In late June, Fox announced that Bill Raftery was leaving ESPN for their fledgling sports network, and would be teamed up with Gus Johnson on Big East hoops. Rob Stone, another former ESPN broadcaster, was later announced as one of the studio hosts, and last week, two more names were revealed: Austin Croshere, a former Providence standout, and Tarik Turner, a former St. John’s player and color commentator on Red Storm radio broadcasts who most recently worked as an analyst on SNY’s Big East telecasts. Both Croshere and Turner will be featured as studio analysts on pregame and halftime shows.
On Monday, Fox unveiled the rest of their on-air talent for Big East coverage, and it’s an impressive roster. The play-by-play announcers for Big East hoops will be:
- Dick Stockton
- Thom Brennaman
- Brian Anderson
- Justin Kutcher
- Eric Collins
- Kevin Kugler
Analysts in-studio and in the broadcast booth include Ohio State All-American Jim Jackson, standout Illinois guard Stephen Bardo, former Georgetown coach Ron Thompson, Connecticut standout Donny Marshall, three-time Duke MVP Jim Spanarkel, former Rutgers player and coach Bob Wenzel, NCAA championship coach Gary Williams and coaching veteran Kevin O’Neill.
Compared to Fox Sports 1’s mostly anonymous college football announcers (other than lead crew Gus Johnson and Charles Davis, of course), their college hoops crew is star-studded and knowledgable about Big East teams. It’s also mostly culled from other Fox properties, such as Big Ten Network (of which Fox owns a controlling stake) and Fox Sports.
Kevin Kugler is the name that jumps off the list for Creighton fans, obviously, given his former role as co-host of “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” on 1620 The Zone and play-by-play announcer for dozens of Creighton games on NET over the years. Game assignments won’t come out for awhile, but it’s probably a fair bet that Kugler will call his share of CU games on FS1, particularly home games, given his knowledge of the program and his proximity to the campus.
On the analyst side, Stephen Bardo called multiple Creighton games in recent years as part of ESPN’s coverage of Missouri Valley hoops, and was sent to Omaha in 2011 for their coverage of “Bluejay Madness.” He’s another good bet to be on the call for several Jays games given his existing knowledge of their program.
The play-by-play announcers Fox has tapped for Big East coverage shows their commitment to the league — the roster includes most of their biggest names, giving viewers instant recognition of the voices calling the action.
Dick Stockton is perhaps best known in recent years for his work for Fox on NFL and MLB games, but his 40-year career also includes stints calling MLB, NBA and NCAA Tournament action for CBS and the 1975 World Series for NBC. He hasn’t done a college basketball game since leaving CBS for Fox in 1994, but has called NBA games for Turner since 1995. Though he’s slipped a bit in recent years — Stockton is a frequent target of the website Awful Announcing for his on-air gaffes — he remains one of the most accomplished play-by-play broadcasters on television.
Like Stockton, Thom Brennaman is a versatile announcer who’s primarily known for his work on Fox’s coverage of MLB and NFL games. Other than Joe Buck, he’s perhaps the broadcaster most closely associated with Fox; Brennaman has called playoff games for both baseball and football and was their lead play-by-play announcer for BCS coverage. He has done work on ACC games for FSN and the occasional Cincinnati Bearcats game on local affiliate WXIX (he’s a Cincinnati native), but as with Stockton, Brennaman’s been away from the college hoops game for a while.
Rounding out the PBP roster are Justin Kutcher and Brian Anderson. Kutcher is a former ESPN announcer on Big East games, and after moving to Fox, has called regular season MLB action as well as Thursday Night College Football on FS1. Anderson is Turner’s lead play-by-play announcer for MLB coverage, and has added Big Ten hoops on BTN to his resume in recent years (including the Creighton-Iowa game in Des Moines two years ago).
It appears Fox has done a good job of assembling broadcasters familiar with each of the ten Big East teams — even newcomers like Creighton — and that should make their coverage of Big East hoops a blast.
