UK football and basketball at same time? For UK radio network, ‘a challenging day’

If you think the Kentucky Wildcats football and men’s basketball teams playing at the exact same time on New Year’s Eve puts Cats fans in a pickle, imagine the test it is for the UK Sports Network.

With Mark Stoops and the football Cats slated to kick off against Iowa in the Music City Bowl in Nashville on Saturday at high noon and John Calipari and the basketball Wildcats scheduled to tip off against archrival Louisville in Rupp Arena simultaneously, the folks who produce the radio broadcasts of Kentucky Wildcats sports are geared up for a day like few others in UK sports history.

“The challenge for us is two-fold,” says Kim Shelton, who leads the University of Kentucky athletics multimedia rights deals for JMI Sports. “First, just making sure we have (on-air) talent to cover both broadcasts. Then, to make sure we have the distribution methods to get both (game broadcasts) to the audience.”

For fans here in Lexington, JMI Sports will solve the second dilemma by broadcasting the Kentucky-Iowa football game over WLAP-AM 630, while the UK-U of L men’s hoops broadcast will be on WBUL-FM 98.1. In Louisville, the football game will be on WKJK-AM 1080 and the basketball game on WHAS-AM 840.

UK radio affiliates in towns around the state that have access to multiple stations in their markets will have the same chance to broadcast both games, Shelton says. In markets where the UK rights holder has only one station, the football broadcast will go out over the terrestrial radio but the local station will have the opportunity to stream the UK-U of L hoops contest on its website, Shelton says.

With the football broadcast having over-the-air primacy in one-station markets, Shelton said the thought in carrying the basketball game on WHAS (AM 50,000 watts) in Louisville and WBUL (FM 100,000 watts) in Lexington is that those are sufficiently strong radio signals that they will give people in most parts of the state the chance to listen to the hoops contest on over-the-air radio if they so choose.

“The broadcasts will carry the distance that most everybody in the state will have the ability to listen to an over-the-air broadcast (of basketball). It just may not be on their local channel,” Shelton says. “We are blessed to have a great partner like iHeartMedia (which owns the stations carrying the games in Lexington and Louisville) which has the ability to distribute the broadcasts in multiple ways.”

Shelton says the Music City Bowl will break with common practice and will allow UK radio network stations to stream the football game with Iowa on their websites.

“Traditionally, bowl games would not allow for you to stream. Most bowl games retain those rights themselves,” Shelton said. “But, given our circumstances, they are allowing us to stream. We’re very appreciative of that.”

As for the talent distribution on the broadcasts, Tom Leach, the play-by-play voice of both Kentucky football and men’s basketball, will be in Nashville for the Music City Bowl. “It’s been the practice of the UK radio crew going back to the days of Cawood (Ledford) and Ralph (Hacker) that you finish out the football season,” Leach says.

So while Leach broadcasts UK-Iowa on a crew with analyst Jeff Piecoro and sideline reporter Dick Gabriel, Darren Headrick, the regular radio play-by-play announcer for Kentucky Wildcats women’s basketball and baseball, will call the UK-U of L men’s hoops game with analyst Jack Givens.

“We’re very fortunate to have a talent crew that can step up when we need them to,” Shelton says. “Especially to have Darren in the place he is.”

Other than Leach, Shelton says there is not as much overlap between the radio broadcast crews for UK football and men’s basketball as one might expect. “We have engineers for football who are different than our engineers or producers for basketball,” she said.

With UK football and basketball playing simultaneously, Shelton said the biggest question for the UK Sports Network was how to staff the halftime reports on each broadcast. She said JMI Sports considered using the same person to handle those duties on both broadcasts.

“But you don’t know the timing. If the (halftimes) were happening at the same time, we would have been in trouble,” she said. “So, rather than risk that, we’ve gone ahead and put two people in place.”

Andrew Kappes will handle the football halftime, while Chris Labar will do the same for the basketball broadcast, Shelton said.

For the UK Sports Network, Shelton says the other primary task relating to the day when UK’s marquee sports teams both will be playing in unison is to get the word out to fans on how they can access each game.

Toward that end, the UK Sports Network is deploying its social media accounts plus UK’s website.

“A lot of people have been very accommodating, knowing it is not ideal,” Shelton says of producing simultaneous broadcasts of major Kentucky Wildcats sports events. “It’s a challenging day but, look, we are playing a bowl and we get a Louisville game. It’s a great day of UK sports.”

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