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Reel Talk with Rich: Adam Amin · Reel Talk with Rich: Stories in Sportscasting

• Rich: Welcome to Reel Talk with Rich Stories in Sportscasting. This is a podcast about sports, media, and the intersection of both. I'm your host, Rich Hollenberg. I'm a veteran play-by-play announcer, anchor, and reporter at the top levels of this business. And I'm also the host and founder of the Break It and Breakthrough Sportscasting Cohort, a program designed to reach the next generation of top talent who have the passion and potential to chase their dreams. Each conversation will make you better in front of a mic by taking you behind the scenes. No bull, no fluff, just the straight scoop on sports casting. This is Reel Talk. In this episode, my conversation with Adam Amin. Here's a guy who has reached the top of the sports casting profession in a relatively short amount of time. We'll talk about his start at Valpo University, how he juggles all of his roles now currently NFL and Major League Baseball play by play announcer at Fox Sports, and also serving as the TV voice of the Chicago Bulls. One of the things I love about Adam is his versatility. This is a guy who can call any and every sport at peak levels, but he also has a lot of interests outside of sports and sports casting, as you'll hear. I hope you like the episode. If you do, please subscribe to the podcast, write a review, and give it a good rating if you're so inclined. But without further ado, here's some Reel talk with Adam Amin. speaker-0: All right, so Adam Amin, it is great to see your face and be talking to you. You and I rarely get to be in the same place at the same time. So this is the next best thing for me. speaker-1: Definitely, man. It's it's always a pleasure to talk to you, always a pleasure to see you. And I'm glad we we can still chop it up after all these years, buddy. speaker-0: Absolutely. so your story and my story go back a long way to our origins at ESPN, but even though you've done a lot of media through the years, for people who are watching and listening right now, can you give us the encapsulated version of what is the Adam Amin origin story? How did you get your start as a sportscaster? speaker-1: I didn't really know I wanted to do this. I think I we you and I would have a lot of friends and and maybe ourselves included that probably knew they wanted to do this at an earlier age. I wasn't necessarily one of those people. I didn't know that this was a real like career, real job until I got into like my senior high school and I was messing around with like the public access station and you know, I stopped playing football. So I I would just call the football games 'cause my friends were on the team and it was an excuse to talk about Nick the fullback who sits next to me in orchestra or whatever, you know. So I that's kind of how I got my start. But a friend of mine who had gone to high school with me, he was a senior when I was a freshman, his mom was my preschool teacher. Like we went back a long way. his name's Ken Lavica. He was going to Valparaiso University in Indiana and suggested that if I wanted to try broadcasting at like the collegiate level, or if that's a a pathway I wanted to pursue, come here, apply here, come here. I'll put you on the radio and you know, you can just do whatever you want. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. In college, I had like applied to business school and I was gonna go like into marketing or going to like get a business degree. And I just didn't really know what I was like excited about. So I ended up going to Valpo on on kind of a whim, on some advice from a friend. walked up to the advisor at the radio station the first day I was there and said, Hey, my friend told me to come here. What do I do? And he's like, All right, well, come on, come on over to the radio station, check it out. So I checked it out. I ended up just not leaving much at all. And I think a lot of us just Find something that we like and latch onto it and maybe, you know, obsess over it and just try to get better at it. And that was the next four years. So that was that that's kind of how I got into it. started with a minor league baseball job in Gary, Indiana, about 30 minutes away. got a my first like full-time radio job in a small town in Northwest Iowa, about 3,000 people. was the sports director there, did the play by play, did the morning show, did all all the sports casts, did the coaches show. And then I went back to minor league baseball in twenty ten. went out to Somerset, New Jersey, now a Yankees affiliate, but at the time it was an independent team. I did that for two summers. And in all that time, I was doing freelance TV work, going back to people that I had worked with when I was in college that were doing some of this kind of startup internet TV stuff, stuff that feels very common now. You know, what we do with streaming now seems so commonplace. At the time, it really wasn't. So that's how I got like my first real gigs and real opportunities. And you know, Joe Davis and I did the Illinois high school volleyball championships together, you know, while we were both doing minor league baseball. So I think those are like all the little building blocks until you know, I I got hired at ESPN in twenty eleven. speaker-0: From small things, big things come, right? I mean that's a case in point of that. I I I'm gonna go off script already and I knew I was going to. speaker-1: Producers throwing out the rundown already, I guess. speaker-0: That's right. you did mention during high school some of your friends sitting next to you in orchestra. Now, I know this, but I think a lot of people who might not be familiar with it would be fascinated with the fact that A, you're not only Fox's voice on MLB baseball and NFL football and the voice of Chicago Bulls on TV. You were also the best DJ of any play by play man I know. And that was born out of your early love of music. Where does that factor into your sports casting talent? speaker-1: I think so when I was 13, my brother bought me for my birthday a set of turntables and a mixer. Like I had to go out to a record store and buy vinyl records. And like I'm from Chicago. I I live here now, obviously, and and it's the birthplace of house music. So just if you kind of grow up here or in the vicinity or in the suburbs, you're probably at some point going to be exposed to it. And more often than not, it feels like anybody who's from Chicago that it ends up hearing this music ends up getting very, very attached to it very quickly. So That happened to me. I I heard this music. I loved it. My brother bought me turntables and a mixer. So I just started DJing. And as technology got a little better, we moved on to CDs and all that stuff. And I would end up DJing all the homecoming dances or like during the cafeteria periods during lunch. And kind of that ended up being like an easy way for me to make money. My bro, my other brother was a wedding and mobile DJ. So he would do corporate events and things like that. So he had this huge CD collection that. kind of taught me like, well, this is what they like at weddings, and this is what people do at their, you know, like quince and eras their bar mitzvahs. And you kind of get used to the idea of like that could be a job. So I would do that once I was able to drive, I started doing that and made money doing that, doing my friends' weddings and doing various corporate events and stuff like that. And eventually I got a chance to start playing in nightclubs when I was probably a little bit too young to be in the nightclubs, but I had a few, you know, events to kind of get ex exposed to that. I did that all the way through my time in Iowa. And then once I got this job at ESPN, it just obviously took a backseat to everything else I was doing. But I grew up in music. I grew up playing the violin from the time I was seven. I played the guitar when I was 13. I was in choir and orchestra and and musical theater and I was in theater itself, like just kind of acting. I was really a big arts proponent and a participator. So that ended up teaching me how to use my voice. You know, there was a portion of time I thought I was gonna try to go to Italy for a for like a semester abroad and and learn, you know, like operatic techniques and maybe like, you know, learn how to maybe be an opera singer. I was gonna go to Turin. And then my voice dropped and that kind of went out of the out of the out the window. But yeah, music has always had a really, really big influence on my life. And then a couple of years ago, you know, some time, some resources, some connections, I I decided I kind of wanted to do something on the side and got back into DJing. So that's been A a fun little side project over the course of the last two years again. Yeah. speaker-0: So you mention your voice, and anybody who's listening to this or has listened to any game you call knows that you are blessed with what is generally known in our business as golden pipes. You were, I'm guessing, born with those. And yet there is certainly, and you could attest to this, a lot of work that needs to be put into nurturing those golden pipes. Could you share with me? Maybe one or two things that you lean on to make sure you sound your best every time you go on the air. speaker-1: I think the I'm I'm fortunate to get to work a lot. So there are a lot of reps. So it's a it's in constant use. but I think when I'm off the air, I I rest, you know, my voice, I don't talk as much when I'm off the air. you know, I I don't I'm not as focused on like the breathing techniques the way you might be during a game where you're trying to like breathe in and use your diaphragm so you're not straining your throat. that's always been a really important thing. That would those are some of the musical theater and operatic and acting techniques that you learn when you're on stage. You don't out, you know, I think even like high school productions, like I think that my nephew and niece participate in now, like they give you the microphone. Like they don't have to project the way that you know we used to. We speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: had to speak to the last row of the house, Rich. You understand it completely. Like we had they they would yell at you like, I can't hear you. Project more. Like we would just keep hearing it from our director in the back of the theater. Like Be more clear, ennunciate. And you kind of have to you have to establish those as techniques. More so that more not even establish them as techniques. You need to make that a habit. You need to make that second nature where you're constantly projecting. So I think it built up a lot of strength. you know, there have been plenty of moments and plenty of weeks and plenty of weekends where you're jamming in a few games together, you know, radio and TV or a couple of radio games, and and you might strain a little bit. And I think the most important thing is to go back to the techniques that that I learned when I was, you know, 14 years old to be able to project, use the proper portion of your body to generate air and and pressure rather than putting it all on your vocal cords and straining them. and then just the reps. The the fact that I get to do it as often as I do, that keeps them loose. Obviously, you want to drink water, you wanna be hydrated, you wanna lubricate your throat. I always have cough drops on me. I drink a lot of tea, you know, especially as I get older. I think it's just important to To keep them, you know, warm and feeling good. And and T always helps me do that. but I don't think there's one right way to do it. I just think keeping it in use and keeping it healthy and keeping it feeling good is the best thing you can do for it. But all those techniques that I learned 20 some years ago are still applicable today in in terms of doing games and broadcasts. And I also don't think you need to have a a booming voice to be able to do this job. I think Rich, if you don't consider your vo your own voice booming, that's fine. But I've always appreciated how clear and concise and resonant your voice is, you know, listening to you on college basketball games or when you're hosting a studio show. It's clear and concise. And I think that's always going to go a longer way than necessarily having just a booming voice. I I think I've learned how to use mine. I think I have intonation and volume control and and tempo control because Again, singing and acting and projecting, you kind of learn some of those things and they become second nature. And those are never bad things to learn or study or read about or practice a little bit. but I think if you have those things, if you have a kind of musicality to your voice and it's clear and concise and resonant, then it's going to be palatable to an ear if they have to listen to you for a half hour or an hour pregame or a two and a half hour basketball game or a three hour baseball broadcast. speaker-0: I I appreciate that answer. Really good info there. you and I had chopped this up a little before we came on the air. And unfortunately, neither of us have a good enough memory to remember when this actually was. But years ago, when you and I were both on the come up at ESPN, you were doing a radio game, I was doing the TV side, we were both in the same gym for the same game. And the reason I bring this up, Adam. And you probably don't even remember this. But I remember being at the coach's pregame the day before, or maybe it was the morning shoot around, and seeing you. And you and I had not met at that point, but seeing you with your laptop, taking notes while the coach was talking. And then after the interviews were over, you were still typing away on your I I on your MacBook, I'm guessing it was at that point. And I walked away going. What do I not know about this business that Adam Amin knows? Because he is doing things that I would never think of doing. Maybe I'm just so old school that I never thought about it. But one thing I came to appreciate about you is the fact that you make it look so easy on the air. And then I got a firsthand look at how much work you put into it behind the scenes. Can you talk a little bit about how you learned your particular process? of preparing for whatever game it is you're calling football, basketball, baseball, you name it. speaker-1: Yeah, I I appreciate that, but it's and and you know this too, because you you work so hard, especially, you know, you cover a c a certain conference. You and I covered a lot of the same conferences when we were coming up, and you always had a great working knowledge of everything in the conference, not just the two teams that we were covering that night, but of the rest of the ACC or the rest of the American or the rest of the big twelve. You you wanted to make sure that you had an understanding of how these dots connect. And that's the biggest thing that we're doing is connecting dots. And it's connecting dots in different ways. It's Connecting dots of the information that's out there. Well, how does this person's injury affect this guy on this portion of the depth chart? How does this person's passing affect this person shooting, whatever it may be? You're trying to get as much of a sense for a team as you possibly can, but it's also connecting dots in your own head. You're you're trying to learn how your own brain works and processes information and how it feeds you to be able to recall certain things at the right time. And a lot of that, I didn't know, I don't think anybody really knows. how to do it when you first start, you try to find a template and and like a an order of operations or a skeletal structure for how to do this. And for me, it was finding Mark Boyle's de spotting charts for basketball on the internet. Mark Boyle is still the wonderful radio voice of the Indiana Pacers. And when I was at Valpo online, somewhere, I can't even remember what site it was, he had posted or like shared his Indiana Pacer spotting charts and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, right? Like this is amazing to look at. They were color coded and every color meant something. Every bold or italic or underline meant something. He had different fonts for different things. He had the team logo in the corner. And I just thought, wow, this is how you're supposed to organize all this. And this is the amount of information that he has every night. Wow. So it was a real eye-opening thing to kind of see What goes into at the highest level? I mean, this guy's been doing the NBA for, you know, the f better part of four decades at this point. Like this is what it takes to do this job for a long period of time at the highest levels. So that was the first template I ever had. And then naturally you start Googling and you start searching for more things. And then you ask you know, the kid at Indiana State when you're sitting in a booth together, hey, how do you what what scorebook do you use? Or did you make that yourself? Or what do you do? And you ask somebody how they prep for a football game or I found spotting charts when, you know, I first started doing football and thought, all right, well, this template works. I like this. Well, I used this about six times and I would probably change it. So now I'm gonna make my own and now I'm gonna experiment here. And eventually I just had my own charts. By the time I got to ESPN, 24, 25, 26 years old, I had made my own scorecard because I kind of had a sense after doing it a little bit, doing minor league baseball for four years and doing college games and Being at ESPN for a little while, you're like, all right, I would use this and I like this, but I don't really need this. And this is what works for me. And on my basketball charts, well, I'm just going to use the season points per game, and the career numbers will go somewhere else. And I'm going to use this section for notes and this section for bio and whatever it may be. You realize the amount of information you need and then where to put it in whatever structure you want to put it, you know, wherever you want to put it. And some guys don't need the boards. Some guys need more on their charts. Some people want less. Some people want to type everything out and then print it. Some people want to type a few things out, basics and then write things down. I'm I'm 17, 16 years into this professionally, and I'm still changing how I prep for games. I I just got done. So I I use an iPad now. So speaker-0: There we go. It's fancy pants. Come on. speaker-1: now I'm I'm trying to do some things more digitally. And you know, I'm I'm I'm really excited about this because I just you know, got to do a pretty epic baseball game. And I had to figure out like on my iPad, well, how do I do this? Well, I can copy and paste certain things and I can use this. So I I transitioned over to this. And I've been doing baseball for 13 years. And only three months ago did I s decide I wanted to do this. So you're constantly evolving, you're constantly changing. I know that was a very long answer, but I feel like if if you're figuring out more and more ways on how your brain uses information and recalls it and what's the best way for your brain and that on that day. I know there's a process. I know everybody wants to go through it the same way, but on that day, what's the most important thing for you to do? And how are you going to make sure you remember it? If you have to write it down twice, fine. But I want to be able to be flexible and malleable when it comes to making sure I'm always prepared. I'm I'm constantly evolving how I want to do this job. So Getting some templates is good. Getting a starting point is probably the most helpful thing. And then the more you do it, the more you experiment, the more you try, the more you learn about yourself, the better you'll end up being at using that information and putting in certain places. speaker-0: Yeah, it's a testament to your intelligence and also your brain power. And since you mentioned your brain and how did things fit in your brain, I think this is a a natural transition, if not maybe a little bit of an awkward one, but something that you've been really open and refreshingly so talking about it to your constituents and in public in general. mental health. I talk about it a lot. With the young aspiring sportscasters who I come across and who I mentor, and you've talked about it as well. It in your opinion, what have you learned are the best ways to cope with whatever mental health challenges might come our way as sportscasters and maybe more specifically as up-and-coming sportscasters? speaker-1: I think it's kind of a domino effect, right? Because this is a business, an industry that is kind of meant to weed people out, especially early on, because as as you've talked about, and I I've I I know you and I both feel this way, like we have such a wonderful, privileged position to do this as a living. Like this is a a pretty fortunate situation to be in that we get to do something that we love in a medium that we love with a subject that we enjoy that. doesn't feel tedious or maybe sometimes it does, but it's the tediousness that we like and that w then that always seems to have a payoff at the end of it. you know, I've heard a lot of veteran people, whether it's in this industry or or others, say you have to be able to pick and live with the torture that you love, right? Everybody's tortured in some capacity. Not everybody loves their job. And even if you do love it, there's a lot of things about it that can be upsetting to you because you're so focused on the nuance of it. So you have to pick the torture that you love. This is the torture that I love. So I want to put everything I can into it. That means I put a lot of stock into how I do the job and how people feel about how I do the job. Because when you put so much of yourself into something, it's not as if you're necessarily looking for approval, but you that's the audience. The o you want the audience to, you know, like what you're doing. Maybe it's good feedback for you to make an adjustment or something like that. But not everybody is that nice and not everybody is that constructive. So I think. This job is meant to kind of this industry is kind of meant to weed people out early because it is taxing. It can be taxing, especially the higher you go and the high more exposure you get. You're just going to be seen by more people who are probably going to disagree with your general disposition or your general approach to doing the job, or maybe they just think you don't like their team. So they're willing to say whatever they want to you in whatever medium they can. though those things can be taxing if you put more too much stock into them. So I had to learn that I started on ESPN at age 24 in 2011. So Twitter had been around for about three years, and I have I was pretty much active as soon as it began. So a lot of my young adulthood was spent on social media learning how this was working and how you could interact with other people. And I've seen the evolution of all of it, well and and and times the evolution of it as well, what it's devolved into at times. While I've come up in my career as a young adult and into adulthood and kind of being more of a not not an elder by any means in this business, but certainly somebody who's got more experience and some mileage under underneath their underneath them at this point. So I've seen how that can affect fellow broadcasters. I've seen fellow play-by-play announcers, I've seen analysts change how they may call a game because they saw somebody say something at the wrong time. And suddenly their whole demeanor changes. And that's a real thing because you feel like that's instant feedback. I think the best thing I can tell people is you have to learn how to do this while essentially being bad at it. You know, like the this is this is a business where you really have to go through the trial and error. And some people are naturally gifted at it. And you and I know plenty of people that just have a natural ability or charisma for it, and then they learn as they go and they can always kind of mask some things. I'm a reps guy. I wasn't like that. I I didn't have a natural ability for this. I felt like I developed it and curated it and worked on it to the point where I felt comfortable with what I was doing. So I think you have to learn how to be bad at it. You have to be a student at it to recognize what's bad about it or what you're doing that could be improved upon. You have to do it a lot in in a lot of cases so that you get more and more practice, you have more and more thought about how to approach different situations. And then the other thing is you have to know not to be too hard on yourself when you make a mistake when you're when you're doing this job too, because that can easily turn into, well, if I make a mistake, then the next person behind me is gonna pass me up and now I don't have a career in this. You know, I I thought if I wasn't doing certain sports or certain events by a certain age, then I just I just didn't have a future in this. And that's just not true at all. You know, the this is a marathon, not a sprint, for most of the people in this business and and it's still a marathon for me. And I got a head start. I was lucky and fortunate to get into a good position when I was pretty young and I got to develop myself in some spots where maybe not as many people are watching the way they're watching now. So I got to work on myself a lot during that time. And I had to learn how to take in constructive criticism, let go of negative feedback that doesn't that shouldn't take up space in my head. Other people should not influence how I do this job. I should influence how I do this job, the industry, who I respect, the voices that I've grown up on that I re that I feel do a wonderful job at this, being a student of those broadcasters and figuring out how that fits into my own personality. So once you can get to that point and it takes a long time and I'm still not fully there yet, but I feel closer to it than I ever have been, that that's a big step to be able to take to move past some of those mental hurdles and the things that can really bring you down, you know, and and make you feel. You know, like you should question what you're doing. That's a very easy thing to do in this business. Any business where you're in some capacity in front of people, it's very easy to question yourself. And I think the more you can battle through those things, take the constructive criticism to be able to eliminate the stuff that doesn't matter. I think that's a really important step to be able to take to get better in a lot of different ways. speaker-0: Yeah, there's only one opinion that matters and it's yours. And that was really well said. And it's heartening for all of us to know that someone as accomplished as you could still consider yourself a work in progress because we all are. okay, the heavy hitters are out of the way. I'm gonna put you on the spot now, Amin. you've done a ton of big events. Even most recently, you had a week that most play by play men would dream of. But I want you to nail down your top three broadcasting moments for me. I don't mean top three games you've called that will be looked at. I remember that particular game. But for you as a play-by-play man, what are the top three games that you've called broadcasting-wise, where you walked away going, I freaking nailed that? speaker-1: I think and obviously knowing that those things are subjective, I think there are three the three things I think about and the three games I think about a lot all came at various points and they all were inflection points to feel like I took a step, right? And and this doesn't mean I walked out of these games thinking it was it was completely perfect, but something happened or I did something or said something or I approached it that stuck with me for a long time. the first one is the iron bull. the kick six game in two thousand and thirteen, between Alabama and Auburn. I was doing the national radio call of that game, and that was the game where Chris Davis takes the missed field goal by Adam Griffith a hundred and nine yards all the way back to win the SEC div West I think it was West Division title and send Auburn to the SEC championship game in a week. speaker-0: T V call. speaker-1: Vern Lundquist, the great Vern Lundquist, was on the TV call. There were four of us on that call. Vern Lundquist was one, Eli Gold for the Alabama Radio Network, the late great Rod Bramblett, for the Auburn Tigers, who was right behind me. And I could hear his call right after I finished mine, and then and then myself with Gary Barnett. I I remember calling that moment. It was the first truly big moment in a big game that I ever got the chance to call. And I remember when I finished the call, I felt great about what I said for a radio call. I thought it was descriptive. you know, I was really proud of what I said. But at the end, my voice just cracked and it went. It it left me. And that was one of those weekends where I had called the game, you know, a couple of days prior and and I had probably been straining a little bit. And I was at the end of this incredible game. There was a ninety nine yard touchdown reception by Amari Cooper in that game. you know, there there were two incredible Auburn plays that led to scores. And then all of a sudden, you know, you get the miss field goal and take it back. My voice just cracked. And I remember walking out of there and my the the the broadcaster that I had worked with at Valpo, who's been at Valpo since the late 1980s, Todd Eichel, the play-by-play man for the Crusaders at the time and now the Beacons, I sent him the call and I told him. Man, I really wish my voice hadn't gone. I almost made it to the end. And he goes, No, that's the emotion of the moment. And your voice is telling me that this was such an impactful moment on you that you got so excited that that's the reaction that a human being had while calling that game. And Todd is another guy who doesn't have a booming voice, he has a higher. more nasal voice, but it's resonant and it's clear and his play by play is crisp. And that's what makes him a great broadcaster. He said it's not about that. It's about the emotion of the moment and you captured that, whether direct you know, purposefully or inadvertently, you captured that. Always remember that your emotion does matter in those big moments. And that was a great learning experience. So that was in 2013. About four and a half years later, I called the women's final four for the first time. And Aurico Gumbowali of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish hit a go-ahead shot in the final seconds against Connecticut in the national semifinal, knocks out the number one seed Yukon. And it's obviously an incredible moment in NCA tournament history. And I thought, well, it's not gonna get any better than that. And then two nights later, she wins the national championship on a three pointer against Mississippi State. And I remember walking out on that Sunday night, we were in Columbus, Ohio. And I just felt not just myself, but I thought our crew, my partners, I worked with Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe and Carol Lawson on that broadcast. And I was so proud of our our crew that night. Jim Zaroli directed it, Jimmy or produced it, Jimmy Platt directed it. And I was just so proud of the crew. We we were there, we stayed with it till the end. we laid out for the big shot. I felt good about how I called it. And it always was very meaningful that I had that moment. And that was the first time that I walked away thinking, I I know how to call the big moment. I will be prepared again. If something like that ever happens, I never have to question myself. I know I know how to think about things, how to process time, score, situation, timeouts. are they trying to foul? Where's the foot? You know, that means it's a three, not a two. I I I started to realize I have all these permutations in my head. And as long as I stay calm and and present, I I know how to do these moments. So that was that was gosh, you know, seven and a half years ago. And then seven and a half years later, you know, this past weekend, I I put game five, a 15 inning game five winner take all playoff baseball game at the top of the list because it it's a historic night. It's a historic game. it was a standalone game. Every person who likes baseball. Was watching that game. And any person who flips through their channels and maybe will lock into a sporting event they don't care that much about was watching that game. And I felt again very proud of our crew of my partners, AJ Przezinski, Adam Wainwright, Tom Verducci our wonderful Fox Sports crew. Like I was so proud of how we handled a marathon five hour baseball game. And I had never felt so dialed in to what was happening in front of me for that long of a period of time. And From here on out, I will always feel confident. I'm again, I've been doing this for 16 years. I've done over a thousand, maybe close to thirteen, fourteen hundred national broadcasts at this point in my life, or broadcasts in my at this point of my life. And I only now do I truly feel like, you know what, you can throw anything at me. And I will more than likely be ready. I'll be prepared. And if I don't know everything, I'll be present enough to understand what's taking place in front of me. I think those are the three inflection points that that take place over a course of, you know, basically twelve years. speaker-0: Awesome. As a sports casting geek like you are as well as I am, I feel like this is my Newt Rockney speech. I'm ready to run to the brick wall right now because of Adam and Amin's stories. Let's end on this. You've given us a bunch of pearls of wisdom already, but if you had to distill it into your best advice for aspiring sports casters, what would that advice be? speaker-1: Never stop being a student of it. You know, the the same way that I I think I love I love talking like this with with colleagues and friends of mine like you because it reminds us, it reminds ourselves of what's important to us when we're calling games or preparing for games. You know, like it's I think it's very easy when we're in the grind of everything. And, you know, I'm I'm sure student broadcasters feel this way too when they've got midterms or they got exams and they want to prepare for this game that they really care about because it's important to what they want to do for their future. Like, you know, you're learning how to budget your time and that's something you're going to do for the rest of your career. but talking about philosophies about how to do this job as well, and, you know, the the things that we've learned over our careers and what a lot of students are going to start learning or they've already begun to learn now that they're going to take for the next 20, 30, 40, hopefully 50 years of their careers, I I I think you never stop being a student of it and reminding yourself or or at least being conscientious about what's important in a broadcast. What does an audience member need? What does a fan who's watching or listening need? What does a non fan who's just tuning in for the very first time, need in that moment? And trying to be as present as possible and constantly studying the craft of still the people that you respect and you know who you think is great at this, how would How do they do certain things? And are you able to implement some of those skills into your own voice and into your own personality, into your own style? never stop being a student of this because you'll constantly think about how you can get better at it. And I think anytime you come up with a problem or something you think you can do better, just being cognizant and and recognizing it is the first step to getting better at it. So all those things are important. That never stops happening. The best of the business, continue to be students of it and You know, I I think that's awesome. I I think that's that's a wonderful thing to be able to be in a pursuit that that never stops giving you information and you can always keep learning more and more from. Well speaker-0: I I'm certainly not the only one, but plenty of people feel like you are among the best in the business. I value your friendship. These were fantastic words of wisdom for anybody who's interested in sports casting. keep spinning those ones and twos, brother. And my biggest compliment I could pay to anyone, I will pay to you. I think you are a raconteur. And I think you are a renaissance man. You are still young in age, but you are wise beyond your years, not just in sports casting, but in many, many facets of life. And I value your friendship. speaker-1: Thanks, Adam. Yeah, you very, very much, my friend. Thanks so very much for everything over the years. And anytime I can help, let me know. Rich: Amazing takeaways from Adam Amin's conversation, huh? He is a gem, But every episode of this real talk podcast, we are going to go over my biggest takeaways, my three biggest takeaways from the conversation. So, my talk with Adam, the first thing that jumped out at me. was when he talked about the emotion of the moment. And don't get so caught up with sounding perfect when you're making a call. It's okay if you get caught up in the emotion of the moment. Remember, like Al Michaels told me, the game is the music and we provide the lyrics. So when Adam's voice cracked in that big call during that big game, That just added to the emotion of the moment. Takeaway number two, I loved how he talked about the blocking and tackling of sports casting. For him, he called it connecting the dots. And that's really what we need to do. We want to give the audience access, right? Access to conversations with players and coaches, but also access to the information that helps tell the story about the game you're calling. Last but certainly not least, this was poetic. he said, pick and live with the torture that you love. We all want to be perfect sports casters. Not one of us is ever going to be a perfect sports caster. So while you continually want to grow and learn and strive to be your very best, no one is going to have a quote unquote perfect game or a perfect interview or a perfect show or a perfect podcast. Perfection is a fool's errand. So all you have to do is get your mind around picking and living with the torture that you love. If you love sports casting, it's okay to make mistakes along the way as long as you're learning from them and getting better all the time. Thank you again to Adam Amin for joining us on Real Talk with Rich. If you want more information on things like this, go to my website, richhollenberg.com. I run the break-in and break through cohort for aspiring sportscasters, people in college who are looking to break into the business, people who are already working and looking for that big break through. I hope you'll check that out, and I hope you'll subscribe, rate, and review. This podcast. We'll see you next time on Reel Talk.