a site because somebody took it out of a kit when they shouldn't have and a Comrex that wouldn't work and strings that Alex Silverman pulled for us to be able to stay on south campus during our sophomore year intercession so that we could call our first game together in the dome, a Syracuse Sienna women's basketball game.
It's all those moments that we recall years later and I don't really have one moment other than to say just the trips were always great. One thing that the sports department I guess had uniquely from news or from music is that we traveled to games and we had the opportunity to share time on the road and to break bread and to get off campus and make these long journeys that is 19, 20, 21-year-olds that we probably should not have.
Jag: Pride in cars you probably shouldn't have, I'd imagine.
David: No question. It was in the pursuit of calling the game and getting the rep and being there for our coverage and taking pride in and never missing a game. When there was a will, there was a way, and even when there probably shouldn't have been one. [laughter] Those experiences and the people that I was around I certainly cherish very much.
Jag: The sports road trips have come up obvious as you know periodically throughout the podcast. The way you just phrased that is perfect, because it never clicked for me until right now not having been a JPZ sports guy that all the bonding time that we talked about at the station and off campus parties and whatever decade you were at school there all the time and the lifelong friends you made and marriages have been formed there and so on and so forth. Sports had that extra layer of your road tripping to UMBC or Kentucky or Tennessee or wherever you're going.
You're spending all that time in a car, in a hotel room, whatever with these people. You're bonding with them even more than just living at the station practically and partying. I'm glad you brought that up and crystallized that for me.
David: Yes. We were fully in the Big East during my time in college and so let's just say that the short straw was the tandem that had to drive to Morgantown.
Jag: Oh, that's right. That would've been the furthest trip for you in the Big East, right?
David: We I think had like a six-hour rule, that anything within six hours we would drive to, and then if we needed to fly, figure out the one with four connections sitting in the cargo underneath the plane so that we'd be able to afford it.
Jag: Yes. There you go. One last thing I want to ask you, something that was also striking to me about our conversation today is you referred to your clients all these different outfits that you're broadcasting for.
It struck me that you used the word clients, and we've heard a lot in the last few years about the gig economy and putting all these things together, whether you're driving an Uber or a Lyft, or you're doing DoorDash or any of these things, and especially through COVID and since, but just cobbling different things together to make it all work, what advice would you give to somebody in the class of 2024 or beyond who wants to make a go at this and really wants to be a sportscaster and has to have a probably a bunch of different gigs all put together to make it work? Whereas you said clients, what advice would you have for them?
David: The first thing that I was very surprised to learn is that cold emails work more than they should-
Jag: Really?
David: -because there's a proliferation in need and in streaming, and I think a proliferation in using different people to cover a number of events. They might have somebody that'll cover 80%, but then that person is trying to find other things also. There's this hierarchy of scheduling that I think everybody goes through in terms of what's their number one and their number two, et cetera.
The second thing is, when you work in a town, and I think if you work in a specific region, it's amazing how quickly you get to meet people that know other people and everybody knows each other. I've been in the same general market for the last 12 years and I can't take on a new assignment without knowing somebody who's on the production sheet or knowing somebody who knows somebody that I've worked with before. I know it's been spoken a lot on this podcast just about the way that you carry yourself and you treat people but your reputation is so huge. Just presenting yourself in a certain way and being known for the right things, I think that's supremely important as you're trying to build a schedule or build a career or build a calendar that's filled with games and assignments. The other thing that I wish I knew while I was at school is to think about the other roles that are tangential to what you can do as a broadcaster.
You might want to do seven days of play-by-play, but the college down the road might need a PA announcer. That's something that you probably have the skills for or learn how to be a stat in putter or learn the different roles within an athletic department, because the same ways that an SID needs help broadcasting the game, they probably also need help with the other roles that it takes to operate and run a game.
Jag: Wow.
David: It's not meant as a long-term play, but it's meant as a way to fill your schedule and meet new people. Not only do I think it's important to be in front of the camera, in front of the mic, or know how to produce, or know how to cut highlights and be able to be versatile in that way, but also just to think about the different things that go on in a game and how your skills as a sports lover or as somebody who uses their voice, can fill in on different roles that are needed for each game.
Jag: That is great advice and an outstanding place to leave it. David Resnick from the class of 2010, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for reaching out. I'm so glad you were part of the podcast.
David: It was a pleasure to lend my voice to this amazing project, and I wish you the best as you continue to chronicle the history of WJPZ.
[00:31:46] [END OF AUDIO]