Pod People

From 2005-2012, I sat next to Jones Angell while he did play-by-play for the Carolina baseball team. It was a pretty incredible time to have that job; the Tar Heels went to the College World Series five times in that span, meaning Jones and I became much better acquainted with Omaha, Nebraska, than we ever imagined. There was a time when Jones rightfully claimed that other than his hometown of Jacksonville and Chapel Hill, Omaha was probably the city in America he could most easily navigate without a map.

I was originally going to write that I was the “color analyst” on the baseball broadcasts, but that sounds a little more professional than I actually was. I had no clue what I was doing and Jones was nice enough to let me sit there and follow the Tar Heels. We saw some of the greatest victories in program history and also some of the most painful defeats. Jones once checked into a hotel room that had as its primary feature a guy who was not wearing pants, and I once told off the Oregon State radio broadcaster in an Omaha parking lot. Come to think of it, off-the-field baseball broadcast stories might be a good blog topic.

Since that last baseball broadcast in 2012, Jones has provided the signature radio calls for every important moment in Carolina football and basketball.

Just like he did for baseball, he’s provided the perfect mix of Tar Heel emotion and radio professionalism.

I’m far from being a radio expert, but based on what I’ve observed from Jones–and Woody Durham before him–one absolute truth of the business is that the broadcasters who are the best at their craft work much harder than you think. “Anyone can do radio, it’s just talking about sports and I’m good at that!” No, that’s how some people do it, and it’s usually pretty easy to pick them out. But being good at it actually requires preparation and knowledge and skill.

Even with Jones’ current high-profile gig, it’s been gratifying to have numerous fans ask if we might ever do baseball again. They are usually nice enough to follow that comment by saying they enjoyed the broadcasts. The funny thing, though, is they rarely mention specific games. They do, however, frequently talk about the rain delays, and the tangents that were a semi-regular feature of the baseball broadcasts.

We tried to have fun doing the games while also being informative. I don’t know which of those two goals we met more regularly, but that’s the same strategy we’re going to follow with the new Carolina Insider podcast, which was announced today. UNC is one of four schools nationwide to participate in this pilot program. The others are Alabama, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, so we’re in good company.

Prior to about three weeks ago, I had never listened to a podcast in my life. Since then, I’ve listened to some good ones and some bad ones, but I still feel a little bit like my dad trying to program the VCR in 1988 (“BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ON CHANNEL 3?”). There’s one thing I’ve determined for certain: to make this podcast good, and to make it something that has some value to you as a Tar Heel fan, we need your help. So we’re open to your comments on what you want to hear more or less of, or which guests make for entertaining listening. We want it to be informative, because that’s the whole point, but we also want it to be fun, because this is sports and in some small way that’s also supposed to be the whole point. So we’d ask you to subscribe and listen to the initial episodes next week (new podcasts each Tuesday and Friday) and then let us know what you like and don’t like.

I’ll never forget one particular baseball rain delay. It was during the 2008 NCAA Tournament, when Carolina played its home games at the USA Baseball complex in Cary while Boshamer Stadium was being renovated. It was approximately 184 degrees that day, and a summer thunderstorm had sent fans to their cars. We stayed on the air to kill some time, and the conversation ranged from movies to favorite Tar Heels to when we might ever play baseball again. I was pretty convinced that our only listener, at that point, was my father, and even he might have dozed off.

I was trying to persuade Jones to play the UNC baseball rap song (that’s a whole different blog entry). To enlist the always-helpful aid of peer pressure, I said, “If you’re listening in the parking lot and want to hear the rap song, blow your horn.”

To be honest, I just assumed we would be greeted with dead silence. But then came a cacophony of car horns. “Wow!” I remember saying on air. “They’re actually listening!”

We’re hoping for the same enthusiastic response to the new podcast. Blow your car horn if you can hear us.

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