With two broadcasters in the family, Ian Eagle and his son Noah get a chance to pick the brain of the other and provide input, but they try to provide each other a lot of positive input.
On the latest episode of Fowler, Who You Got?, Chris Fowler had a conversation with both Noah and Ian Eagle and Ian told Fowler that if there are any “critiques”, there is a lot of positivity around any criticism of a call Noah had.
“Our dynamic is one of positivity. If there’s something that stands out to me, I’ll mention it to him, but not necessarily the day after the game. It might be in a series of conversations we have a week later, 10 days later. Usually, it will be in the Oreo cookie realm, which would be positive, critique, positive.”
Both broadcasters also got into pivotal moments for them in their career and Ian discussed how he knew it was pivotal when his bosses at CBS would trust him with an assignment, whether it was calling The Masters for CBSSports.com or getting to call Army-Navy football for nine years beginning in 2002.
“CBS trusted me and that’s a huge word in our business when your bosses start to trust you and that was probably pivotal as I look back in my career of recognizing without them saying but based on the assignment. Getting Army-Navy in 2002, that came out of left field. I had not done college football for CBS. That was not something I assumed could happen. They gave it to me and I ended up doing it for 9 years.”
One of the events Ian called that most people might not remember off the top of their head was the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championship (2004-2012) and he said calling track and field is a play-by-play broadcaster’s dream.
“I did track and field. I had never been to a track and field event. I ended up doing 8 straight NCAA Track and Field outdoor championships and loved it. I thought the whole vibe was a play-by-play man’s dream. Every race is good. If it’s a lopsided race, it’s exciting that someone dominated the field. If it’s close, it’s equally exciting that it’s coming right down to the wire and someone is going to win at the very last instant.”
As for Noah, he reflected on the first NFL Wild Card Nickelodeon broadcast he did with Nate Burleson and he mentioned to Fowler that before that first game, he and Burleson agreed not to look at their phones or social media during the broadcast.
“Our first year doing it, it’s a Wild Card Game. Sure you can go and watch the normal broadcast, but we knew that because it was so new, a lot of people were going to tune in. We just knew we were going to get all different types of people. So, trying to invite the entire audience was seminal in our minds.
“The best thing Nate and I did year 1 was before the game, we looked at each other and we said ‘Put it away. Just put it to the side. We don’t want to be impacted by anything.’ We didn’t want any words that anyone was saying, anything was texted to us. We just didn’t want anyone to impact us.”
Due to his experience calling the Nickelodeon NFL games, Noah has learned that he can balance having fun on a broadcast with being serious and has carried it into the other events that he does.
“Doing those games has taught me a lot of how to balance the fun with the serious, how to get down to the nitty gritty when you have to, how to take care of the business that maybe a network wants you to take care of or your producer wants you to take care of. At the same time, not losing sight of that kid in you. I think I have taken a lot of that to the not animated or different broadcasts I’ve done. It’s just making sure I still have fun with it. Doing it has been good practice in a lot of ways.”
