Not only athletes create the excitement and adrenaline during a sporting event but many other contributors— and voices— make the experience enjoyable.
If you have spent any time at a Pepperdine sporting event chances are you saw senior Tony Simeone sitting on the sideline enthusiastically reporting the game live for those not present on TV-32.
This summer Tony Simeone took the pursuit of excellence to a new level after he was awarded the prestigious Jim Nantz Award which designated him as the 10th best collegiate student broadcaster in the nation.
The Jim Nantz Award is in its second year of being presented annually in the name of Jim Natntz who is best known for his work with CBS Sports Television.
Frequent nagging from his father made Simeone decided to apply for the award that was sponsored by the Sports Talent Agency of America. After submitting an audio tape in early May that required no more than 24 minutes of continuous play-by-play of two sports Simeone was notified of his award in early June.
But despite the prestigious caliber of the award Simeone remained and still remains humble about his accomplishment. In fact some of his friends say they only learned of his accomplishment from the Internet rather than from Simeone himself.
Although Pepperdine has only had a sports broadcasting program for a year Simeone enrolled at Pepperdine in 2007 with every intention of pursuing such a career. He began as a journalism major but said “I got stuck doing newspaper stuff which really isn’t what I want to do….I have wanted to do play-by-play since I realized playing sports after high school wasn’t realistic.”
Fortunately for Simeone as well as other students interested in telecommunication production and sports broadcasting Pepperdine now provides a wealth of opportunities for all students even freshmen in this area.
“I came here strictly with the mindset that this school has the ability to broadcast all their sports live Simeone said. This is a rare Division 1 school were you can come as a freshman and do broadcasting— and not just sit in a classroom and learn about it.”
And Simeone definitely has extensive amounts of work outside of the classroom ever since he has become the primary play-by-play announcer and color commentator for men’s and women’s basketball as well as men’s and women’s volleyball. He also did some solo broadcast work for the Pepperdine baseball team and called the weekend road series against the school rival Loyola Marymount. And we can’t forget his hefty contribution to The Sports Report where he anchored and led many sports discussions.
But Pepperdine is not the only experience Simeone has on his resume; he also has a history of sports reporting.
During summer 2009 Simeone interned at the La Crosee Loggers (Northwoods League) in La Crosee Wisc. where he was part of a two-man play-by-play and color commentary broadcast team for all 68 of the Logger regular season games and 5 post-season games. He recently returned to Pepperdine for his senior year after a summer of 68 additional baseball games in Mankato Minn. also in the Northwoods Leage.
And even in our struggling economy it is hard to believe that Simeone will have a hard time securing a job upon graduation.
“I will take wherever the best job takes me but from a preference standpoint I would love to end up back in Seattle Simeone said. In the ideal world I would go work for the Mariners or the SuperSonics.”
Until then we can all enjoy Simeone’s broadcasting for a large portion of Pepperdine sporting events and hope someone will eventually be able to fill his shoes. At Pepperdine there is no shortage of opportunities for students who have aspirations similar to Simeone’s.
Because of these opportunities he has accomplished things before graduation a lot of broadcasters wish they could.
“I’ve called all three Gonzaga games and that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
To see a reel of Tony Simeone’s work as broadcaster at Pepperdine University visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jIgWBU0hsw