Today we are joined by our first elected official - Ryan McNaughton from the Class of 1996 has been both President of the Syracuse University Alumni Association, as well as a councilman at large in his current home of Niles, Ohio. You'll hear his passion to serve many constiuencies throughout this podcast.
Ryan knew he wanted to go to Syracuse since first hearing about the school as a 15 year old in blue-collar Amherst, Ohio, outside Cleveland. He worked toward that goal throughout high school, and thanks to some financial aid, was able to head to Syracuse. On campus, he saw a flyer for Z89, and like many of us, immediately fell in love when he walked in.
While his true passion was sports, Ryan also found a home on the Cray-Z Morning Crew. He will tell you his transcripts will show which semeseters he was getting up at 5am, but he learned a valuable lesson about going outside your comfort zone.
We uncover the fact that Ryan's voice was the first one live on The Pulse. There was an Orangewoman basketball game to call during the winter break of the flip. In fact, many of Ryan's fondest memories are traveling to call games all over the country, but one is also his most bittersweet. He was on the call when Syracuse upset mighty UConn, but wait until you hear what happened 20 minutes later!
Ryan's first gig out of school landed him in Michigan, but only for a few months, before the business side of the radio business interfered. So he headed home for a number of on-air sports gigs in Cleveland, including a betting show that was way ahead of its time.
Fate would bring our guest back to Syracuse though, when his wife found herself at SU working on her doctorate. At that time, Ryan really reconnected with his passion for the Orange. A return to Ohio would be next, and a re-invention. Two masters degrees later, he's gone from politics to PR and communications. You'll hear about that.
Ryan shares a valuable lesson he learned at WJPZ. When he lost the election for sports director, he had a choice to make: take his ball and go home, or stay and make the radio station the best it could be. We're all thankful he chose the latter.
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. We have had so many members of the class of 95. We finally have one from 96. He is maybe the first elected official we've had on the podcast, and I mean that in two ways. He has held public office and he is also the, as of the time of this recording, the president of the National Alumni Association of Syracuse University, Mr. Ryan McNaughton and welcome to the show.
Ryan: At Ease. Jon, thank you for that. Humble and true. It's absolutely my pleasure to be with you and thank you for doing this series. It's humbling just to listen to all of these. And I've listened to so many and it's one thing to think maybe you left a little bit of a mark, but then you listen to all the folks you've talked to and you realize how truly insignificant you are.
Just listen to all the talent and the history and the struggles and the battle and the successes, even some of the failures. Yeah. So to be just a minor blip on the radar screen of so many big folks on the scope that is JPZ. I appreciate you having me.
JAG: The running theme throughout this is that we are one big family of 50 years of alumni, and you are certainly a part of that family, and I'm thrilled to have you. We'll start at the beginning, Ryan. How did a Cleveland guy end up at Syracuse?
Ryan: My story kind of started. I was 15 years old and it's one of those things. You know how there's moments in your life you say you can remember when and for most folks like my age, yeah. I can remember when President Reagan was shot.
I remember being in like my parents' living room when I was seven. So I'm 15 years old. I'm a sophomore at Marian L Steele High School in little Amherst, Ohio. And there's a show on ESPN and I think it was This Week in Baseball. It was something like that. And they dedicated a segment to sports broadcasters, but specifically sports broadcasters that came from this place called the Newhouse School.
JAG: Oh, what producer made that call to do a segment on that? That's awesome.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm laying on my rather large stomach in my parents' living room at 15 years of age, and I'm watching this.
And keep in mind, this is 1989 and cable was not quite in every household at that point. But our local Amherst, Ohio city cable station was at the high school. So I knew that. It's a long story short, I watched this and I vividly remember I stood up and I turned around and my mom and dad. And I said, mom, dad, that's what I want to do and that's where I want to learn to do it at.
So for the next three years, everything I did in high school, whether it was academics, I got involved in the TV station and they put a 15 year old on television, Jon, doing football, play by play basketball. We did wrestling, we did everything. Everything I did was to try to get into Syracuse. And even then, I figured I'm a kid from 30 minutes west of Cleveland. There's a cornfield across the street from where I'm growing up. They'll never choose me, and as luck would have it, they chose me. And the rest is history.
JAG: So you were accepted into Newhouse right out the gate.
Ryan: Yeah. Newhouse right out of the gate. Thank goodness for the financial aid package that came in.
JAG: Agreed. Yeah.
Ryan: If not for scholarships and grant and work studies I probably would've been so one of the many fine state institutions that Ohio has.
JAG: I would've been at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I am right there with you.
Ryan: I was accepted into the Scripps School at Ohio University as well. A tremendous institution that, that's where I would've gone. But I am so grateful to, to have had the chance to go to Syracuse.
JAG: Okay. So you knew about Sportscaster U, so to speak and the reputation that proceeded it. How did you find WJPZ when you got to campus?
Ryan: I imagine it's it's like a lot of folks you talk to, maybe even yourself, flyers. And I saw a flyer on campus. That said, Hey, informational meeting at HBC Monday or Tuesday night show up. So myself and I think one or two other guys on my floor, we walked over and I just, I loved the vibe.
I felt very relaxed even though I walked in extraordinarily intimidated. And I believe at that point Ryan Raffensberger was the new general manager. Found out he was a sports guy. So immediately I went in and introduced myself to him and he introduced me to some folks. And they really put me at ease and they said, hey, if you're really interested in doing this, go to the station. Just show up. Get yourself seen. Which I did.
At that point they were doing a nightly show called Sports Wrap, Monday through Friday at 11 o'clock. It was about a 10 to 15 minute show. So one of my floor mates who became one of my roommates, Jon Pru good old Juice. Juice, and I walked to the station.
And Randy Stern is at the station preparing for sports wrap, and we just introduced ourselves and said, we're here to shadow you. Don't know if you know that. And he welcomed us with open arms. And probably for the next five to six weeks, we did that every weeknight I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, we knew Randy was doing the show.
We'd go, we'd watch, and we'd learn. And then it just started building from there. And about a month in my voice was on the air for the first time with a high school sports show called Press Box. And I was hooked. I was absolutely hooked.
JAG: So take me through what you did in your tenure at the station, Ryan.
Was it all sports or was there any music or what did you do there?
Ryan: So it was primarily sports but for two years I did co-host the morning show. Was the Cray-Z morning crew. Eventually, I think it was rebranded Mad Dogs in the Morning. Oof. And there was a stretch this semester. I was doing the morning show twice a week, which really was foolishness on my part because, years ago I took a look back at some of my old transcripts.
And it was very evident which semesters I was getting up at 5:15 AM twice a week as opposed to when I was just doing, evening sportscast and weekend sports sports items. But. I think it, it made me a much better broadcaster. It made me a much better communicator as I grew older, because again, that was something that took me outta my comfort zone.
I always thought, I'm gonna go to Syracuse, I'm gonna go to Newhouse. I'm gonna be a sports guy. And I've been very happy being a sports guy. And then I started doing these morning shows and, when you're around the likes of guys like like John Beck, who's now an uber successful Hollywood writer for the Disney Channel.
And Mike Murphy, who's a seemingly 30 time New Hampshire Sportscaster of the Year, and Brian Gowertz who is now like The Rock's right hand guy who writes everything for him. Like these are the people I was surrounded with on the morning show. I co-hosted with them, Mike Connor, who, him and I just clicked early on for some inexplicable reason.
And he was my co-host for most of the time. And he's now very successful at the NFL Network. Just a tremendously gifted broadcaster. Steve Donovan. I think we know that guy well. Yeah. When you do three or four hours with a guy like Steve Donovan, you, if you walk out of that on air booth worse, that's on you. That's not on him.
JAG: The only thing that's worse is probably your jaw hurts some laughing.
Ryan: Exactly. So that was my tenure. It was primarily sports. From sportscasts to, I spent three years as the executive producer for Orangewomen Basketball. And there's a lot of great stories there.
Press Box, the high school sports show for a couple of years and then morning show. I tried to do sales for a hot minute.
JAG: Admirable you tried.
Ryan: Failed miserably and grew such an appreciation for the folks who actually did that and kept us all afloat, quite honestly.
JAG: Agreed. Ryan, you've mentioned so many names already in this podcast. Other folks from your time at JPZ stick out in your memory?
Ryan: Yeah, that's a great question, Jon. Yeah. When you come in as a first year student at that first meeting I went to I met so many folks. I mentioned Ryan Raffensberger, but I did my best to assimilate with the rest of the station too.
Dave Gorab, I thought was 40 years old the first time I met him. He was just so seasoned and professional and wise beyond his years, and someone had to tell me no, he's not he's not like a faculty advisor, Ryan, he's a student. And I was floored. Embarrassed, but I'm like, man, I can only dream of being that.
That composed and confident and wise at any age. Guys like Dave Gorab, Bette Kestin, goofy Betty, who she's not as goofy as this, the name would be, but I developed a strong friendship with Betty. People have always called me an old soul, so I think immediately I was gravitating towards the juniors and seniors at the station the Mark Kindermans and the Dan Kramers and the Mike Tersells and the AD Vernons.
And. Randy Stern, Brian Madeira, Derek Snow just so many people. Neon Dion, people that you knew like Neon Dion, you knew. The first time you met him oh yeah this, he's a superstar. There, there's nothing this cat ain't gonna be able to accomplish in his life. And he's proven us absolutely right. Eric Reinhardt who was a tremendous mentor to me in the sports department, even to the point where Eric Stengel, who would eventually go on to be an enormously successful writer for Letterman and TV show producer, we were. News and sportscast partners. At three o'clock on Tuesdays, I'd be at my little part of the desk in a sports report and there's Eric Stengel, who again I knew was going to be a rockstar writing a newscast at the same time. And I know there's so many other names that I'm forgetting and I apologize, but yeah, they were so important, not only to me, but I just think that the growth of the station as a whole.
JAG: Awesome. You were there in the heyday of a lot of things at the radio station, but you mentioned Orangewomen basketball.
It's something I wanna get more of on in this podcast. Tell me a story or two, if you remember, from Orangewomen basketball.
Ryan: So here's how I would say it, and I say this with love for everybody, including my colleagues. I always say like the truly talented sports broadcasters were down the dial at AER.
Yeah. And this is, and now keep in mind, this is when there actually was a rivalry. I go back to campus now and I meet all these students and they're like, oh, I'm at JPZ and I do AER and I do all this. And I'm like, wait a minute. There's no rivalry. What do you mean this is Kumbaya? This is a different world for me,
JAG: I think it was Scott MacFarlane because I think once we realized AER and JPZ realized they could share a Scotty MacFarlane, that was probably a thaw in the Cold War.
Ryan: But so this is still when, we had, yeah, we had nukes aimed at each other above the Schine Student Center, just kinda in between where both of our studios were. So, I will say that Orangewomen basketball brought me not only some of my best friendships, but some of my best memories, and this was an era where we were really the only media entity, not students, the only media entity in all of Central New York, that gave that program any coverage. We treated them like they were a professional organization, even though the on court product may have been suspect at best, like we treated that a full-time job. We treated those athletes, they were division one scholarship athletes, and by God, we were gonna give them the best broadcast that we could.
The problems were on our end, specifically, usually with technology. You can do an entire podcast. If you could interview the old Comrex for one of your episodes.
JAG: If this Comrex could talk.
Ryan: That thing is the size of a bus. And operated with the legitimacy and frequency, probably of a decommissioned World War II tank.
This thing would operate when it wanted to and when you are on the road and that thing goes out. This is pre cell phones, pre-texting. Someone back in Syracuse had to get ahold of you. It's usually meant calling the media number on press row for the home sports information director. Saying excuse me, we know there's a game going on. Can you tell the Syracuse sports broadcasters, they're off the air and they need to find a landline now to continue broadcasting the game. That happened more times than I can tell you. So the equipment was something that at that point, North Koreans would scoff at.
JAG: We have made all kinds of international references so far, my friend.
Ryan: Yeah. But I will tell you, I wouldn't trade it in for the world. The road trips we drove, we basically drove everywhere when we couldn't hitch a ride with the team bus. The bus rides would save us a lot of times. A group of us, it was me, it was Mike Murphy.
It was Raffensberger, and I think it was Ray Curran. We did a 34 hour round trip drive to Memphis and back for a two day tournament. 17 down 17 back. Two losses, back on the road heading back. And even the shorter road trips, if it was a big East game, it'd be a five or six hour drive, Jon.
And by the time we'd get back in the middle of the night, the team was already back sleeping, cuz they, a lot of times they flew. And then we had class in the morning. Or sometimes we'd be hosting a morning show in three hours and would have to get back to the station. But by far the quintessential JPZ story from me is January 2nd. 1996. So Syracuse is hosting number two UConn. So it's two days after New Year's. And it was typically sports guys and Orangewomen broadcasters. Like we would give up half of our Christmas breaks to go back and basically run the station because everybody else is home.
And the team played. So we would be home for maybe eight, nine days and we'd be back in Syracuse when the campus was desolate. So I drove back on January 2nd, lake effect snow from northeast Ohio all up and down the thruway. So it took me seven hours, about seven and a half hours.
Got up there at enough time, went off-campus to my place at Livingston to clean up. Throw a suit. So it's me and Phil Soto Ortiz. Three days prior, Jon, the Orangewomen played Duke on the road. They're lost by 44 points. 44 no less. That's a very important part of this story. Now, incomes number two, UConn.
They are the defending national champs. I think they went undefeated the year before. They're just a behemoth. It's like they still are, right? It's Geno and it's Lobo. They're rock stars. In the world of women's basketball, Syracuse wins.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: Syracuse wins 62 59. Wow. Again, in an era before social media.
Yeah. Before every game was broadcast live. It wasn't on the ACC network or the Big East Network at that time. Nobody knew except us. And we go extended post game and it's just, it's surreal. So at the end of the broadcast, to this day, and I wanna put this on my tombstone. I remember my call, my sign off.
It was words to the effect of Anne let it be known on a cold, snowy, early January night in Syracuse, New York. David has once again beaten Goliath. Goodnight everyone.
JAG: Yes!
Ryan: So we pack up and we go back to the station and I'm thinking, career making demo. I'm gonna get my Dream Division One basketball play by play job out of this tape because that was, and actually still is my dream at 48.
I'd do D-1 basketball tomorrow if I got the call. So we get back to the station again. Very important. It's January 2nd. It's break and we get back. And Phil Soto Ortiz and I were like fighting each other to get the tape out of that old cassette. Cassette tapes is what we recorded these games on.
And we get the tape and we put it in the the player in the back room at the old station.
(slowly) andd......it.....sounded......liiike....thissss...
JAG: Oh no!
Ryan: It was break. The tape deck had broken over break, and nobody knew.
JAG: Oh, Ryan. Oh. So I'm heartbroken here hearing this story. Oh. Oh, it hurts.
Ryan: And it's so true. So we're sitting there we'll always have the memories and we can always mention this in job interviews, but we won't have the audio.
And I think Phil, somewhere in Pennsylvania has those tapes. And if Phil Soto Ortiz listens to this send me the tapes. I am hell bent on trying to get those repaired at some point in my life.
JAG: I was gonna ask if you had the audio, but maybe we, with technology, how far technology's come in 20 years, I think we might be able to restore it.
Ryan: Yeah, so that was like, it went from career defining to utter deflation in the span of about 20 minutes from the time you left Manley Field House. Got back to Watson and hit that tape. I'm very happy that technology has changed. So the broadcasters of today and tomorrow will not suffer the same, this thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Personally, so quickly, like we did that night, oh
JAG: I'm speechless that, oh I'm just sitting here wincing hearing that story. Oh I don't even know how to transition here, but let's try. And also, among your many claims to fame, Ryan, If, do I have this right? You were the first voice on The Pulse when it flipped.
Ryan: That's probably why The Pulse era didn't last that long. That is true. Yeah. It's probably not how the powers that be Jeff and Dan really wanted that to play out, but, so we had a big event right before everyone went home for the break of the countdown and the ceremonial switching to the pulse and the premise was, we're going to go off the air.
Where everyone's going on break, so they just had nothing but pre-recorded messaging, boom. All during break. Yep. Yep. Again, sports had to be live during breaks and the first live event was a Syracuse, Orangewomen basketball game right before Christmas in 95. They played in Cincinnati, against Kentucky for some reason. And since I was in Ohio I'm like I'll drive down, I'll do the game. I think Ray Curran came down with me, so I vividly remember and it, I don't think it hit me until we were on press row and we're getting ready and I turned to Ray. I'm like, Ray, I don't think anybody's been on our air since we left town.
I think we're the first ones. And he looked at me. He goes, oh, wow. That's kinda weird. I'm like, it's really weird that basketball broadcasters are going to christen the era of the pulse. So sure enough, we went on the air and I led us off. I'm like hey, welcome to Orangewomen basketball on The Pulse.
And I tried to come up with something weird, but I'm like, yeah, you'd probably rather be listening to the Friday night party right now, guys, but this is what you have. This is same great quality content that you've expected from us, but different branding and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But yeah. Ryan McNaughton was the first voice on the pulse. And it was surreal because we had such a big event in studio. I was inside the studio when they did it. We all counted down and it's just, it was weird times, nineties, mid-nineties music was quite interesting.
But leave it to the sports department to have to usher in the era of the pulse.
JAG: Add that to the long list of many interesting nuggets we have uncovered in this podcast.
Tell me about life after Syracuse, cuz you have had one of the more fascinating journeys of our alumni and, you had similar beginnings as a lot of our guests wanting to be a sportscaster, go to Syracuse, et cetera.
But your path since has been a lot different than a lot of the guests we've had.
Ryan: At some point when I figure out what I wanna do when I grow up, I'll have more of a linear story. But I spent a good 15 years in the business. So my first full-time job in the business was up in the state of Michigan, up in a little place called Caro, Michigan.
And how I can always prove where I worked is I can use my hand I point to my thumb and say, that's my station. And then I point somewhere about my index finger, as I said. But I lived in Saginaw Township. And they're like, okay, you're legit.
JAG: Yeah. You know what to do.
Ryan: So I got a job up there in November of 96 as a, primarily a news guy. They did sports, but the local yokel who was a sports guy, there was a little intimidated by my background and never gave me a shot to do sports. That gig lasted about four months. And it wasn't because of me, it was because, and here's a great broadcast story. My boss at the time who owned the station did not tell me in the job interview that he was six figures deep into the Internal Revenue Service.
And this is after I had signed a year lease and moved everything up. So that was my welcome to the business. And I took a pay cut to move up there. I was temping at a pretty nice trucking company of all places, but I wanted to live the dream. So that was part of it. A couple months later, I'm right back home with my parents in Amherst, Ohio trying to figure out next steps.
And I I interned for the Cleveland Browns, this is after they moved to Baltimore, but the NFL had awarded then a franchise. So I worked in their communications department and they did a weekly radio show. I was helping with some of their stuff behind the scenes. Worked at a TV station at the desk, and then a buddy of mine said, hey, the 50,000 watt flame thrower in town WTAM, they're looking for a sports guy.
And he worked the board over there and said Mike Snyder is a sports director, who I knew Mike. He's said give him a tape. And I sent it. Didn't get a job there, but he forwarded me on to WKNR, which was the all sports station in town. They hired me part-time. And that led to a nice eight year run in my hometown.
My goal was to work in Cleveland by the time I was 30. When I got hired full-time, I was 23 and fairly sure I was the youngest full-time radio or television, sports reporter in the market. So I was ahead of the curve and I was thrilled. So I worked at WKNR for a long time did a actually did a national talk show for a year at the same time. And if you go up and down the dial now with sports betting so prevalent you wouldn't think that 20 years ago it was still taboo. It was.
So a guy I knew when I was doing an internet sports talk show, pre-internet boom, a guy by the name of Sean Griffin was working for a company outta Chicago who he had an investor.
He's like, I got an idea for you. He wants to do a sports radio network that's focused on sports, but with a gambling side. Are you interested? I'm like, all right, tell me more. So I vetted it through my bosses and they said, look, we'll give you a 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM show every day. We'll get you an actual working Comrex as opposed to the JPZ Comrex.
So I was able to do a show in the living room of the place we rented in Lakewood, Ohio. Turn that thing off at 11. Drive to my full-time job. It was great. It was great. Extra money. It was primarily on the internet. We were on in a couple of markets, like on tape delay. I think Boston and St. Louis, maybe nine people heard us, Jon.
I don't know, but I look back at it, the timing was wrong. 20 years ago, these folks who started this were so far ahead of the game. Yeah. And now gambling radio's everywhere. Musburger doing it. And, the point spreads are legitimately a thing. I took this seriously, like it was a legitimate sports talk show with calls and guests.
I interviewed Richard Petty. We didn't talk gambling on NASCAR races. Obviously, Jim Katt, Clark Kellogg, like we had legitimate guests. And it was primarily sports. But I'd also talk about the lines from time to time, pre previewing games that night. But we were just 10, 15 years early.
JAG: I guess it's like when you're in top 40 radio. I learned this at my first radio station, when you know a song is gonna be a hit, but you're on it too early and you can be, you can do something great, but if the rest of the world doesn't ready to catch up, you might not do so well. And then if you wish you could have done it later.
Ryan: Timing is everything at life.
The older you get, whether business or personal, et cetera. So you're absolutely right. So fast forward, I moved back to Syracuse to be with my now wife. She was starting actually her doctoral degree at Syracuse, and I got a job in TV up there as a producer. Made my made my way to sports.
Was our orange carpet reporter for when The Express the movie premiered in downtown Syracuse. My boss then, my news director and GM Ron Lombard took a chance on me cuz he knew my background and the rest of the station's we barely know this guy. You're putting him as our Joan Rivers! Basically had the time of my life Dennis Quaid and all sorts of others we talked to.
And we moved back to Ohio in 09 for my wife's job and it was time to reinvent myself. Left the business full-time. I did a lot of freelance work. Baldwin Wallace, which is a small university outside of Cleveland. My buddies Kevin Rupel and Jeff Miller and sports information there, they did games on Sports Time Ohio.
So they asked me if I'd go and do a lot of play by play. Pretty sure I scored the first post Ohio State television interview with Jim Tressel after he left Ohio State in scandal. He's from Berea, which is where the school is. His father, Lee Tressel, was a legendary coach. I saw him in the stands before a game.
And said, I want him to come on. And they said no. I said, I'm not doing your game today unless you go and ask him. And he came up and I said, coach, I said, I promise you I'm not gonna ask you one question about Ohio State. Let's focus on your time growing up in Berea and Baldwin Wallace. He stayed an entire quarter.
So that was just fabulous. Nicest guy in the world. But then I said, okay, let's get re-educated. So I got a couple of master's degrees. I worked in higher education. I've worked in the private sector. I worked in government relations for a local regional chamber.
JAG: What were the master's degrees in?
Ryan: Counselor education which I think every broadcaster needs. If you'll take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. I wish I had known that when I was younger. So the first was counselor education. That was at Westminster College, and then I got a second Master's in public relations at Kent State. So I was just I went from broadcasting to PR, so I got some stink eye from some folks when they knew about that.
They're supposed to, it's kinda like AER and JPZ back in the day. You're not supposed to cross that picket fence, but I did.
JAG: Oh yeah. A little bit of rivalry there. Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. So I've been all over the place, but now I'm pretty settled into marketing and public relations and communications.
I still MC some events from time to time. Once it's in your blood, it's in your blood. And oh yeah. I was also an elected official for six years. I was a city councilman.
JAG: I mentioned that off the top. Tell me briefly about that.
Ryan: Yeah, public service was always something I was interested in.
I remember being of fifth grade at St. Joe's Elementary, and they said, what do you wanna do? I'm like, I wanna be the President. Now I know it's a godawful job. It's the worst job in the world. But in fifth grade in the 1980s, it was, still had some respect for the office, no matter who held it.
So there was always part of me that wanted to do it, and the town that we moved to here, Niles, Ohio. They were dealing with a lot of issues and to give you an idea the mayor that was in office when we moved is halfway through a 10-year prison sentence, so I'll leave it at that.
JAG: Fair enough.
Ryan: So there was some change that needed to be made. So I tossed my hat in the ring and went door to door in a town that I was not born and raised in. And I was told there's no way you're gonna get elected. And three elections later I was still in office I'm glad I did it. We got the city out of fiscal emergency.
It's amazing when you do things the right way that you can fix things in life, which is what we did. It's just a good lesson to everybody. I don't regret it for one second. It's tough on your family.
JAG: So what was the official title? Was the city councilman or?
Ryan: I was a city councilman at large.
So our town has four wards and then three at large. So I ran for an at-large position. Okay. Yep. But then I think that experience helped the local regional chamber show interest in me to do their government relations work. So I resigned, a couple months before my third term was up to work for them. Conflicts of interest, and I found myself in Columbus a lot, in our state capital here in Ohio.
Just advocating legislators in the Statehouse for funding for projects. And yeah. It all goes back honestly to my communications background and all that time at JPZ to, yeah, we talked earlier about, not just doing sports and I, it might not be a direct correlation, but I know.
All the other things I did at that station years and years ago have allowed me to be flexible in my personal life. I'm probably on my fifth or sixth career now, but I think that's absolutely because you go outside your comfort zone at a place like JPZ where you're all in, you're all each other's bosses, right? It is student run. Student operated. There is such a challenge to that, but there's such a beauty to that. Yeah. And you might not see the fruit bear from those experiences in your twenties or maybe even your thirties, but as you get older and you have to switch or you choose to switch personally, professionally. I absolutely can look back on all that time and say, yeah, that, that prepared me for both the good and the bad.
It is the greatest media classroom in the world. And I tell folks all the time, Jon, that, one of the greatest lessons I got was a pretty bad one. It was the great election of 1995. Okay. And us would be seniors were up for a lot of senior staff positions.
And so I ran in for sports director and, I had a lot of folks, basically in so many words going with me to size up the curtains in the wall sconces of the sports director's office.
JAG: There was no actual sports director's office back then. We should be clear he's making a metaphor here.
Ryan: I just wanted to say wall sconces. I had people coming up saying, hey, I want to be your assistant and you start believing this. But we had such a great incoming senior class. Your Phil Soto Ortizes, your Ray Currans, your James Steiners, your Jon Goshens. Oh gosh, I know I'm missing a lot of folks, but, thousands and thousands of hours that would be senior class.
So I'm thinking I feel confident. But if I don't get it man, one of these guys is gonna get it and we're just gonna crush it in 95-96. And on election night, the call came particularly late. It was after 11 o'clock and the call came and said it's not you. In fact, it's not any of you in your class.
And it went to a freshman at the time. And it was crushing at that point. And oh, he was a great young man. There's no names to be had.
JAG: Who was this freshman?
Ryan: Nice kid, but none of us actually knew him. That's how inexperienced he was.
JAG: Okay. So how the heck did he win?
Ryan: I was not privy to those conversations, Jon. So I don't know.
JAG: All right. All right. Okay.
Ryan: All I know is my phone started ringing off the hook from current seniors saying, how did this happen? We're so sorry. You gotta stay. You can't leave. A bunch of us may have had a case or two of beer and went to the Quad and decided to let loose some steam.
But I will say this, it came down to are we all gonna leave or are we all gonna stay, and just make this place the best it can be? And we all stayed. And I was talked into running for assistant sports director which I got. And our senior class really led the way. And I was proud of how we did it.
But I share this because, that Michigan experience, my first job, four months in, I get tapped on the shoulder in the boss's office. There have been other professional experiences where I've been tapped on the shoulder and saying, listen, your services are no longer required, and it isn't because of, the work you've done. That isn't because of the person you are, it's just life, it's business, it's this, it's that.
And. I honestly think that that experience in 95 was the absolute best thing that could have happened to me as an individual in retrospect, because it just taught me, man, hey, this, hey baby, it's the zig. Like the zigs gonna come and hit you when you least expect it. You better learn how to deal with it because you gotta accept it, but you can't let it envelop you.
And I was very proud of how our senior year went. We did some great things. And at the end of the day, a title's a title. Yeah. But the work is the work. And how you approach your work, how you approach life is far more important than whatever's on a business card or if you get to run a meeting or not.
So for that, I'm actually grateful in retrospect that the world's greatest media classroom kicked us all in the teeth maybe years before we were ready for it. But man, I think it really made us better people and professionals as a result.
JAG: You have made one of my favorite points in the podcast so far, Ryan, and yes, we've talked about World's Greatest media classroom. I always ask every guest what they've learned from their time at JPZ. But the point you made of lessons we learned as students 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds, maybe we didn't realize they were lessons at the time, but how they served us into our thirties and forties and beyond in some cases. That really is a great point.
And I wanted to, put an exclamation mark on that. Before I let you go, I do wanna ask you about your time as president of, not the JPZ Alumni Association, but the full boat Grand Poobah Syracuse University Alumni Association. Take me behind the scenes, tell me how you got involved and rose through the ranks and became president and what those duties entail. Cuz I'm fascinated by this.
Ryan: You are the one, so thank you for that. No. I think I've shared my love at the institution so far, but I really fell back in love. Never fell out of love with Syracuse, but I got reconnected once I started dating my now wife, I was still in Ohio, she was in Syracuse, so I had to go up to Syracuse every couple weekends of see her before I moved back.
And just being back in Central New York and then visiting her on campus, she's getting her doctorate, she's teaching and being back in that environment. Got the juices going. So when we left in 09 and moved back to northeast Ohio, I do remember that Cleveland area had a strong alumni club, and I reached out to the University and said, hey, I just literally just left Syracuse, so I wanna get involved back home. Can you gimme some names? And they said actually currently the Alumni Club is dormant. And it was a strong club when I was a student. I used to speak at the new students send offs in Cleveland, and I actually actively started recruiting students at JPZ before they stepped forward on campus.
JAG: Yeah. Cleveland is one of those cities where we always have a ton of classmates here. And it was like, Boston and New York and Philly and Jersey and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Cleveland always had a significant presence.
Ryan: Yeah, you usually get about 40 plus students from the region. So I was very surprised.
So that started a process working with the folks up in the office of alumni engagement of trying to rebuild the club. So we fast forward to a meeting on a Tuesday morning in early 2010. The Council of Elders, as I call them, they were older alums who I remembered when I was an undergrad. That I leaned upon.
So we had breakfast at a place east of Cleveland called Corky and Lenny's. I remember right off at 271 and there's maybe eight or 10 of us and we met at 8:00 AM cuz I was working part-time and I had the time. And by 8:04 they said you are the new President. Ryan, the meeting is yours.
I'm like, I thought we were just gonna talk. So that led to rebuilding the club and events. So for four years I ran the local club. And then some folks up in Syracuse even Mark Verone, JPZ alum, Class of 95, former president.
JAG: Former podcast guest, he talked about how you and he have infiltrated the greater Alumni Association from behalf of WJPZ.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a few folks approached me and said, hey, would you be interested in serving on the national board? And I already had my successor picked out in Cleveland. So I said, sure. So they brought me on. And it's two, two year terms. So after my final year was approaching the end, I thought, okay I've served my institution, I'm ready to move on.
And they tapped me on the shoulder and said, we need a vice president. Would you be willing to stay? We're not ready for you to end yet. I'm like, sure. So I served as one of two vice presidents. And they say the hell with it, I've stuck with it this long. I might as well dip my toe in.
The wife gave me the blessing if I wanted to run. So I ran for president and in true McNaughton fashion of all the years, there was never more than one person who ran. I had an opponent, of course I won three local elections here in Niles. I know how to run a campaign, so I was able to get just enough votes to be president and it's just been the thrill and honor of a lifetime to, this might not be the face that the University wants to represent, but I hope that my voice, my passion lends itself. Actually Alison Mitchell in Atlanta, she does marketing. She's on the board now, and she describes us as Engagement officers. She goes, Ryan, yeah, you're the chief, you're the CEO. You are the Chief Engagement Officer. So I look at the role as trying to engage alums.
I share with folks, there's, there is no contractual obligation to stay involved with the University once you graduate. Same thing with JPZ, right? There's no contractual obligation to donate to the alumni association, to go back to banquets, to come back and do shifts. But should something have to be written in a contract, to be meaningful, to be impactful?
And I say no. So I tell the story about how I feel like my life has been enriched by staying involved with the University, by being a peer, by giving back time, talent. Sure, a little bit of treasure. Not much, but every little bit counts. What do you know, this also gets me a seat on the board of trustees, which is just insane.
At the end of the day, there's influential people and me, but you get installed and I'm in front wearing the lovely robe and the hat and the medal they give you, and you get to speak for a few minutes. And I had a speech written and I ripped it up because I heard a young student in a meeting earlier today to speak to the heart about how philanthropy just made him able to go to school.
And the same thing happened to me. We talked about that financial aid package earlier. And I just I just I was an emotional wreck because I was just ad-libbing. But I was able to do that because I'm a JPZer. And I just told folks, I told folks, I said, yeah.
Financial aid is why I was able to get here. My family is as blue collar as the sky is sunny on a day, right? We're the bluest of blue collar families. And for decades, I've talked about these folks who are nameless and faceless, who allowed my parents to sacrifice everything so their kid could have something.
But I'm fairly certain tonight I'm standing in front of you. Some folks who I've described, so I can put names and faces. So if you ever think that your time, your talent, your treasure, if they don't matter, exhibit A. You matter. You mean the world to me. You allowed me a small town, Ohio kid to live his dreams.
That's the type of passion that I try to instill in our alumni body to realize that it's not, you don't have to write a check. Those are great, but man, if you can hire orange, if you can provide an internship. If you can have a conversation with someone. If you could speak to a class, just something.
Go to a game watch in your area, just to feel the revel that is that orange blood. You can do all of it. You can do some of it, but do something. So that's what I've tried to do. And hopefully what little legacy I can potentially leave with the office. That's what I hope to do.
JAG: That is an amazing place to leave it. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for all your contributions to JPZ and to Syracuse University as a whole. And let's see if we can get that Syracuse UConn tape restored. We need to make sure we have that for history. Thanks Ryan.
Ryan: Thank you for everything, Jon. Go Orange. Go JPZ.