March 10, 2025 • 59 mins
As March Madness takes over, there's no better time to revisit one of our favorite episodes featuring Ian Eagle—the lead voice of the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament on CBS. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation, where Ian shares the pivotal moments that shaped his path from a young sports fan to one of the most recognizable voices in broadcasting.
Ian’s journey started in a home filled with entertainers, where he learned the art of performance at an early age. But making it in sports broadcasting took more than talent—it required persistence, preparation, and the right opportunities at the right time.
In this episode, Ian shares:
- How a single unexpected opportunity launched his on-air career.
- The preparation and mindset required to excel in sports broadcasting.
- How growing up with a comedian father and a singer mother shaped his skills behind the microphone.
- The role of mentorship, perseverance, and adaptability in building a successful career.
Whether you're a basketball fan, an aspiring broadcaster, or just someone who appreciates great career stories, Ian’s journey is packed with insights, humor, and inspiration.
You can find Part 2 anytime by visiting NoWrongChoices.com or searching for it on your favorite podcast platform.
Listen now to this special No Wrong Choices episode!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Larry Samuels (00:02):
Hello and welcome to a best of edition of no
Wrong Choices, featuring theiconic play-by-play broadcaster,
ian Eagle, who is the voice ofthe NCAA men's college
basketball tournament on CBS.
We thought it would be fun torevisit this conversation as
March Madness kicks into highgear.
I'm Larry Samuels, soon to bejoined by Tushar Saxena and
(00:23):
Larry Shea.
Before we get rolling, pleasebe sure to support no Wrong
Choices by liking, following andsubscribing to the show on your
favorite podcast platform.
Your support enables us to keepbringing these great stories to
life.
Now.
Let's get started Now.
Joining no Wrong Choices is oneof the most recognizable voices
in sports Play-by-playannouncer, ian Eagle.
(00:46):
Among Ian's many projects, heserves as the lead voice of the
NCAA men's basketball tournamenton CBS, calls games for the
network's number two NFLbroadcast team and is a favorite
voice within the NBA world,highlighted by his work with TNT
, tbs and YES.
He was also named the 2022National Sportscaster of the
(01:08):
Year.
Ian, thank you so much forjoining us.
Ian Eagle (01:10):
Feels like this is your life.
I feel like my fourth gradeteacher, Richard Frank, is now
going to join us to discuss abit of my youth.
No, I appreciate theintroduction Great to be with
you guys and fun time of year.
So this is where it all begins.
And you're getting me on theback end of free time.
(01:32):
So I am very serene.
I'm I'm Zen, but I'm ready forwhat's to come.
Tushar Saxena (01:40):
All right.
So full disclosure, as I doevery once in a while here.
I've actually known Ian Eaglefor what?
30 years now, almost.
Ian Eagle (01:47):
I don't like to count the numbers per se, tushar.
I like to keep it fresh.
It's like we're new friends.
This is like a new relationship, but yeah, it probably has been
close to 30 years.
That's insane.
Close to 30 years?
That's insane.
Tushar Saxena (02:02):
Which is an insane thing to say, because I
remember, because I actually hadthe opportunity to intern and
then work at WFAN with Ian manyyears ago, when, ian I think at
that point you still may haveactually been a producer who
started doing updates on theweekends over at FAN.
So it's a long journey, man.
Ian Eagle (02:23):
Yeah the story behind that.
So I joined WFAN Radio in Mayof 1990.
I just graduated college.
I had interned there the summerbefore and it is a reminder
about, even in this day and age,where we text, we email and
oftentimes it is impersonal, ourcommunication At the time it
(02:46):
was very personal and it wasvery intimate and I made a
strong enough impression as anintern to get a call right
before spring break of my senioryear.
There's a job that's opening upas a producer.
We know it's not what you wantto do ultimately, but we just
wanted to see if you'd like tocome in and interview, which I
(03:07):
did, and I ended up meeting withMark Mason who was the program
director at the time.
It was the 7 and Midnight Shiftproducer job.
Eric Spitz was moving on to adifferent role within the
station, leaving that day part,and there was going to be an
opening, and I actually askedEric his opinion.
Hey, do you think I shouldinterview for this?
(03:28):
He said yes, great experience.
You're not going to get the job.
He didn't make that point.
There were a couple ofcandidates internal that were
qualified for it, had done theirtime there.
So I show up for the job.
Interview during spring breakwent back to my dad's house in
Forest Hills.
Queens went to Astoria, metwith Mark Mason.
(03:51):
Within two minutes of themeeting I could sense that it
was going very well.
He was laughing at my jokes.
We had good back and forth andhe asked me well, when can you
start?
Tushar Saxena (04:01):
I was like, oh man he's a hell of an interview,
very direct.
Ian Eagle (04:06):
I said, well, I graduated May 10th, I could
start May 12th, I need a day toget my life in order and I'd be
ready to go.
He said, great, that would begreat.
And that was it.
I walked out of there and Ithought did I just get this job?
What's happening right now?
And I went back.
(04:26):
Eric was in the newsroom and hesaid how'd it go?
I said I think it went reallywell.
He's like all right, I'll callyou in a few days.
I get back to my dad's place.
I'm going to drive back toSyracuse and I was in the
driveway like packing up mystuff and my father jogs out I
don't want to say runs.
He jogged out or a brisk walkout of the house and said hey,
(04:51):
there's a phone call for youbefore you go.
I said who is it?
It's Eric Spitz.
And I pick up the phone andEric says what the hell did you
say to Mark Mason?
I said I don't know.
I'm telling you we clicked.
He wants to offer you the job.
He's ready to go.
So I took the job, even though Iwanted to be on the air.
I just thought a chance to getback home and work at the radio
(05:16):
station that I wanted to be apart of so badly and even by
osmosis I almost looked at it asgraduate school and that's
really what it turned out to be.
But they told me very strongterms Do not take this job if
you want to be on the air.
This is not going to lead tothat.
(05:36):
And I said I get it, I'm goingto take the job.
So I take the job.
I'm producing on a nightlybasis.
I'm working with Howie Rose job.
So I take the job.
I'm producing on a nightlybasis.
I'm working with Howie Rose.
It was a crash course onprofessional radio and high
level radio at that.
Howie is an incredible talent.
Fast forward.
A year goes by, I'm gettingantsy and I'm doing my job and
(05:57):
I'm trying to do it to the bestof my ability.
But I am feeling the itch and Ithink to myself maybe I need to
make a move and go somewhereelse if they're not going to
give me my shot.
I had had a job offer inBuffalo on the air, had a job
offer in West Virginia on theair, so I contemplated those
before I took the FAN job.
And, as cliche as it sounds, itis September of 91.
(06:22):
And there was the sportsdirector at the time, the great
Stan Martin, who was a wonderfulguy, truly just a joy.
But he would make the schedulethe update schedule.
I was in my cubicle gettingready for a Friday night show
and Stan is on the phone.
And Stan was very dramatic, hecame from a bit of an acting
(06:43):
background and I have no ideawhat the phone call is.
I just hear one end of thephone and Stan was very dramatic
, he came from a bit of anacting background and I have no
idea what the phone call is.
I just hear one end of thephone and it's him saying hello,
what?
No, really, no, no, a lot ofthat.
And he hangs up and he turnsaround, he looks at me.
He says you want to be on theair, don't you?
(07:06):
Yes, he said I don't want to dothe voice or it might affect me
.
He said go, make a quick twominute update, one, take in the
back and give me the tape.
And I said what is this for?
And he goes just do it, man,that was it, okay.
So I go to the back and I hadbeen doing updates on my own
(07:34):
just to stay into the mindset ofdoing it and writing them and
using tape.
At the time we had carts and Idid it.
I went back one take, handedhim the update.
He went to the back and then hecame back out.
He said you're on the scheduleof Sunday.
Pat Harris has pneumonia.
(07:55):
And that was it.
I did an update.
Tushar Saxena (07:57):
Wow, pat Harris never worked again.
Ian Eagle (08:00):
It wasn't quite Wally Pip Lugarik.
Tushar Saxena (08:02):
I know.
Ian Eagle (08:02):
I know, but I ended up getting another shift the
following week and the weekafter and the week after, and
that led to many opportunitieson air that were not coming my
way until that one fateful day.
So that is a true reminder ofyou.
Wake up in the morning, youhave no idea if that's the day
(08:24):
that's going to change your lifeor alter it, and that truly was
the day where everything reallychanged, for me at least at
WFAN, and it kept me on theright road and on the tracks and
ultimately took advantage ofall the other things that popped
up along the way.
Tushar Saxena (08:43):
I just want to say we've been friends for 30
years, but I appreciateeverything else.
I mean we were going to get it.
Well, obviously, we're going toget into the FAN days with you
as well, but OK, so we'll takeit back to the beginning,
because I've known you for along time.
This was always your dream todo this job that you're doing
currently.
Wasn't it dream to?
Ian Eagle (09:03):
do this job that you're doing currently, wasn't
it.
It was as far back as eightyears old.
This was a legitimate objectiveand goal and told my parents
such at that age.
My parents were entertainers,Dad was a stand-up comedian,
(09:26):
actor, trumpet player.
My mom was an actress, a singer.
So I grew up in a householdthat had no boundaries as to
what you could do, and that wasvery empowering in that I was
encouraged to look outside thebox.
So when I told them that Iwanted to be a sportscaster,
they both told me that that'swhat I would do.
And when you're eight years old, that's all you need to hear to
(09:46):
believe it.
So you know, back then we'retalking about the seventies
there was no place to do it.
I didn't go to a high schoolthat had the facilities to do it
, other than performances.
Here and there there wereopportunities to show that.
I was more than willing to gofront and center and I was open
(10:10):
to the idea of a microphone or acamera.
None of that intimidated me andI think there was just an inner
belief that I could do this,and I went to college at
Syracuse with that belief.
And then you get rocked a littlebit when you realize that there
are a bunch of other peoplethat are also confident and have
(10:33):
ability and an aptitude for it.
And then that's where the nextstep begins of trying to polish
your craft and work at it andtruly become a student of it.
And other than a freshman year,where I was still balancing the
idea of what college wassupposed to be partying and
(10:58):
being very social and joining afraternity and doing all the
things that I envisioned I gotvery serious about it.
The start of sophomore year, tothe point where I truly
committed to it, caught a coupleof breaks along the way.
I was at a high school footballgame covering it for one of the
college radio stations, and onthe sideline is a new sports
(11:22):
anchor in town.
Although he was still a studentat the school, he was a senior
and he had gotten the weekendjob at the CBS affiliate in
Syracuse.
And the guy that I went to thefootball game with, another
radio guy, said is that MikeTirico there?
Tushar Saxena (11:41):
Look at that.
Ian Eagle (11:42):
I said, yeah, yeah, I think it is, it is.
He said, well, we shouldintroduce ourselves.
I said why?
He said he'd love to meet us.
This guy's doing weekend sports, he, he wants to get out into
the community.
I went, okay, that was enoughfor me, so we went over,
introduced ourselves.
He was very happy to meet us.
What's your background?
(12:02):
I'm from Queens, I'm fromQueens, so really he's from
Bayside.
So boom, instantly you feel aconnection.
And he also happened to beincredibly affable and gracious
and everything that you seetoday is what he was back in
1987.
So at the end of it he said hey, if you guys want to come check
(12:25):
out the TV station, love tohave you.
He didn't have to do that.
I followed up.
I went, I became his intern, Ilater became his producer.
I later became a radio producerfor him because he started his
own show my senior year and then, when he couldn't do it, he
would have me host the show.
So these are small snippetsthat I look back on and think to
(12:49):
myself it could go one way orthe other and things lined up.
Because I was open to it, Isaid, yes, a lot.
I went in with a really goodattitude, no matter what the
situation was.
I brought positivity and I madesure that I introduced myself
to people, knew their names,learned their background, took
(13:13):
an actual interest in them as ahuman being.
And, tushar, I can tell youwithout any pause that I know
our experience was a good onewhen you were at FAN Radio,
because I just didn't know anyother way I treated people with
respect and that has been acommon thread throughout my life
(13:37):
and throughout my career.
Larry Shea (13:39):
You are giving amazing career journey lessons
to people out there about beingpersonable and being open and
ready and willing.
And in doing my research, Ireally want to follow up on the
beginning of your family lifetoo, because I do feel that they
played a major part in youbeing able to present yourself
to the world in the way that youdo on a day to day basis today.
(14:01):
I learned that you were put onstage right At the age of six
and you realized hey, no bigdeal, I could do this.
From your mom You're learning.
The show must go on, becauseher voice would be shot.
I mean, these are life lessonsthat you're carrying on to today
.
Talk a little bit more aboutyour, your mom, your dad, just
(14:21):
your upbringing, because Ireally think that affected a lot
.
Ian Eagle (14:24):
Yeah, guys, I didn't know any different.
It was not normal by anystretch.
But you don't know what youdon't know.
I recognize that it didn't feelthe same as my friend's family
situation, but I never looked atit as odd or woe is me.
My parents were on the road agreat deal.
(14:47):
They took me on the road withthem until a certain age when I
had my own stuff going on and Icouldn't just take off of school
for three straight days.
So by about eight years old Igot into a more normal routine.
My parents had put me in aschool we lived in Rego Park, so
(15:09):
not quite Forest Hills, it wasright on the edge of Forest
Hills and they put me inMontessori School, which was a
progressive school.
It was a melting pot.
The teachers were nottraditional in any way, the
classes were not traditional andI think because of that it did
(15:30):
open up my brain a bit to theidea that it doesn't have to be
conventional and even your viewsare not necessarily
conventional.
They were open to all sorts ofopinions and not just raising
your hand to speak, butinformally it was a very open
(15:52):
dialogue.
So we moved to Forest Hills in1977.
And I remember this veryvividly.
We go to the local public schoolin between what is second grade
for me and what my next schoolyear is going to be and we go
and meet with the principal andI'm told to bring my work, my
(16:13):
latest work, and the principalwas Dr Charles Bechtold, tall
man, very nice guy.
We sit down in his office andhe's going through what it's
going to look like next year,going to start the school year
in September.
And now he takes a look at mybook and he's looking through
the paper.
(16:33):
And he stops and looks at mydad and says he's done all the
work for third grade and my dadsaid, okay, so what are the
options?
And he said, well, we can putthem in fourth grade.
And my dad said, okay, so whatare the options?
And he said, well, we can putthem in fourth grade.
And my dad turns to me and saysdo you want to be in fourth
grade, ian?
I said, yeah, that's fine, thatsounds good, new York City
(16:58):
public education.
And Dr Bechtolt said, okay,great, and that was it.
There was no paperwork, therewas nothing.
I show up the next year and I'min fourth grade and I have this
whole new world of new people,new teachers, new dynamic, much
(17:18):
more conventional, verydifferent, but I do remember
bringing with me the mentalityof a different sort of angle on
how all of this stuff works.
So my parents were very muchgrinders in how they went about
their business and their workand my father really didn't have
(17:43):
the kind of success that hedreamed of until he was dropped
out of high school at the age of16.
Wow, in Brooklyn Erasmus Hall,you know I have photos that my
(18:10):
father's wife, his widow, sentme that I had never seen before.
She sent them to me about threemonths ago and I'm just blown
away by how young he was andwhat he was doing.
He was on the road at 16 yearsold making a living and then
(18:32):
eventually Buddy Hackettconvinced him.
Hey, you're funny, you shouldbe doing standup.
No, no.
Larry Shea (18:41):
Buddy.
Ian Eagle (18:42):
Hackett says that, yes, when Buddy Hackett tells
you you're funny, or the way mydad said it, buddy said, hey,
you're funny, you're funny, youshould be out there.
And that was the impetus forhim to do it and to break away
from the band and be front andcenter.
My mom was a child star inChicago.
(19:04):
I have photos of her at six onthe radio singing.
She was considered well beyondher years at the time and how
that manifested itself, and shedropped out of high school at
the age of 16.
They were 19 years apart in age.
So the fact that it wascongruous in that way that they
(19:28):
somehow met.
They met because my motheropened for my father at the
Playboy Club in Chicago.
That's how they meet in life,it's a different era.
But the late 60s produced somereally interesting stories.
So there's a lot there.
There's a lot of meat on thebone and, yes, larry, it did
(19:50):
shape me in ways that I didn'teven imagine.
I knew that it was different,but I never let on to anybody
else that it was different.
I acclimated and adjusted basedon my circumstances and even
skipping a grade.
I wasn't leading with that whenI showed up for fourth grade.
(20:12):
Hey, you know, I'm supposed tobe in third grade here.
Larry Samuels (20:15):
Nobody knew.
Ian Eagle (20:16):
I just meshed in and tried to find ways to fulfill
whatever creative itch that Ihad.
There were ways of doing it andthere were performance aspects
to it and I do think because ofthat I always felt pretty
confident that I was going to beable to somehow do this.
(20:37):
You never know for certain, butI just had an inner conviction
that I was going to be able tomake a living doing this just
had an inner conviction that Iwas going to be able to make a
living doing this.
Larry Samuels (20:50):
I think we should call out that your father.
I think one of his bigbreakthroughs, as we did our
research, was becoming Dominicthe Xerox guy.
Is that right?
I vividly remember thatcharacter.
Ian Eagle (20:57):
Oh, yeah, no that was a huge commercial at the time.
It was for Xerox.
As you mentioned, it was thefirst commercial that ever used
a religious figure, so this wasnot one of those-.
Tushar Saxena (21:07):
He was a monk in that movie.
He was a monk.
Ian Eagle (21:09):
This was not one of those.
Hey, we'll just kind of go withthe same thing that the other
brands are doing.
They really were creative.
A gentleman who just recentlypassed away by the name of Alan
Kay, who was a brilliant ad man.
He was the one that came upwith the idea and another claim
to fame for Alan Kay, just togive him his due he came up with
(21:32):
the slogan if you see something, say something.
That was him, wow.
Which we still use today.
Yeah, give you a little insightinto his fertile mind.
And if you go on YouTube, it's aquick search Brother, dominic
Xerox.
It really was a beautifulcommercial and it spurred a
(21:53):
number of commercials for Xeroxand for him.
It opened up this door that hadnot existed.
He ended up doing about 50different commercials for
various companies existed.
He ended up doing about 50different commercials for
various companies Fleischmann'sMargarine, gillette, coppertone,
noodles Soup, you name it.
He would sell it and he gotreally hot in that area.
(22:18):
Anything he went up for, theywere looking for a cherubic
gentleman with a fun face andgreat facial reactions.
He was the guy.
In addition, he then dabbled inHollywood.
He was on three differentpilots that aired on network
television back at a time wherewe only had CBS, nbc, abc and
(22:40):
then a couple of independentchannels and PBS and none of
them got picked up.
They all aired and none of themwere at a level that the
networks were going to go withit.
And that would have changed hislife and probably would have
changed my life, because wewould have moved to LA and then
who knows if Syracuse is in themix for me.
(23:01):
So I do think of thingssometimes and that sliding doors
theory of how life can bedifferent based on your
circumstances, for sure, forsure.
Larry Samuels (23:13):
So the window between this is going to sound,
I don't know, a little hokey,but the window between fourth
grade and 12th grade.
You know what are you doing?
To prepare yourself to get intothe best broadcasting
university in the country, atNewhouse and Syracuse.
Ian Eagle (23:32):
Well, what I was doing?
That.
Larry Shea (23:33):
I didn't even know it takes offense.
I like the Fordham guy.
Fordham guy getting hisfeathers around, I get it.
I get it.
It's like West Side Story.
Sorry, tj, I can't shake it.
Tushar Saxena (23:42):
It's not a problem.
Ian Eagle (23:46):
I didn't even know I was doing it at the time because
it was very natural.
I was completely immersingmyself in sports in general, so
anything that I could get myhands on, baseball was my number
one sport by far.
But it didn't end there.
I was a huge football fan andbasketball fan and hockey fan
and the Olympics.
(24:07):
I couldn't get enough.
So little do you know as a kidthat you're building this, this
dossier of knowledge and a basethat is going to serve you well,
your cataloging memories andyou're doing it in a manner that
is not, for any other reason,no agenda other than I just had
(24:32):
pure love for it.
And running parallel with thatwas the broadcasting side.
The curiosity we would go toShea Stadium grew up, you know,
10 minutes from there, and theMets were not very good.
This was when Joe Torre wasmanaging the squad and my dad,
because of whatever minorcelebrity it had brought to him
(24:53):
as the Monk.
There were companies and teamsand various groups that wanted
him to appear in a Monk outfit,including the Mets.
So in 1978, he brings me alongand he's there to bless the team
.
They lost a hundred games thatyear so it didn't work.
(25:16):
Bruce Beauclair didn't all of asudden become a 325 hitter but
it did afford me the opportunityto to go behind the scenes.
I got a bat from Lenny Randall,I got a helmet from Lee
Mazzilli.
This just intensified my loveof sports.
And even at the game I'mstaring at Bob Murphy and Ralph
(25:40):
Kiner and Lindsay Nelson in thebroadcast booth.
I'm just tantalized by the ideathat this is a way that you can
make a buck and be around theballpark, talk to the athletes,
describe what you see.
And that never escaped me.
I just always had that interestand curiosity.
(26:05):
Same with a Nick game or aRanger game.
The game would be going on andI would just lock in on Marv
Albert and watch him do histhing.
And I do think it plants seedsin you and it resonates with you
in some way.
And for me that's never goneaway.
That almost youthful exuberanceof this job and this vocation
(26:32):
has stuck with me for all theseyears.
Tushar Saxena (26:33):
Obviously you know you're building yourself to
become the broadcaster, thatyou are at a very young age,
which know you're buildingyourself to become the
broadcaster, that you are at avery young age, which means that
you've got to get some kind ofteaching and that's going to
come from your parents.
So I'm going to assume and I'mgoing to touch on Syracuse after
in just a second, but I'm goingto assume that at some point,
like your parents are in showbiz, so you have the greatest,
(26:56):
essentially encyclopedia ofknowledge in front of you where
your parents can give youpointers.
Was that what was happening?
Is that you know, dad, whatdoes this sound like?
Or your father was saying hey,look, if you want to, if you
really want to make it in thisindustry, this is what you have
to do.
Your mom is saying the samething.
Ian Eagle (27:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting.
I lost my mom when I was 19.
She died of lung cancer.
Two-pack-a-day smoker which fora gifted singer, just makes no
sense that that would be a habit.
She was alcoholic.
She was anorexic.
(27:30):
There were a lot of challengesthere.
She was really brilliant.
She did not graduate highschool, as I mentioned, she
dropped out.
She completed the New YorkTimes crossword puzzle every
Sunday, every Sunday, wow.
She must have been a voraciousreader, yes, blown away by her
intellect and her IQ, but, withthat said, then did irrational
(27:52):
things in her life, things thatmade no sense.
That's what's so amazing aboutthe human condition and so
perplexing as well that someoneis consciously hurting
themselves while they're doingthis.
They got divorced, so thatcreated a very large gap
(28:14):
Geographically.
She was living on the WestCoast.
My father was East Coast.
I stayed with my father.
That's where my life was.
My mother needed to go and dosome things on her own.
She eventually enjoyed hergreatest success in Las Vegas,
playing Judy Garland in a showcalled Legends.
She was amazing.
It was probably the role thatshe needed to play her whole
life.
It was probably the role thatshe needed to play her whole
(28:36):
life.
She completely lost herself inthat role.
She became Judy Garland in manyways.
There's a documentary that wasdone on the show and it's pretty
wild how much she immersedherself in this.
You know to the point where youthink, whoa, you've probably
gone a little too far.
(28:57):
And she did so performance wise.
I was just starting out doingcollege radio.
She never really got a chanceto hear me or see me do any of
this.
She had nothing but confidencein me and believed that I was
(29:18):
going to be very successful, andwould say it over and over
again.
So, amidst whatever she wasgoing through personally, she
still had the wherewithal andthe instincts to tell her son
that you're going to do reallywell in life, and that's
something that can buildconfidence, no doubt about it.
(29:38):
My dad, at the time that we'retalking, was traveling somewhere
in the neighborhood of 245 daysa year.
Wow, wow, wow.
So this was not one of thosetypical sit at the dinner table
chat about your day.
What happened with Xerox wasincredible for him.
(30:03):
What they quickly realized wasthat he was a secret weapon for
them to appear at openings ofKinko's.
Or if Ford Motor Companybrought in Xerox copiers to
their main offices, he wouldshow up.
(30:24):
And it was personal appearancesand because of his standup
comedy background and because ofhis humanity, he's just an
incredible off the charts peopleperson.
The combination of those skillsled him to be very successful
for Xerox and they just keptbooking him.
(30:45):
You got to go to Lexington, yougot to go to Akron, we need you
in Vegas, then we need you to goto Orlando and then from there,
austin, you name it.
He was in every city in thecountry in the monk outfit doing
his thing, but it did take himaway from New York.
So I grew up basically with ahousekeeper that lived in the
(31:09):
home and I was highlyindependent from a very young
age.
I was doing my homework on myown.
I was waking up on my own.
I was doing my homework on myown.
I was waking up on my own.
I was going to bed on my own.
I'm talking about from the ageof nine on.
Wow, wow, wow.
So when this is all you know,it doesn't seem odd, you figure?
Larry Samuels (31:32):
it out or you don't.
Ian Eagle (31:33):
Figure it out or you don't.
So back to your question,tushar.
My father never really sat downand criticized my work or gave
me specific pointers.
He was not a huge sports fanbefore I started doing this.
When I showed an interest insports he opened up part of his
(31:53):
brain to it, but it reallywasn't until I started doing
this for a living that he thencommitted as a sports fan.
So there was nothing from asports knowledge standpoint that
he could share with me.
And then broadcasting was nottheir thing, so technically
there was not much that theycould do in that area.
(32:14):
What they could do was provideme with a blueprint for work
ethic, which was insane both oftheirs and then performance,
which I just saw with my owneyes watching them on stage or
watching them on TV.
My mom was in a few soap operasas well, so I think that was
(32:36):
inspirational in many ways andwas a North star for me in
recognizing that you've got tosometimes summon something
within yourself in order to dothis job and do it well and be
consistent at it.
That's been a big part for methat I wanted to get to that
(32:57):
place where I was consistentlygood at this, not a good call
here, or a nice moment or aphrase that caught people's
attention.
Can you consistently deliver,doing game after game after game
after game?
Tushar Saxena (33:14):
Was Syracuse always the choice for you, or
did you have a number ofdifferent schools that had solid
broadcasting backgrounds?
Ian Eagle (33:20):
I got turned down at Fordham.
So that was no, I didn't, I hadyou.
There was a moment like damnright, you did.
Larry Shea (33:29):
We only want good people at Fordham.
Ian Eagle (33:34):
No, syracuse was the number one choice and, and
honestly it was because therewas an article in sports
illustrated.
We all remember when sportsillustrated had a very serious
impact on sure absolutelymagazine yes, stacking the
magazines and keeping them andreading back issues and being
(33:57):
blown away by the work that theydid.
There was an article in SportsIllustrated a broadcaster by the
name of Greg Papa who is thevoice of the San Francisco 49ers
.
He did the Warriors for manyyears.
He was the feature, he was asenior at Syracuse and it was
called the Cradle ofSportscasters and that caught my
(34:20):
eye and I believe the year was84.
So I'm a sophomore in highschool and I thought to myself
they listed the lineage forMarty Glickman to Dick Stockton,
to Marv Albert, to Andy Musserto Len Berman, on and on and on.
(34:42):
And I said to myself that'swhere I have to go and that was
my number one choice.
I did apply to a bunch ofschools.
I was fortunate enough to getinto a bunch of schools, but
Syracuse was always the topchoice, yeah.
Larry Shea (34:56):
I love how you've set this up for us, because
there's a real entertainmentaspect of the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree.
We hear it in your calls.
You know anytime you're doing agame, and now you've set the
path to Syracuse.
Where are you honing thosechops?
Do you learn to do the stuff atSyracuse, or did it start way
earlier than then?
(35:17):
You know just in your roomcalling the game when you're
watching TV.
Where does it begin?
Where you're starting to honeyour craft?
Ian Eagle (35:25):
All of the above Growing up in New York with the
surplus of teams in the area.
If you turn your radio on, youwere going to get a game, and it
could have been John Sterlingdoing the Islanders, it could
have been Marv Albert doing theRangers, Could have been Marv
Albert doing the Knicks.
(35:46):
Eventually, when the Netsrolled around, that was another
option Marty Glickman,originally the Giants, then the
Jets Giants, then the Jets andthen the Yankees, the Mets.
They were all there and allavailable.
So it really began there.
(36:12):
And then, yes, doingplay-by-play in your bedroom,
setting up your bed like abaseball field and literally
calling the plays as you go,getting in the shower and
working with the space, greatacoustics, play-by-play of
whatever comes to mind.
That was always part of themindset.
And then playing pickupbasketball with your friends and
(36:35):
calling play-by-play and yourfriends wanting to punch you in
the face of course they don'twant to hear play-by-play I know
that too, I know that feelingtoo.
So all of the above and then getto syracuse, and there is a
very specific path that you needto follow.
So there are two radio stationsthere college radio stations,
(36:59):
waer, which all of the peoplethat I mentioned earlier worked,
bob Costas, who I didn'tmention earlier, but was really
the one that captured myimagination when I got to
college.
That was the one that I trulytried to emulate.
I just your style is verysimilar that I truly tried to
emulate.
I just your style is verysimilar, really respected Very
similar, respected his intellect, respected occasional sarcasm
(37:27):
and the fact that he could doany role that you asked of him.
You want him to host, he coulddo it.
You want him to do play-by-play?
He could do it.
You want him to interviewsomeone?
He could do it.
You want him to do play-by-play?
He could do it.
You want him to interviewsomeone, he could do it.
And that show that he did on NBClater with Bob Costas, I
thought was brilliant, and thevariety of guests, I think.
Back he had one particularepisode with Mary Lou Henner of
(37:50):
Taxi fame, and it was one of thebest episodes of television I
had ever seen, one of the bestinterviews I had ever said,
would you say to yourself like,oh yeah, I want to check out
mary lou henner and what she'sgot going on.
She's really interesting.
By the way, she has aphotographic memory and has very
specific memories of every dayof her life.
(38:12):
And then bob threw out a, arandom day, and that happened to
be the day that she lost hervirginity and that brought oh
geez, wait, what is?
Larry Samuels (38:21):
this episode.
Ian Eagle (38:21):
Hold on a second.
What are we doing here?
So I just knew that these tworadio stations WJPZZ89, the
other one, were a part of thepath and showed up to a meeting
for WAR.
There were a hundred people inthere and they mentioned that
(38:42):
the way you start is you have toshow up at five in the morning
on the day that you're assignedand just write the sportscast.
You don't even get to read yoursportscast into a microphone
and then, once your writing isgood enough, we'll allow you to
make a tape.
And then that process is you'llmake tapes until we determine
(39:05):
that you're good enough to be onthe air.
And I sat in that meeting andthought to myself wow, none of
that sounds enjoyable, not onebit.
I go to the other radio stationand they had a piece of copy.
They said read this into themicrophone.
I did.
They said oh, you're prettygood, you available next week?
Yeah, what do I have going on?
(39:25):
I'm a freshman in college.
I just got here, so I startedat Z89.
Waar was really the place youneeded to be and eventually
somebody reached out.
A gentleman by the name ofKevin Martinez, who was a WAR,
now is very high up the ladderwith the Seattle Mariners.
(39:47):
I thought he was a terrificbroadcaster at the time.
He worked at both.
He called me, said hey, there'sa chance for you here.
You should come over and gothrough the process.
So I was now a sophomore.
I said, well, would I have toshow up at five in the morning
and write?
He said yes, it's part of thedeal.
I said no, I said yes, that timeand eventually it all worked
(40:12):
out and I got cleared at WARwhat ends up happening.
You're doing basicallyplay-by-play an impression of
whoever your favorite announceris when you start, and I was
doing an impression of MarvAlbert.
I was doing Marv's inflectionsand a little bit of his voice
quality and a lot of thevernacular and then eventually,
(40:38):
when you get your sea legs, youstart to try to find and
discover yourself within, playby play, that it is a blank
canvas, that you can take it anydirection that you want to take
it.
And I did gain confidence notonly by doing it but by also
listening to upperclassmen, andat the time there were some
(41:02):
really good ones Charlie Polillo, who is a talk show host in
Houston Excellent play-by-playguy and would listen to his
stuff over and over again.
Sean Colthard, who is now knownas Michael Cole in the
wrestling world.
Tushar Saxena (41:19):
Yeah, Wow yeah.
Ian Eagle (41:20):
Sean was at Syracuse, I thought he was outstanding
and would listen to his stuffand begin to incorporate some of
what they were doing.
So, combination of mimickingand then just reps, going into
the stands literally with a taperecorder and calling the game
and not worrying about thepeople that were around you
(41:42):
turning around or sayingsomething untoward, it didn't
matter, you would lock into yourworld and that was the only way
to do it.
By the way, there was nocalling off a monitor or going
into an edit bay.
There was none of that.
You had to go there and you hadto call it, and I slowly
started finding improvement inkey areas that I needed to
(42:06):
improve Shortening my sentences,editing on the fly, picking out
the most important part of theplay in front of you and then
punctuating, finding when to usea period at the end, when to
use an exclamation point, thenhow to vary up your vocabulary,
not say the same thing everytime.
And then, by the time I got tomy senior year after interning
(42:28):
at FAN and, by the way, at FAN,as Tushar will tell you, there
was downtime.
I had three shifts as an intern.
One of them was a weekend shift.
There was not a whole lot goingon in the weekends.
The newsroom was empty.
We had three shifts as anintern.
One of them was a weekend shift.
There was not a whole lot goingon in the weekends.
The newsroom was empty.
We would have to log a Met gameduring the summer.
But I was free to read the mediaguides, which I did.
(42:49):
I memorized the name andbackground of every play-by-play
announcer in the four majorsports.
Name and background of everyplay-by-play announcer in the
four major sports.
And no one told me you shoulddo that.
I just realized that this wassomething that I needed to know
If I wanted to do this for aliving.
I needed to educate myself.
How did Ken Wilson become thevoice of the St Louis Blues?
(43:13):
Or he did AAA baseball inHawaii, looking at his path,
recognizing that there aredifferent ways to get to where
you eventually want to get to,that was a big part of it.
And then they had reel-to-reelsof NFL play-by-play hours and I
just would roll the reel-to-reelonto a cassette tape both sides
(43:37):
and I did, I'd say, fourcassette tapes worth of just NFL
play-by-play Jim Gordon of theNew York Giants, kevin Harlan of
the Kansas City Chiefs at thetime Wayne Larravee was doing
the Chicago Bears, jim Irwin wasdoing the Green Bay Packers,
rick Weaver was doing the MiamiDolphins.
(44:00):
I could go on and on and on.
I just listened to itreligiously.
Every drive that I made at thattime I would pop in the
play-by-play and muscle memorywas created.
Getting ready for my senioryear, I knew I was going to get
a bunch of football games and Iwanted to be ready for it.
I knew I was going to get abunch of football games and I
wanted to be ready for it and itjust helped in terms of
(44:21):
delivery and how to end a call,how to get into your
play-by-play.
All of that was part of thelesson of developing that muscle
and trying to figure out how tobest get to a place where I
would be comfortable on the airdoing play-by-play.
Larry Samuels (44:38):
So take us forward.
You're at the fan, you're doingupdates, you're getting
established within the New Yorkmarket.
What was your first big moment?
Doing play-by-play as a pro?
Ian Eagle (44:51):
Well, this is really wild to think now, because the
odds of it happening this wayare very slim.
I am doing updates, I'm workingwith Mike and the Mad Dog, so
I'm taking off the seven tomidnight shift.
I'm placed on the drive timeshift as the board operator for
Mike and the Mad Dog.
(45:11):
But the way it's sold to me isthis will free you up in case we
need you to do something atnight.
That will now be available foryou to go cover a game which
ended up happening.
I would do the shift and Iwould go cover the devil's game
and get sound and do voicersfrom there.
(45:33):
So they were living up to theirend of the bargain.
The part that I didn't knowwhich then happened Jody
McDonald left the overnight onweekends.
Steve Summers, of course, didweekday overnights.
Jody Mack did weekendovernights.
He left to take a job at a newsports radio station in
Philadelphia, wip radio.
That job opens up and I wasasked if I was interested.
(45:56):
That job opens up and I wasasked if I was interested.
I said I'm very much interestedand I was told okay, but you
still have to do Mike and theMad Dog Monday through Friday.
Oh, wow, so I was working sevendays a week for one full year.
I would work the board Mondaythrough Friday for Mike and
Chris, and then Friday nightinto Saturday morning I would
(46:16):
host midnight to 6 am.
I would try to get some sleepand then do it again Saturday
night into Sunday.
But what had happened for mebeing around Mike and Chris do a
(46:38):
show and how to get into thetopics and how to weave in
callers, and I thought to myselfwho's going to call at 3 am on
a Sunday morning?
Tushar Saxena (46:53):
And Tushar can validate this for me, you would
be surprised.
Ian Eagle (46:55):
It's shocking, shocking.
All I had to say was open phonelines at 718-937-6666.
Bang.
All four would light up inunison.
Were some of the callers comingoff a bender?
Yes, probably.
Larry Samuels (47:16):
Those are the best callers.
The best.
Ian Eagle (47:20):
So that started to work a muscle for me of being
extemporaneous and thinking onmy feet and being entertaining
and moving a show along even atthat hour of the morning.
Mark Chernoff takes over as theprogram director.
The radio station acquires theNew York Jets and Mark Chernoff
(47:41):
asks me if I'm interested inhosting pre and post game for
the Jets.
This is 1993.
I jump at the chance, I say yesand that really gave me my
first little taste of realestate at FAN, because this was
a big deal.
They were putting a lot oftrust in me to do it and I
(48:03):
delivered for them.
I took it very seriously.
It mattered to me.
I had the experience of doingtalk so I knew how to handle
that.
But I also had the experienceof other parts of the business,
dealing with athletes going toJets camp, getting interviews,
recognizing how to tell a storyand then the instant reaction
(48:28):
after the game, which wasimportant.
You were a sounding board forthe fans that had just watched
the game or listened to the gamethe next year.
So this is 1993, 1994, I'm atthe radio station, I have an
update shift, I open up the NewYork Post preparing for the
update shift and I see in PhilMushnick's column that Howard
(48:48):
David, the longtime voice of theNew Jersey Nets, would be
leaving the position.
I think to myself I've had adream two weeks earlier, a
bizarre dream, that I was doinga net game and my father was in
attendance and it really cameout of left field.
I remember telling my wifeabout the dream and she's like
yeah, that's weird.
(49:08):
I was at the Meadowlands andcalling a net game.
It was bizarre and literallythis pops up in Phil Mosnick's
column.
And I think to myself this is asign of some sort.
And I get on the phone.
I called two people.
I called Russ Salzberg, who washosting at WFA at the time, and
I called Don Sperling, who wasworking at NBA Entertainment at
(49:31):
the time.
I had done some voiceover workfor them and I asked them both
hey, do you know anything aboutthis?
They both said I'll get back toyou for them.
And I asked them both hey, doyou know anything about this?
They both said I'll get back toyou.
And they both did.
And they said both of them youneed to get in touch with Amy
Shear, director of broadcastingwith the New Jersey Nets.
I do, I reach out.
She said hey, we're kind ofdeep in the process.
(49:51):
But if you want to drop a tapeoff, be my guest, so I do.
To drop a tape off, be my guest, so I do.
I'm living in Manhattan at thetime, upper East Side 85th and
2nd.
Get in the car, drive to EastRutherford.
I'm not a New Jersey guy.
I know very little about NewJersey at that time.
I don't understand jug handles.
(50:12):
I have no idea.
Tushar Saxena (50:13):
What do you mean?
I want to get over there.
I want to get left Relax.
You.
Got to go right to get left.
I blew by the exit.
What do you mean?
I want to get over there?
I want to get left relax yougotta go right to get left.
Ian Eagle (50:18):
I blew by the exit.
What?
Larry Shea (50:19):
do you mean?
Larry Samuels (50:19):
go right to get left.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
Ian Eagle (50:23):
I have experience.
I've done the van wick.
What?
Tushar Saxena (50:25):
are you talking?
Ian Eagle (50:26):
about.
So I dropped the tape off.
She takes it.
She comes down to meet me infact, so we have a personal
moment.
I said out of curiosity, howdeep are you in the process?
She said we're pretty deep.
We're down to a couple ofcandidates.
But I'm going to listen to yourstuff and if I like it, I'll
(50:48):
play it for my boss.
This was all college play byplay, yep.
And if I like it, I'll play itfor my boss.
This was all collegeplay-by-play, yep.
So I included a SetonHall-Syracuse game that was at
the Meadowlands and it was agame winner for Seton Hall.
Ollie Taylor was a guard forthe Pirates and he beat Syracuse
at the buzzer.
My senior year Syracuse had agreat team Derek Coleman, Stevie
(51:10):
Thompson, david Johnson theyshould have been a Final Four
team that year Billy Owens andthat's on the tape.
She calls me the next day.
She said really liked yourstuff.
I played it for my boss, jimLamparello.
He liked your stuff.
I said great.
She said we just need some morerecent stuff.
(51:32):
Do you have some recent stuff?
I said we just need some morerecent stuff.
Do you have some recent stuff?
I said absolutely yes, I had norecent stuff.
I had nothing.
That was my most recentplay-by-play.
That was the recent stuff right.
My most recent play-by-play wasfour years earlier, as a senior
in college.
So I reached out to a friendthat I had worked with a bit at
(51:56):
NBA Entertainment doing thesevoiceovers.
I called him and said hey look,is there any way I can get in
there and make a tape off of agame from a monitor, and could
you pipe in crowd noise?
He said, yeah, I think we coulddo that.
So I drove over there toSecaucus.
I called a knick-knack playoffgame.
(52:17):
They recorded it.
They put crowd noise in.
I go directly to Amy Scheer.
This is a day later.
I hand her that tape and then Iget a call the next day saying
that our team president, johnSpolstra Eric Spolstra's dad
would like to meet with you.
And I said to Amy I said, well,how many people are in the
(52:41):
running here?
And she said it's down to youand another guy.
Wow, holy shit.
Wow, this all happened in fourdays.
Tushar Saxena (52:55):
Four days after seeing.
That's a very net thing to do.
By the way, Deep in the processYou're right, that's an
excellent point by you.
Ian Eagle (53:05):
So I end up meeting with John Spolstra and, very
similar to my sit-down with MarkMason, I just felt instantly
connected.
We hit it off and I took a bitof a risk at the end of it.
We spoke for about 30 minutesand right at the end of our
conversation I said hey look,john, I don't know how this is
(53:31):
going to go.
This is the one thing that I doknow.
I believe I'm going to bereally successful in this
business and if I get this job,you will always be known as the
one that gave me my firstserious break, and he smiled
(53:53):
back at me.
And that can go on a two wayseither the person on the other
end things or fortunately hisreaction was a positive one
Shook my hand, I walked out, mywife and I it was our one year
(54:13):
anniversary we flew to SanFrancisco and did San Francisco
Sonoma wine country Napa like,really went for it a year later
and had a voicemail on my answermachine in New York from Amy
Shearer saying please call me.
(54:33):
We pulled over on the side of aroad.
I got on a pay phone and calledher and she said you got the
gig and that was it.
That really was the break.
So, larry, to your questionbreak.
(54:54):
So you know, larry, to yourquestion.
That was the break.
And then everything else beyondthat was me trying to figure
out how to do this job.
Well, because I really was notqualified at that point to do it
.
Tushar Saxena (55:02):
Your preparation for all this stuff.
I mean, obviously you are,you're a font of knowledge.
I, I, I was joking with theguys before, uh, before we came
on a few days ago, which was,you know, I remember back in our
FAN days for those who don'tremember the old game which was
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thatyou know, any actor out there
(55:24):
he's six degree.
You can get Kevin Bacon withinsix moves or not, and I always
remember you as just this, theking of that game.
You could, absolutely it didn'tmatter who it was, like Errol
Flynn.
Yes, I can get Errol Flynn insix moves.
But your preparation, talk abit about that.
(55:45):
That the the amount ofpreparation that you go into,
because obviously a lot of whatyou sound like it sounds so
natural.
I mean, a lot of us always saidIan's a prodigy, but you worked
hard at this.
This was not something whereyou just sat down in front of a
mic, turned it on and then went.
You spent a lot of time honingthat skill to become prepared.
(56:06):
Yeah.
Ian Eagle (56:07):
Tushar, I think how you separate yourself in this
business is based on that.
So for a Sunday football game,of course what you do in that
three hour period is theperformance part and it goes
without saying you must do wellin those three hours.
(56:27):
But what you do Monday throughSaturday is probably the part
that defines you a bit more,because that's where the work is
done.
So if that's familiarizingyourself with every player and
biographical personal and thenevery storyline that needs to be
(56:50):
covered, goes without saying,and then it's the next level Can
you connect with the athletesin a way that extracts
information that wasn't in thenewspaper the entire week?
(57:11):
That isn't the low-hangingfruit that is available.
It's interesting With theinternet, I think it's changed
the game in many ways.
Certainly it's changed the gamein terms of preparation because
there's so much informationavailable, but it's also changed
the game because fans are moreinformed than ever before.
You cannot bs a true fan.
Yeah, they're on it.
They know their team team, theyknow their sport, they know the
(57:34):
matchup.
Sometimes they know it at alevel that you now need to match
.
So if you're doing rudimentaryfundamental parts of covering a
game, that's all good for thegeneral fan, but you have to
know that there is a diehardthat is so consumed by this, so
(57:57):
I try to remind myself of that.
Every broadcast and it doesn'tmatter if it's a big network
broadcast, a local broadcast, aradio broadcast, a podcast, an
internet broadcast, it doesn'tmatter your reputation means
everything, and that's how I'vetried to view this, and maybe it
(58:21):
did help me in many ways that aNets-Wizards game on a Tuesday
night is equally important to meas the Ravens and the Steelers.
A big Sunday, one o'clockwindow.
I just don't.
I don't see the difference interms of preparation and
(58:41):
performance.
Those two things arenon-negotiables if you're going
to do this job well.
Larry Samuels (58:47):
That was part one of our conversation with Ian
Eagle.
You can hear the rest of thestory in part two by visiting
our website at NoWrongChoicescomor on your favorite podcast
platform, including YouTube.
We'll be back with a newepisode next week.
On behalf of Tushar Saxena,larry Shea and me, larry Samuels
, thank you again for joining us.
If you enjoyed what you heard,please be sure to like.
(59:09):
Follow no-transcript.
Hello and welcome to a best of edition of no
Wrong Choices, featuring theiconic play-by-play broadcaster,
ian Eagle, who is the voice ofthe NCAA men's college
basketball tournament on CBS.
We thought it would be fun torevisit this conversation as
March Madness kicks into highgear.
I'm Larry Samuels, soon to bejoined by Tushar Saxena and
(00:23):
Larry Shea.
Before we get rolling, pleasebe sure to support no Wrong
Choices by liking, following andsubscribing to the show on your
favorite podcast platform.
Your support enables us to keepbringing these great stories to
life.
Now.
Let's get started Now.
Joining no Wrong Choices is oneof the most recognizable voices
in sports Play-by-playannouncer, ian Eagle.
(00:46):
Among Ian's many projects, heserves as the lead voice of the
NCAA men's basketball tournamenton CBS, calls games for the
network's number two NFLbroadcast team and is a favorite
voice within the NBA world,highlighted by his work with TNT
, tbs and YES.
He was also named the 2022National Sportscaster of the
(01:08):
Year.
Ian, thank you so much forjoining us.
Ian Eagle (01:10):
Feels like this is your life.
I feel like my fourth gradeteacher, Richard Frank, is now
going to join us to discuss abit of my youth.
No, I appreciate theintroduction Great to be with
you guys and fun time of year.
So this is where it all begins.
And you're getting me on theback end of free time.
(01:32):
So I am very serene.
I'm I'm Zen, but I'm ready forwhat's to come.
Tushar Saxena (01:40):
All right.
So full disclosure, as I doevery once in a while here.
I've actually known Ian Eaglefor what?
30 years now, almost.
Ian Eagle (01:47):
I don't like to count the numbers per se, tushar.
I like to keep it fresh.
It's like we're new friends.
This is like a new relationship, but yeah, it probably has been
close to 30 years.
That's insane.
Close to 30 years?
That's insane.
Tushar Saxena (02:02):
Which is an insane thing to say, because I
remember, because I actually hadthe opportunity to intern and
then work at WFAN with Ian manyyears ago, when, ian I think at
that point you still may haveactually been a producer who
started doing updates on theweekends over at FAN.
So it's a long journey, man.
Ian Eagle (02:23):
Yeah the story behind that.
So I joined WFAN Radio in Mayof 1990.
I just graduated college.
I had interned there the summerbefore and it is a reminder
about, even in this day and age,where we text, we email and
oftentimes it is impersonal, ourcommunication At the time it
(02:46):
was very personal and it wasvery intimate and I made a
strong enough impression as anintern to get a call right
before spring break of my senioryear.
There's a job that's opening upas a producer.
We know it's not what you wantto do ultimately, but we just
wanted to see if you'd like tocome in and interview, which I
(03:07):
did, and I ended up meeting withMark Mason who was the program
director at the time.
It was the 7 and Midnight Shiftproducer job.
Eric Spitz was moving on to adifferent role within the
station, leaving that day part,and there was going to be an
opening, and I actually askedEric his opinion.
Hey, do you think I shouldinterview for this?
(03:28):
He said yes, great experience.
You're not going to get the job.
He didn't make that point.
There were a couple ofcandidates internal that were
qualified for it, had done theirtime there.
So I show up for the job.
Interview during spring breakwent back to my dad's house in
Forest Hills.
Queens went to Astoria, metwith Mark Mason.
(03:51):
Within two minutes of themeeting I could sense that it
was going very well.
He was laughing at my jokes.
We had good back and forth andhe asked me well, when can you
start?
Tushar Saxena (04:01):
I was like, oh man he's a hell of an interview,
very direct.
Ian Eagle (04:06):
I said, well, I graduated May 10th, I could
start May 12th, I need a day toget my life in order and I'd be
ready to go.
He said, great, that would begreat.
And that was it.
I walked out of there and Ithought did I just get this job?
What's happening right now?
And I went back.
(04:26):
Eric was in the newsroom and hesaid how'd it go?
I said I think it went reallywell.
He's like all right, I'll callyou in a few days.
I get back to my dad's place.
I'm going to drive back toSyracuse and I was in the
driveway like packing up mystuff and my father jogs out I
don't want to say runs.
He jogged out or a brisk walkout of the house and said hey,
(04:51):
there's a phone call for youbefore you go.
I said who is it?
It's Eric Spitz.
And I pick up the phone andEric says what the hell did you
say to Mark Mason?
I said I don't know.
I'm telling you we clicked.
He wants to offer you the job.
He's ready to go.
So I took the job, even though Iwanted to be on the air.
I just thought a chance to getback home and work at the radio
(05:16):
station that I wanted to be apart of so badly and even by
osmosis I almost looked at it asgraduate school and that's
really what it turned out to be.
But they told me very strongterms Do not take this job if
you want to be on the air.
This is not going to lead tothat.
(05:36):
And I said I get it, I'm goingto take the job.
So I take the job.
I'm producing on a nightlybasis.
I'm working with Howie Rose job.
So I take the job.
I'm producing on a nightlybasis.
I'm working with Howie Rose.
It was a crash course onprofessional radio and high
level radio at that.
Howie is an incredible talent.
Fast forward.
A year goes by, I'm gettingantsy and I'm doing my job and
(05:57):
I'm trying to do it to the bestof my ability.
But I am feeling the itch and Ithink to myself maybe I need to
make a move and go somewhereelse if they're not going to
give me my shot.
I had had a job offer inBuffalo on the air, had a job
offer in West Virginia on theair, so I contemplated those
before I took the FAN job.
And, as cliche as it sounds, itis September of 91.
(06:22):
And there was the sportsdirector at the time, the great
Stan Martin, who was a wonderfulguy, truly just a joy.
But he would make the schedulethe update schedule.
I was in my cubicle gettingready for a Friday night show
and Stan is on the phone.
And Stan was very dramatic, hecame from a bit of an acting
(06:43):
background and I have no ideawhat the phone call is.
I just hear one end of thephone and Stan was very dramatic
, he came from a bit of anacting background and I have no
idea what the phone call is.
I just hear one end of thephone and it's him saying hello,
what?
No, really, no, no, a lot ofthat.
And he hangs up and he turnsaround, he looks at me.
He says you want to be on theair, don't you?
(07:06):
Yes, he said I don't want to dothe voice or it might affect me
.
He said go, make a quick twominute update, one, take in the
back and give me the tape.
And I said what is this for?
And he goes just do it, man,that was it, okay.
So I go to the back and I hadbeen doing updates on my own
(07:34):
just to stay into the mindset ofdoing it and writing them and
using tape.
At the time we had carts and Idid it.
I went back one take, handedhim the update.
He went to the back and then hecame back out.
He said you're on the scheduleof Sunday.
Pat Harris has pneumonia.
(07:55):
And that was it.
I did an update.
Tushar Saxena (07:57):
Wow, pat Harris never worked again.
Ian Eagle (08:00):
It wasn't quite Wally Pip Lugarik.
Tushar Saxena (08:02):
I know.
Ian Eagle (08:02):
I know, but I ended up getting another shift the
following week and the weekafter and the week after, and
that led to many opportunitieson air that were not coming my
way until that one fateful day.
So that is a true reminder ofyou.
Wake up in the morning, youhave no idea if that's the day
(08:24):
that's going to change your lifeor alter it, and that truly was
the day where everything reallychanged, for me at least at
WFAN, and it kept me on theright road and on the tracks and
ultimately took advantage ofall the other things that popped
up along the way.
Tushar Saxena (08:43):
I just want to say we've been friends for 30
years, but I appreciateeverything else.
I mean we were going to get it.
Well, obviously, we're going toget into the FAN days with you
as well, but OK, so we'll takeit back to the beginning,
because I've known you for along time.
This was always your dream todo this job that you're doing
currently.
Wasn't it dream to?
Ian Eagle (09:03):
do this job that you're doing currently, wasn't
it.
It was as far back as eightyears old.
This was a legitimate objectiveand goal and told my parents
such at that age.
My parents were entertainers,Dad was a stand-up comedian,
(09:26):
actor, trumpet player.
My mom was an actress, a singer.
So I grew up in a householdthat had no boundaries as to
what you could do, and that wasvery empowering in that I was
encouraged to look outside thebox.
So when I told them that Iwanted to be a sportscaster,
they both told me that that'swhat I would do.
And when you're eight years old, that's all you need to hear to
(09:46):
believe it.
So you know, back then we'retalking about the seventies
there was no place to do it.
I didn't go to a high schoolthat had the facilities to do it
, other than performances.
Here and there there wereopportunities to show that.
I was more than willing to gofront and center and I was open
(10:10):
to the idea of a microphone or acamera.
None of that intimidated me andI think there was just an inner
belief that I could do this,and I went to college at
Syracuse with that belief.
And then you get rocked a littlebit when you realize that there
are a bunch of other peoplethat are also confident and have
(10:33):
ability and an aptitude for it.
And then that's where the nextstep begins of trying to polish
your craft and work at it andtruly become a student of it.
And other than a freshman year,where I was still balancing the
idea of what college wassupposed to be partying and
(10:58):
being very social and joining afraternity and doing all the
things that I envisioned I gotvery serious about it.
The start of sophomore year, tothe point where I truly
committed to it, caught a coupleof breaks along the way.
I was at a high school footballgame covering it for one of the
college radio stations, and onthe sideline is a new sports
(11:22):
anchor in town.
Although he was still a studentat the school, he was a senior
and he had gotten the weekendjob at the CBS affiliate in
Syracuse.
And the guy that I went to thefootball game with, another
radio guy, said is that MikeTirico there?
Tushar Saxena (11:41):
Look at that.
Ian Eagle (11:42):
I said, yeah, yeah, I think it is, it is.
He said, well, we shouldintroduce ourselves.
I said why?
He said he'd love to meet us.
This guy's doing weekend sports, he, he wants to get out into
the community.
I went, okay, that was enoughfor me, so we went over,
introduced ourselves.
He was very happy to meet us.
What's your background?
(12:02):
I'm from Queens, I'm fromQueens, so really he's from
Bayside.
So boom, instantly you feel aconnection.
And he also happened to beincredibly affable and gracious
and everything that you seetoday is what he was back in
1987.
So at the end of it he said hey, if you guys want to come check
(12:25):
out the TV station, love tohave you.
He didn't have to do that.
I followed up.
I went, I became his intern, Ilater became his producer.
I later became a radio producerfor him because he started his
own show my senior year and then, when he couldn't do it, he
would have me host the show.
So these are small snippetsthat I look back on and think to
(12:49):
myself it could go one way orthe other and things lined up.
Because I was open to it, Isaid, yes, a lot.
I went in with a really goodattitude, no matter what the
situation was.
I brought positivity and I madesure that I introduced myself
to people, knew their names,learned their background, took
(13:13):
an actual interest in them as ahuman being.
And, tushar, I can tell youwithout any pause that I know
our experience was a good onewhen you were at FAN Radio,
because I just didn't know anyother way I treated people with
respect and that has been acommon thread throughout my life
(13:37):
and throughout my career.
Larry Shea (13:39):
You are giving amazing career journey lessons
to people out there about beingpersonable and being open and
ready and willing.
And in doing my research, Ireally want to follow up on the
beginning of your family lifetoo, because I do feel that they
played a major part in youbeing able to present yourself
to the world in the way that youdo on a day to day basis today.
(14:01):
I learned that you were put onstage right At the age of six
and you realized hey, no bigdeal, I could do this.
From your mom You're learning.
The show must go on, becauseher voice would be shot.
I mean, these are life lessonsthat you're carrying on to today
.
Talk a little bit more aboutyour, your mom, your dad, just
(14:21):
your upbringing, because Ireally think that affected a lot
.
Ian Eagle (14:24):
Yeah, guys, I didn't know any different.
It was not normal by anystretch.
But you don't know what youdon't know.
I recognize that it didn't feelthe same as my friend's family
situation, but I never looked atit as odd or woe is me.
My parents were on the road agreat deal.
(14:47):
They took me on the road withthem until a certain age when I
had my own stuff going on and Icouldn't just take off of school
for three straight days.
So by about eight years old Igot into a more normal routine.
My parents had put me in aschool we lived in Rego Park, so
(15:09):
not quite Forest Hills, it wasright on the edge of Forest
Hills and they put me inMontessori School, which was a
progressive school.
It was a melting pot.
The teachers were nottraditional in any way, the
classes were not traditional andI think because of that it did
(15:30):
open up my brain a bit to theidea that it doesn't have to be
conventional and even your viewsare not necessarily
conventional.
They were open to all sorts ofopinions and not just raising
your hand to speak, butinformally it was a very open
(15:52):
dialogue.
So we moved to Forest Hills in1977.
And I remember this veryvividly.
We go to the local public schoolin between what is second grade
for me and what my next schoolyear is going to be and we go
and meet with the principal andI'm told to bring my work, my
(16:13):
latest work, and the principalwas Dr Charles Bechtold, tall
man, very nice guy.
We sit down in his office andhe's going through what it's
going to look like next year,going to start the school year
in September.
And now he takes a look at mybook and he's looking through
the paper.
(16:33):
And he stops and looks at mydad and says he's done all the
work for third grade and my dadsaid, okay, so what are the
options?
And he said, well, we can putthem in fourth grade.
And my dad said, okay, so whatare the options?
And he said, well, we can putthem in fourth grade.
And my dad turns to me and saysdo you want to be in fourth
grade, ian?
I said, yeah, that's fine, thatsounds good, new York City
(16:58):
public education.
And Dr Bechtolt said, okay,great, and that was it.
There was no paperwork, therewas nothing.
I show up the next year and I'min fourth grade and I have this
whole new world of new people,new teachers, new dynamic, much
(17:18):
more conventional, verydifferent, but I do remember
bringing with me the mentalityof a different sort of angle on
how all of this stuff works.
So my parents were very muchgrinders in how they went about
their business and their workand my father really didn't have
(17:43):
the kind of success that hedreamed of until he was dropped
out of high school at the age of16.
Wow, in Brooklyn Erasmus Hall,you know I have photos that my
(18:10):
father's wife, his widow, sentme that I had never seen before.
She sent them to me about threemonths ago and I'm just blown
away by how young he was andwhat he was doing.
He was on the road at 16 yearsold making a living and then
(18:32):
eventually Buddy Hackettconvinced him.
Hey, you're funny, you shouldbe doing standup.
No, no.
Larry Shea (18:41):
Buddy.
Ian Eagle (18:42):
Hackett says that, yes, when Buddy Hackett tells
you you're funny, or the way mydad said it, buddy said, hey,
you're funny, you're funny, youshould be out there.
And that was the impetus forhim to do it and to break away
from the band and be front andcenter.
My mom was a child star inChicago.
(19:04):
I have photos of her at six onthe radio singing.
She was considered well beyondher years at the time and how
that manifested itself, and shedropped out of high school at
the age of 16.
They were 19 years apart in age.
So the fact that it wascongruous in that way that they
(19:28):
somehow met.
They met because my motheropened for my father at the
Playboy Club in Chicago.
That's how they meet in life,it's a different era.
But the late 60s produced somereally interesting stories.
So there's a lot there.
There's a lot of meat on thebone and, yes, larry, it did
(19:50):
shape me in ways that I didn'teven imagine.
I knew that it was different,but I never let on to anybody
else that it was different.
I acclimated and adjusted basedon my circumstances and even
skipping a grade.
I wasn't leading with that whenI showed up for fourth grade.
(20:12):
Hey, you know, I'm supposed tobe in third grade here.
Larry Samuels (20:15):
Nobody knew.
Ian Eagle (20:16):
I just meshed in and tried to find ways to fulfill
whatever creative itch that Ihad.
There were ways of doing it andthere were performance aspects
to it and I do think because ofthat I always felt pretty
confident that I was going to beable to somehow do this.
(20:37):
You never know for certain, butI just had an inner conviction
that I was going to be able tomake a living doing this just
had an inner conviction that Iwas going to be able to make a
living doing this.
Larry Samuels (20:50):
I think we should call out that your father.
I think one of his bigbreakthroughs, as we did our
research, was becoming Dominicthe Xerox guy.
Is that right?
I vividly remember thatcharacter.
Ian Eagle (20:57):
Oh, yeah, no that was a huge commercial at the time.
It was for Xerox.
As you mentioned, it was thefirst commercial that ever used
a religious figure, so this wasnot one of those-.
Tushar Saxena (21:07):
He was a monk in that movie.
He was a monk.
Ian Eagle (21:09):
This was not one of those.
Hey, we'll just kind of go withthe same thing that the other
brands are doing.
They really were creative.
A gentleman who just recentlypassed away by the name of Alan
Kay, who was a brilliant ad man.
He was the one that came upwith the idea and another claim
to fame for Alan Kay, just togive him his due he came up with
(21:32):
the slogan if you see something, say something.
That was him, wow.
Which we still use today.
Yeah, give you a little insightinto his fertile mind.
And if you go on YouTube, it's aquick search Brother, dominic
Xerox.
It really was a beautifulcommercial and it spurred a
(21:53):
number of commercials for Xeroxand for him.
It opened up this door that hadnot existed.
He ended up doing about 50different commercials for
various companies existed.
He ended up doing about 50different commercials for
various companies Fleischmann'sMargarine, gillette, coppertone,
noodles Soup, you name it.
He would sell it and he gotreally hot in that area.
(22:18):
Anything he went up for, theywere looking for a cherubic
gentleman with a fun face andgreat facial reactions.
He was the guy.
In addition, he then dabbled inHollywood.
He was on three differentpilots that aired on network
television back at a time wherewe only had CBS, nbc, abc and
(22:40):
then a couple of independentchannels and PBS and none of
them got picked up.
They all aired and none of themwere at a level that the
networks were going to go withit.
And that would have changed hislife and probably would have
changed my life, because wewould have moved to LA and then
who knows if Syracuse is in themix for me.
(23:01):
So I do think of thingssometimes and that sliding doors
theory of how life can bedifferent based on your
circumstances, for sure, forsure.
Larry Samuels (23:13):
So the window between this is going to sound,
I don't know, a little hokey,but the window between fourth
grade and 12th grade.
You know what are you doing?
To prepare yourself to get intothe best broadcasting
university in the country, atNewhouse and Syracuse.
Ian Eagle (23:32):
Well, what I was doing?
That.
Larry Shea (23:33):
I didn't even know it takes offense.
I like the Fordham guy.
Fordham guy getting hisfeathers around, I get it.
I get it.
It's like West Side Story.
Sorry, tj, I can't shake it.
Tushar Saxena (23:42):
It's not a problem.
Ian Eagle (23:46):
I didn't even know I was doing it at the time because
it was very natural.
I was completely immersingmyself in sports in general, so
anything that I could get myhands on, baseball was my number
one sport by far.
But it didn't end there.
I was a huge football fan andbasketball fan and hockey fan
and the Olympics.
(24:07):
I couldn't get enough.
So little do you know as a kidthat you're building this, this
dossier of knowledge and a basethat is going to serve you well,
your cataloging memories andyou're doing it in a manner that
is not, for any other reason,no agenda other than I just had
(24:32):
pure love for it.
And running parallel with thatwas the broadcasting side.
The curiosity we would go toShea Stadium grew up, you know,
10 minutes from there, and theMets were not very good.
This was when Joe Torre wasmanaging the squad and my dad,
because of whatever minorcelebrity it had brought to him
(24:53):
as the Monk.
There were companies and teamsand various groups that wanted
him to appear in a Monk outfit,including the Mets.
So in 1978, he brings me alongand he's there to bless the team
.
They lost a hundred games thatyear so it didn't work.
(25:16):
Bruce Beauclair didn't all of asudden become a 325 hitter but
it did afford me the opportunityto to go behind the scenes.
I got a bat from Lenny Randall,I got a helmet from Lee
Mazzilli.
This just intensified my loveof sports.
And even at the game I'mstaring at Bob Murphy and Ralph
(25:40):
Kiner and Lindsay Nelson in thebroadcast booth.
I'm just tantalized by the ideathat this is a way that you can
make a buck and be around theballpark, talk to the athletes,
describe what you see.
And that never escaped me.
I just always had that interestand curiosity.
(26:05):
Same with a Nick game or aRanger game.
The game would be going on andI would just lock in on Marv
Albert and watch him do histhing.
And I do think it plants seedsin you and it resonates with you
in some way.
And for me that's never goneaway.
That almost youthful exuberanceof this job and this vocation
(26:32):
has stuck with me for all theseyears.
Tushar Saxena (26:33):
Obviously you know you're building yourself to
become the broadcaster, thatyou are at a very young age,
which know you're buildingyourself to become the
broadcaster, that you are at avery young age, which means that
you've got to get some kind ofteaching and that's going to
come from your parents.
So I'm going to assume and I'mgoing to touch on Syracuse after
in just a second, but I'm goingto assume that at some point,
like your parents are in showbiz, so you have the greatest,
(26:56):
essentially encyclopedia ofknowledge in front of you where
your parents can give youpointers.
Was that what was happening?
Is that you know, dad, whatdoes this sound like?
Or your father was saying hey,look, if you want to, if you
really want to make it in thisindustry, this is what you have
to do.
Your mom is saying the samething.
Ian Eagle (27:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting.
I lost my mom when I was 19.
She died of lung cancer.
Two-pack-a-day smoker which fora gifted singer, just makes no
sense that that would be a habit.
She was alcoholic.
She was anorexic.
(27:30):
There were a lot of challengesthere.
She was really brilliant.
She did not graduate highschool, as I mentioned, she
dropped out.
She completed the New YorkTimes crossword puzzle every
Sunday, every Sunday, wow.
She must have been a voraciousreader, yes, blown away by her
intellect and her IQ, but, withthat said, then did irrational
(27:52):
things in her life, things thatmade no sense.
That's what's so amazing aboutthe human condition and so
perplexing as well that someoneis consciously hurting
themselves while they're doingthis.
They got divorced, so thatcreated a very large gap
(28:14):
Geographically.
She was living on the WestCoast.
My father was East Coast.
I stayed with my father.
That's where my life was.
My mother needed to go and dosome things on her own.
She eventually enjoyed hergreatest success in Las Vegas,
playing Judy Garland in a showcalled Legends.
She was amazing.
It was probably the role thatshe needed to play her whole
life.
It was probably the role thatshe needed to play her whole
(28:36):
life.
She completely lost herself inthat role.
She became Judy Garland in manyways.
There's a documentary that wasdone on the show and it's pretty
wild how much she immersedherself in this.
You know to the point where youthink, whoa, you've probably
gone a little too far.
(28:57):
And she did so performance wise.
I was just starting out doingcollege radio.
She never really got a chanceto hear me or see me do any of
this.
She had nothing but confidencein me and believed that I was
(29:18):
going to be very successful, andwould say it over and over
again.
So, amidst whatever she wasgoing through personally, she
still had the wherewithal andthe instincts to tell her son
that you're going to do reallywell in life, and that's
something that can buildconfidence, no doubt about it.
(29:38):
My dad, at the time that we'retalking, was traveling somewhere
in the neighborhood of 245 daysa year.
Wow, wow, wow.
So this was not one of thosetypical sit at the dinner table
chat about your day.
What happened with Xerox wasincredible for him.
(30:03):
What they quickly realized wasthat he was a secret weapon for
them to appear at openings ofKinko's.
Or if Ford Motor Companybrought in Xerox copiers to
their main offices, he wouldshow up.
(30:24):
And it was personal appearancesand because of his standup
comedy background and because ofhis humanity, he's just an
incredible off the charts peopleperson.
The combination of those skillsled him to be very successful
for Xerox and they just keptbooking him.
(30:45):
You got to go to Lexington, yougot to go to Akron, we need you
in Vegas, then we need you to goto Orlando and then from there,
austin, you name it.
He was in every city in thecountry in the monk outfit doing
his thing, but it did take himaway from New York.
So I grew up basically with ahousekeeper that lived in the
(31:09):
home and I was highlyindependent from a very young
age.
I was doing my homework on myown.
I was waking up on my own.
I was doing my homework on myown.
I was waking up on my own.
I was going to bed on my own.
I'm talking about from the ageof nine on.
Wow, wow, wow.
So when this is all you know,it doesn't seem odd, you figure?
Larry Samuels (31:32):
it out or you don't.
Ian Eagle (31:33):
Figure it out or you don't.
So back to your question,tushar.
My father never really sat downand criticized my work or gave
me specific pointers.
He was not a huge sports fanbefore I started doing this.
When I showed an interest insports he opened up part of his
(31:53):
brain to it, but it reallywasn't until I started doing
this for a living that he thencommitted as a sports fan.
So there was nothing from asports knowledge standpoint that
he could share with me.
And then broadcasting was nottheir thing, so technically
there was not much that theycould do in that area.
(32:14):
What they could do was provideme with a blueprint for work
ethic, which was insane both oftheirs and then performance,
which I just saw with my owneyes watching them on stage or
watching them on TV.
My mom was in a few soap operasas well, so I think that was
(32:36):
inspirational in many ways andwas a North star for me in
recognizing that you've got tosometimes summon something
within yourself in order to dothis job and do it well and be
consistent at it.
That's been a big part for methat I wanted to get to that
(32:57):
place where I was consistentlygood at this, not a good call
here, or a nice moment or aphrase that caught people's
attention.
Can you consistently deliver,doing game after game after game
after game?
Tushar Saxena (33:14):
Was Syracuse always the choice for you, or
did you have a number ofdifferent schools that had solid
broadcasting backgrounds?
Ian Eagle (33:20):
I got turned down at Fordham.
So that was no, I didn't, I hadyou.
There was a moment like damnright, you did.
Larry Shea (33:29):
We only want good people at Fordham.
Ian Eagle (33:34):
No, syracuse was the number one choice and, and
honestly it was because therewas an article in sports
illustrated.
We all remember when sportsillustrated had a very serious
impact on sure absolutelymagazine yes, stacking the
magazines and keeping them andreading back issues and being
(33:57):
blown away by the work that theydid.
There was an article in SportsIllustrated a broadcaster by the
name of Greg Papa who is thevoice of the San Francisco 49ers
.
He did the Warriors for manyyears.
He was the feature, he was asenior at Syracuse and it was
called the Cradle ofSportscasters and that caught my
(34:20):
eye and I believe the year was84.
So I'm a sophomore in highschool and I thought to myself
they listed the lineage forMarty Glickman to Dick Stockton,
to Marv Albert, to Andy Musserto Len Berman, on and on and on.
(34:42):
And I said to myself that'swhere I have to go and that was
my number one choice.
I did apply to a bunch ofschools.
I was fortunate enough to getinto a bunch of schools, but
Syracuse was always the topchoice, yeah.
Larry Shea (34:56):
I love how you've set this up for us, because
there's a real entertainmentaspect of the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree.
We hear it in your calls.
You know anytime you're doing agame, and now you've set the
path to Syracuse.
Where are you honing thosechops?
Do you learn to do the stuff atSyracuse, or did it start way
earlier than then?
(35:17):
You know just in your roomcalling the game when you're
watching TV.
Where does it begin?
Where you're starting to honeyour craft?
Ian Eagle (35:25):
All of the above Growing up in New York with the
surplus of teams in the area.
If you turn your radio on, youwere going to get a game, and it
could have been John Sterlingdoing the Islanders, it could
have been Marv Albert doing theRangers, Could have been Marv
Albert doing the Knicks.
(35:46):
Eventually, when the Netsrolled around, that was another
option Marty Glickman,originally the Giants, then the
Jets Giants, then the Jets andthen the Yankees, the Mets.
They were all there and allavailable.
So it really began there.
(36:12):
And then, yes, doingplay-by-play in your bedroom,
setting up your bed like abaseball field and literally
calling the plays as you go,getting in the shower and
working with the space, greatacoustics, play-by-play of
whatever comes to mind.
That was always part of themindset.
And then playing pickupbasketball with your friends and
(36:35):
calling play-by-play and yourfriends wanting to punch you in
the face of course they don'twant to hear play-by-play I know
that too, I know that feelingtoo.
So all of the above and then getto syracuse, and there is a
very specific path that you needto follow.
So there are two radio stationsthere college radio stations,
(36:59):
waer, which all of the peoplethat I mentioned earlier worked,
bob Costas, who I didn'tmention earlier, but was really
the one that captured myimagination when I got to
college.
That was the one that I trulytried to emulate.
I just your style is verysimilar that I truly tried to
emulate.
I just your style is verysimilar, really respected Very
similar, respected his intellect, respected occasional sarcasm
(37:27):
and the fact that he could doany role that you asked of him.
You want him to host, he coulddo it.
You want him to do play-by-play?
He could do it.
You want him to interviewsomeone?
He could do it.
You want him to do play-by-play?
He could do it.
You want him to interviewsomeone, he could do it.
And that show that he did on NBClater with Bob Costas, I
thought was brilliant, and thevariety of guests, I think.
Back he had one particularepisode with Mary Lou Henner of
(37:50):
Taxi fame, and it was one of thebest episodes of television I
had ever seen, one of the bestinterviews I had ever said,
would you say to yourself like,oh yeah, I want to check out
mary lou henner and what she'sgot going on.
She's really interesting.
By the way, she has aphotographic memory and has very
specific memories of every dayof her life.
(38:12):
And then bob threw out a, arandom day, and that happened to
be the day that she lost hervirginity and that brought oh
geez, wait, what is?
Larry Samuels (38:21):
this episode.
Ian Eagle (38:21):
Hold on a second.
What are we doing here?
So I just knew that these tworadio stations WJPZZ89, the
other one, were a part of thepath and showed up to a meeting
for WAR.
There were a hundred people inthere and they mentioned that
(38:42):
the way you start is you have toshow up at five in the morning
on the day that you're assignedand just write the sportscast.
You don't even get to read yoursportscast into a microphone
and then, once your writing isgood enough, we'll allow you to
make a tape.
And then that process is you'llmake tapes until we determine
(39:05):
that you're good enough to be onthe air.
And I sat in that meeting andthought to myself wow, none of
that sounds enjoyable, not onebit.
I go to the other radio stationand they had a piece of copy.
They said read this into themicrophone.
I did.
They said oh, you're prettygood, you available next week?
Yeah, what do I have going on?
(39:25):
I'm a freshman in college.
I just got here, so I startedat Z89.
Waar was really the place youneeded to be and eventually
somebody reached out.
A gentleman by the name ofKevin Martinez, who was a WAR,
now is very high up the ladderwith the Seattle Mariners.
(39:47):
I thought he was a terrificbroadcaster at the time.
He worked at both.
He called me, said hey, there'sa chance for you here.
You should come over and gothrough the process.
So I was now a sophomore.
I said, well, would I have toshow up at five in the morning
and write?
He said yes, it's part of thedeal.
I said no, I said yes, that timeand eventually it all worked
(40:12):
out and I got cleared at WARwhat ends up happening.
You're doing basicallyplay-by-play an impression of
whoever your favorite announceris when you start, and I was
doing an impression of MarvAlbert.
I was doing Marv's inflectionsand a little bit of his voice
quality and a lot of thevernacular and then eventually,
(40:38):
when you get your sea legs, youstart to try to find and
discover yourself within, playby play, that it is a blank
canvas, that you can take it anydirection that you want to take
it.
And I did gain confidence notonly by doing it but by also
listening to upperclassmen, andat the time there were some
(41:02):
really good ones Charlie Polillo, who is a talk show host in
Houston Excellent play-by-playguy and would listen to his
stuff over and over again.
Sean Colthard, who is now knownas Michael Cole in the
wrestling world.
Tushar Saxena (41:19):
Yeah, Wow yeah.
Ian Eagle (41:20):
Sean was at Syracuse, I thought he was outstanding
and would listen to his stuffand begin to incorporate some of
what they were doing.
So, combination of mimickingand then just reps, going into
the stands literally with a taperecorder and calling the game
and not worrying about thepeople that were around you
(41:42):
turning around or sayingsomething untoward, it didn't
matter, you would lock into yourworld and that was the only way
to do it.
By the way, there was nocalling off a monitor or going
into an edit bay.
There was none of that.
You had to go there and you hadto call it, and I slowly
started finding improvement inkey areas that I needed to
(42:06):
improve Shortening my sentences,editing on the fly, picking out
the most important part of theplay in front of you and then
punctuating, finding when to usea period at the end, when to
use an exclamation point, thenhow to vary up your vocabulary,
not say the same thing everytime.
And then, by the time I got tomy senior year after interning
(42:28):
at FAN and, by the way, at FAN,as Tushar will tell you, there
was downtime.
I had three shifts as an intern.
One of them was a weekend shift.
There was not a whole lot goingon in the weekends.
The newsroom was empty.
We had three shifts as anintern.
One of them was a weekend shift.
There was not a whole lot goingon in the weekends.
The newsroom was empty.
We would have to log a Met gameduring the summer.
But I was free to read the mediaguides, which I did.
(42:49):
I memorized the name andbackground of every play-by-play
announcer in the four majorsports.
Name and background of everyplay-by-play announcer in the
four major sports.
And no one told me you shoulddo that.
I just realized that this wassomething that I needed to know
If I wanted to do this for aliving.
I needed to educate myself.
How did Ken Wilson become thevoice of the St Louis Blues?
(43:13):
Or he did AAA baseball inHawaii, looking at his path,
recognizing that there aredifferent ways to get to where
you eventually want to get to,that was a big part of it.
And then they had reel-to-reelsof NFL play-by-play hours and I
just would roll the reel-to-reelonto a cassette tape both sides
(43:37):
and I did, I'd say, fourcassette tapes worth of just NFL
play-by-play Jim Gordon of theNew York Giants, kevin Harlan of
the Kansas City Chiefs at thetime Wayne Larravee was doing
the Chicago Bears, jim Irwin wasdoing the Green Bay Packers,
rick Weaver was doing the MiamiDolphins.
(44:00):
I could go on and on and on.
I just listened to itreligiously.
Every drive that I made at thattime I would pop in the
play-by-play and muscle memorywas created.
Getting ready for my senioryear, I knew I was going to get
a bunch of football games and Iwanted to be ready for it.
I knew I was going to get abunch of football games and I
wanted to be ready for it and itjust helped in terms of
(44:21):
delivery and how to end a call,how to get into your
play-by-play.
All of that was part of thelesson of developing that muscle
and trying to figure out how tobest get to a place where I
would be comfortable on the airdoing play-by-play.
Larry Samuels (44:38):
So take us forward.
You're at the fan, you're doingupdates, you're getting
established within the New Yorkmarket.
What was your first big moment?
Doing play-by-play as a pro?
Ian Eagle (44:51):
Well, this is really wild to think now, because the
odds of it happening this wayare very slim.
I am doing updates, I'm workingwith Mike and the Mad Dog, so
I'm taking off the seven tomidnight shift.
I'm placed on the drive timeshift as the board operator for
Mike and the Mad Dog.
(45:11):
But the way it's sold to me isthis will free you up in case we
need you to do something atnight.
That will now be available foryou to go cover a game which
ended up happening.
I would do the shift and Iwould go cover the devil's game
and get sound and do voicersfrom there.
(45:33):
So they were living up to theirend of the bargain.
The part that I didn't knowwhich then happened Jody
McDonald left the overnight onweekends.
Steve Summers, of course, didweekday overnights.
Jody Mack did weekendovernights.
He left to take a job at a newsports radio station in
Philadelphia, wip radio.
That job opens up and I wasasked if I was interested.
(45:56):
That job opens up and I wasasked if I was interested.
I said I'm very much interestedand I was told okay, but you
still have to do Mike and theMad Dog Monday through Friday.
Oh, wow, so I was working sevendays a week for one full year.
I would work the board Mondaythrough Friday for Mike and
Chris, and then Friday nightinto Saturday morning I would
(46:16):
host midnight to 6 am.
I would try to get some sleepand then do it again Saturday
night into Sunday.
But what had happened for mebeing around Mike and Chris do a
(46:38):
show and how to get into thetopics and how to weave in
callers, and I thought to myselfwho's going to call at 3 am on
a Sunday morning?
Tushar Saxena (46:53):
And Tushar can validate this for me, you would
be surprised.
Ian Eagle (46:55):
It's shocking, shocking.
All I had to say was open phonelines at 718-937-6666.
Bang.
All four would light up inunison.
Were some of the callers comingoff a bender?
Yes, probably.
Larry Samuels (47:16):
Those are the best callers.
The best.
Ian Eagle (47:20):
So that started to work a muscle for me of being
extemporaneous and thinking onmy feet and being entertaining
and moving a show along even atthat hour of the morning.
Mark Chernoff takes over as theprogram director.
The radio station acquires theNew York Jets and Mark Chernoff
(47:41):
asks me if I'm interested inhosting pre and post game for
the Jets.
This is 1993.
I jump at the chance, I say yesand that really gave me my
first little taste of realestate at FAN, because this was
a big deal.
They were putting a lot oftrust in me to do it and I
(48:03):
delivered for them.
I took it very seriously.
It mattered to me.
I had the experience of doingtalk so I knew how to handle
that.
But I also had the experienceof other parts of the business,
dealing with athletes going toJets camp, getting interviews,
recognizing how to tell a storyand then the instant reaction
(48:28):
after the game, which wasimportant.
You were a sounding board forthe fans that had just watched
the game or listened to the gamethe next year.
So this is 1993, 1994, I'm atthe radio station, I have an
update shift, I open up the NewYork Post preparing for the
update shift and I see in PhilMushnick's column that Howard
(48:48):
David, the longtime voice of theNew Jersey Nets, would be
leaving the position.
I think to myself I've had adream two weeks earlier, a
bizarre dream, that I was doinga net game and my father was in
attendance and it really cameout of left field.
I remember telling my wifeabout the dream and she's like
yeah, that's weird.
(49:08):
I was at the Meadowlands andcalling a net game.
It was bizarre and literallythis pops up in Phil Mosnick's
column.
And I think to myself this is asign of some sort.
And I get on the phone.
I called two people.
I called Russ Salzberg, who washosting at WFA at the time, and
I called Don Sperling, who wasworking at NBA Entertainment at
(49:31):
the time.
I had done some voiceover workfor them and I asked them both
hey, do you know anything aboutthis?
They both said I'll get back toyou for them.
And I asked them both hey, doyou know anything about this?
They both said I'll get back toyou.
And they both did.
And they said both of them youneed to get in touch with Amy
Shear, director of broadcastingwith the New Jersey Nets.
I do, I reach out.
She said hey, we're kind ofdeep in the process.
(49:51):
But if you want to drop a tapeoff, be my guest, so I do.
To drop a tape off, be my guest, so I do.
I'm living in Manhattan at thetime, upper East Side 85th and
2nd.
Get in the car, drive to EastRutherford.
I'm not a New Jersey guy.
I know very little about NewJersey at that time.
I don't understand jug handles.
(50:12):
I have no idea.
Tushar Saxena (50:13):
What do you mean?
I want to get over there.
I want to get left Relax.
You.
Got to go right to get left.
I blew by the exit.
What do you mean?
I want to get over there?
I want to get left relax yougotta go right to get left.
Ian Eagle (50:18):
I blew by the exit.
What?
Larry Shea (50:19):
do you mean?
Larry Samuels (50:19):
go right to get left.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
Ian Eagle (50:23):
I have experience.
I've done the van wick.
What?
Tushar Saxena (50:25):
are you talking?
Ian Eagle (50:26):
about.
So I dropped the tape off.
She takes it.
She comes down to meet me infact, so we have a personal
moment.
I said out of curiosity, howdeep are you in the process?
She said we're pretty deep.
We're down to a couple ofcandidates.
But I'm going to listen to yourstuff and if I like it, I'll
(50:48):
play it for my boss.
This was all college play byplay, yep.
And if I like it, I'll play itfor my boss.
This was all collegeplay-by-play, yep.
So I included a SetonHall-Syracuse game that was at
the Meadowlands and it was agame winner for Seton Hall.
Ollie Taylor was a guard forthe Pirates and he beat Syracuse
at the buzzer.
My senior year Syracuse had agreat team Derek Coleman, Stevie
(51:10):
Thompson, david Johnson theyshould have been a Final Four
team that year Billy Owens andthat's on the tape.
She calls me the next day.
She said really liked yourstuff.
I played it for my boss, jimLamparello.
He liked your stuff.
I said great.
She said we just need some morerecent stuff.
(51:32):
Do you have some recent stuff?
I said we just need some morerecent stuff.
Do you have some recent stuff?
I said absolutely yes, I had norecent stuff.
I had nothing.
That was my most recentplay-by-play.
That was the recent stuff right.
My most recent play-by-play wasfour years earlier, as a senior
in college.
So I reached out to a friendthat I had worked with a bit at
(51:56):
NBA Entertainment doing thesevoiceovers.
I called him and said hey look,is there any way I can get in
there and make a tape off of agame from a monitor, and could
you pipe in crowd noise?
He said, yeah, I think we coulddo that.
So I drove over there toSecaucus.
I called a knick-knack playoffgame.
(52:17):
They recorded it.
They put crowd noise in.
I go directly to Amy Scheer.
This is a day later.
I hand her that tape and then Iget a call the next day saying
that our team president, johnSpolstra Eric Spolstra's dad
would like to meet with you.
And I said to Amy I said, well,how many people are in the
(52:41):
running here?
And she said it's down to youand another guy.
Wow, holy shit.
Wow, this all happened in fourdays.
Tushar Saxena (52:55):
Four days after seeing.
That's a very net thing to do.
By the way, Deep in the processYou're right, that's an
excellent point by you.
Ian Eagle (53:05):
So I end up meeting with John Spolstra and, very
similar to my sit-down with MarkMason, I just felt instantly
connected.
We hit it off and I took a bitof a risk at the end of it.
We spoke for about 30 minutesand right at the end of our
conversation I said hey look,john, I don't know how this is
(53:31):
going to go.
This is the one thing that I doknow.
I believe I'm going to bereally successful in this
business and if I get this job,you will always be known as the
one that gave me my firstserious break, and he smiled
(53:53):
back at me.
And that can go on a two wayseither the person on the other
end things or fortunately hisreaction was a positive one
Shook my hand, I walked out, mywife and I it was our one year
(54:13):
anniversary we flew to SanFrancisco and did San Francisco
Sonoma wine country Napa like,really went for it a year later
and had a voicemail on my answermachine in New York from Amy
Shearer saying please call me.
(54:33):
We pulled over on the side of aroad.
I got on a pay phone and calledher and she said you got the
gig and that was it.
That really was the break.
So, larry, to your questionbreak.
(54:54):
So you know, larry, to yourquestion.
That was the break.
And then everything else beyondthat was me trying to figure
out how to do this job.
Well, because I really was notqualified at that point to do it
.
Tushar Saxena (55:02):
Your preparation for all this stuff.
I mean, obviously you are,you're a font of knowledge.
I, I, I was joking with theguys before, uh, before we came
on a few days ago, which was,you know, I remember back in our
FAN days for those who don'tremember the old game which was
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thatyou know, any actor out there
(55:24):
he's six degree.
You can get Kevin Bacon withinsix moves or not, and I always
remember you as just this, theking of that game.
You could, absolutely it didn'tmatter who it was, like Errol
Flynn.
Yes, I can get Errol Flynn insix moves.
But your preparation, talk abit about that.
(55:45):
That the the amount ofpreparation that you go into,
because obviously a lot of whatyou sound like it sounds so
natural.
I mean, a lot of us always saidIan's a prodigy, but you worked
hard at this.
This was not something whereyou just sat down in front of a
mic, turned it on and then went.
You spent a lot of time honingthat skill to become prepared.
(56:06):
Yeah.
Ian Eagle (56:07):
Tushar, I think how you separate yourself in this
business is based on that.
So for a Sunday football game,of course what you do in that
three hour period is theperformance part and it goes
without saying you must do wellin those three hours.
(56:27):
But what you do Monday throughSaturday is probably the part
that defines you a bit more,because that's where the work is
done.
So if that's familiarizingyourself with every player and
biographical personal and thenevery storyline that needs to be
(56:50):
covered, goes without saying,and then it's the next level Can
you connect with the athletesin a way that extracts
information that wasn't in thenewspaper the entire week?
(57:11):
That isn't the low-hangingfruit that is available.
It's interesting With theinternet, I think it's changed
the game in many ways.
Certainly it's changed the gamein terms of preparation because
there's so much informationavailable, but it's also changed
the game because fans are moreinformed than ever before.
You cannot bs a true fan.
Yeah, they're on it.
They know their team team, theyknow their sport, they know the
(57:34):
matchup.
Sometimes they know it at alevel that you now need to match
.
So if you're doing rudimentaryfundamental parts of covering a
game, that's all good for thegeneral fan, but you have to
know that there is a diehardthat is so consumed by this, so
(57:57):
I try to remind myself of that.
Every broadcast and it doesn'tmatter if it's a big network
broadcast, a local broadcast, aradio broadcast, a podcast, an
internet broadcast, it doesn'tmatter your reputation means
everything, and that's how I'vetried to view this, and maybe it
(58:21):
did help me in many ways that aNets-Wizards game on a Tuesday
night is equally important to meas the Ravens and the Steelers.
A big Sunday, one o'clockwindow.
I just don't.
I don't see the difference interms of preparation and
(58:41):
performance.
Those two things arenon-negotiables if you're going
to do this job well.
Larry Samuels (58:47):
That was part one of our conversation with Ian
Eagle.
You can hear the rest of thestory in part two by visiting
our website at NoWrongChoicescomor on your favorite podcast
platform, including YouTube.
We'll be back with a newepisode next week.
On behalf of Tushar Saxena,larry Shea and me, larry Samuels
, thank you again for joining us.
If you enjoyed what you heard,please be sure to like.
(59:09):
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