Sean McDonough ’84 Connects with Newhouse Community

At 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 9^th, Newhouse welcomed Sean McDonough who came to speak about his incredible career as a sports broadcaster. The event was hosted by Matt Park, an adjunct professor in Newhouse Sports Media Center and the Voice of the Orange.

McDonough is a leading play-by-play commentator for ESPN college football and basketball as well as calling NHL and the PGA, including the PGA Championship. In his career he has also covered the World Series, Final Four, Olympics and Monday Night Football, among many other major events. McDonough has been with ESPN since 1989, except a 1996-99 hiatus with CBS, and was named the lead play-by-play announcer for the NHL on ESPN and ABC in 2021.

The conversation started by looking at what Sean McDonough currently has on his plate such as his involvement with Hendricks Chapel this week. He is getting to experience a few weeks off for the holidays as a result of the break for College football. He does have hockey on the horizon, but ESPN gives McDonough the chance to focus in on College Football before the switch to hockey. He touched on all the incredible opportunities he has gotten such as being able to 3 of the 4 major all-star weekends, 11 different sports on national television and championship games. All of that came after coming to Newhouse and his start at NESN doing college hockey as well as his original desire to just be around sports.

Sean McDonough then emphasized different aspects of the craft. For him calling a game hasn’t changed much from the beginning to the end of his career aside from rules or technology. It is, however, always an ongoing game of preparation before calling any game. Whether it be the discussions with production on how to tell and when to tell certain stories or what is even worth saying, those conversations are incredibly important to his preparation. It is always important to think about what is worth saying and what can be skipped which is always impacted by whether the call is on television or radio. Nobody has ever complained that the announcers didn’t talk enough and if nothing is truly occurring don’t be afraid to not say anything.

The bare minimum for any sport is memorizing the name and numbers in order to be able to keep up with the play, mentioning the switch the pace of hockey being an example. The last point he made here was about football and having a color commentator who is able to wrap up their analysis by the time the huddle breaks in order to give the play-by-play enough time to describe the formation and changes that might be occurring from one play to the next.

He then went into the relationships he has with other broadcasters. For him, the feedback he cares about, and need is not going to come from twitter but from those peers that understand the craft. He reaches out to peers like Mike Tirico in order to ask him questions about process or how to improve because nobody is perfect. There has never been a perfectly called game and that is to be expected when a game goes on for hours. With that in mind, McDonough made it a point to emphasize the importance of letting a small mistake go. Many of them the audience at home won’t notice and the one’s they do likely will be forgotten during the course of the game. Pushing those mistakes aside instead of letting something small bring down the rest of the broadcast is always the right call. He also loves hearing from his peers about what he does well such as certain colleagues who have praised his pacing and cadence and even based their own on the example he sets. McDonough did warn that learning from one another in cases like these is as valuable a practice as any, but avoid imitation.

In Sean McDonough’s career he has done a variety of sports and has had to make that transition from one season to the next quite frequently. The change, however, is fairly easy for him because the skill and the storytelling stay the same. He said that you just need to prepare and if you understand the sport you are going into then that preparation will allow for a seamless transition.

The conversation wrapped up with a lightning round of questions where many final points were made. He first advised everyone to avoid trying to invent the next catch phrase. Be yourself and do your job. By being crisp and professional, as well as simply a good person to be around and work with, you will separate yourself far more than trying to come up with the next viral home run call. Sean McDonough then emphasized the importance of production meetings again and how they allow the broadcasters and production side to be on the same page. By doing this then you avoid a many easy fixes like leaving obvious questions unanswered. Finally, he talked about the art of delivering a story. Many times, telling the entirety of a story isn’t possible with how fast paced a game can get, but by aiming to have every sentence of a story you tell act as a potential ending point you can pivot without leaving your audience hanging.

The event was attended by numerous students and was the final guest speaker of the semester. Many more will take place next semester through the end of the school year. For more information on the Sports Media Center, follow us on Twitter @NewhouseSports and visit us on the at Newhousesports.syr.edu.