Prior to the start of the football season, most networks hold a seminar in order to bring their personnel up to speed on new facets of the broadcast, rule changes and to grant them a chance to meet one another. Understanding the importance of establishing affinity with the audience, ESPN executive producer Jed Drake once addressed his staff and implored them not to be afraid to divulge new ideas. Throughout his remarks, he expressed that there is no reason to loathe the prospect of trying, affirming that there is no such thing as a noble failure. The allocution impelled Todd Blackledge to inform his producer, Bo Garrett, about an idea he had had in the back of his mind for several years but never shared.
“I love finding these little hole-in-the-wall places, and I’ve been doing SEC games for a lot of years and I’ve got a whole catalog of places that I like to go,” Blackledge remembered expressing to Drake. “Let’s try to do something and call it ‘Todd’s Taste of the Town.’”
As he peregrinates the country each year to call college football games, Blackledge has always observed the culture surrounding a particular university and its locale. Whether it is Mac’s Drive-In in Clemson, S.C., The Salt Lick in Driftwood, Texas or Ye Olde College Diner in State College, Pa., the college football analyst became known for his culinary palette and created a bonafide franchise. Approaching each edition of the segment receptive to new ideas, he was able to explore destinations and connect the distinct trademarks of communities with one another.
“After being an analyst for 20-something years, all of a sudden after three or four weeks, I became more known as a food guy,” Blackledge said. “I’d run into people in the airport and the hotel, and the first thing they’d ask me [was], ‘Where are you eating this week? Where are you going for a ‘Taste of the Town’?”
Blackledge released a book complete with reviews of restaurants from around the country and anecdotes from his time on the road and appreciated the feedback he received each week. Now that he is a member of NBC Sports as a color commentator on Big Ten Saturday Night, there was a decision to make about the future of the segment.
“I’m going to let it stay where it was,” Blackledge divulged. “As much as anything in respect for the guys that worked so hard with me on it on a weekly basis, I wouldn’t want to try to replicate that with other people.”
Blackledge has an earnest appreciation for his teammates and understands the value of everybody working together. While he does not work directly with the camera operators during broadcasts, he makes time to speak with them and the production staff about storylines he may follow to help them guide their shots. Moreover, Blackledge makes it a point to interact with them during the media meal instead of remaining affixed with his commentary partners, producer and director.
Growing up as the son of a coach, the gridiron was always transfixed in his psyche in addition to the broadcasts themselves. While playing pickup football games in his backyard, Blackledge vividly remembers announcing the contests by mimicking what he saw on television.
As his NFL career began to reach its end, Blackledge began to consider following his father’s footsteps in coaching. In fact, there were a couple of instances where he nearly joined collegiate coaching staffs, but he has grown to cherish sports media. None of it would have happened without his first boss, Guido D’Elia, taking a chance on him in 1990 while working with Penn State through D’Elia’s media production firm, Mind over Media. The outlet had produced the Emmy Award-winning weekly program, Penn State Football Story, which presented highlights and news about the Nittany Lions.
D’Elia taught Blackledge about writing, voicing over highlights and cameras among other things. During that first year, no network had decided to broadcast one of the team’s football games against Texas, resulting in Blackledge receiving his first chance as a color commentator. After calling an additional matchup, plus hosting the weekly recap show, D’Elia helped him compile a demo reel to send out to broadcast outlets for other opportunities.
“He was always challenging me and pushing me to try to take my game to the next level,” Blackledge said. “I am just forever grateful to him for that. To this day, he remains my primary mentor.”
D’Elia, a marketing consultant who is best known as the creator of the “White Out” at Beaver Stadium, has followed Blackledge throughout his broadcasting career. A couple of times a year, Blackledge contacts him and asks him to watch one of his games. The next day, D’Elia shares notes he jotted down.
“It sounds like it should be in the business of communications that there would be great communication from top to bottom,” Blackledge said. “There isn’t always, but if you find somebody that’ll tell you straight, that’s a valuable thing.”
When Blackledge was hired by the Big East Television Network to call 11 games in its first year though, he was not sure whether he would want his career to continue to grow.
“Fortunately, I did the Big East for a couple of years and I was able to add a few Bowl games here or there with ESPN and different things,” Blackledge said. “Then finally after three years, I got an opportunity to go to ABC. They only offered me six games, and they only guaranteed me six games, but at that point, I felt I was ready to take a bet on myself.”
Blackledge entered the ABC Sports role with a determination and focus to perform to the best of his ability, working with commentators such as Roger Twibell, Terry Gannon and Mark Jones. In his five years with the network, he was on the call for marquee matchups including the Army-Navy game and the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry, while also appearing on studio coverage. As he steadily gained more repetitions, Blackledge ensured he remembered a sagacious piece of advice he received from a television producer in 1990 when he was calling a game between Iowa and Miami (FL).
“He pulled me aside after the first production meeting and said, ‘Look, if you don’t remember anything else, remember this,’” Blackledge recalled. “‘The guy sitting next to you – his job is to tell people what happened – who made the carry; who made the tackle; what the down and distance is. That’s not your job; you don’t need to repeat what he said or what we just saw. Your job is trying to answer the question, ‘Why?’”
It may seem simple from the onset, but everything Blackledge does in the booth is geared towards being able to effectively parse moments of each game and convey his expertise. At the same time, he is able to infuse his personality into the conversation and be seen as more than just an unadorned courier.
CBS Sports recognized the strides Blackledge had made and tabbed him as its lead analyst for its coverage of college football in 1999 – including the Southeastern Conference and Army-Navy game among other events. The network is the place where Blackledge first paired with Sean McDonough, who he would later work with again at ESPN. The broadcast booth, which later included Verne Lundquist, traveled around the country to call games, with both commentators further developing as bonafide professionals.
Once Blackledge signed with ESPN in 2006, he started working with Mike Patrick on College Football Saturday Primetime and had the chance to call many captivating showdowns – including the National Championship Game on ESPN Radio. Over the years, he integrated his “Taste of the Town” segment.
Skilled at establishing rapport with his broadcast partners, Blackledge seamlessly transitioned when he was assigned new on-air partners such as Brad Nessler and Joe Tessitore. The key was in determining the broadcast styles of the commentators and blending in to maintain a steady sound on a week-by-week basis.
“For me, I never had any issues working with anybody because they were all great and all of them wanted to be successful and wanted our team to be successful,” Blackledge said. “It didn’t take long to adapt.”
Leading up to a game, Blackledge consumes an inordinate amount of information. He tries to watch the last three games of each team, along with any recent previous matchups between them. On Thursdays, he is usually traveling to the site of his Saturday game and attempts to arrive in time to watch afternoon practice.
Friday is usually when the broadcast team gets to meet with the head coach, offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator from the home team. If there was no conference call ahead of time with the visitors, they will meet in person with them as well, usually at the team hotel. By the time gameday comes around, he is ready to inform and educate viewers about all things college football.
“I like to get to the stadium early, [the] same way that I used to do when I played,” Blackledge said. “When you play in the NFL, they used to have the first bus earlier than the second bus, and I was a first bus guy. Sometimes, I was even [in] a cab before the first bus. I just liked to be there [and] get there early, and I like to do the same thing with broadcasting.”
When NBC Sports closed a seven-year deal with the Big Ten to acquire a share of its media rights, the network officially secured a prominent conference to pair with its exclusive broadcasts of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Blackledge did not foresee himself joining NBC Sports and was content with his role at ESPN, but ultimately received an offer to join the prime-time game that he could simply not refuse. What NBC brought to the table was intriguing to him in being part of launching a new era of Big Ten football. The conference now has a dedicated weekly prime-time slot on a national broadcast network for the first time, along with nine exclusive games on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock.
“I just think that game under the lights at that time of day has just got a great look and feels big and looks big and sounds big, so I’ve always enjoyed doing prime-time games,” Blackledge said. “With NBC doing the prime-time games and Big Ten and again just the way they made me feel, they wanted me to kind of be in the center of this new thing that they’re doing.”
Blackledge will work with 26-year-old rising star Noah Eagle, who was most recently the radio play-by-play voice of the LA Clippers. Blackledge has had the chance to interact with Eagle on several occasions and is already convinced that he is going to be a star in the business. Both broadcasters met to call a closed-circuit practice game together ahead of their debut on Saturday night when Penn State hosts West Virginia.
“I grew up the son of a coach and there’s real value in that,” Blackledge said, “and he grew up the son of a great broadcaster and in that kind of family, and I think there’s great value in that for him as well.”
Eagle and Blackledge will implement sideline reporter Kathryn Tappen, who is joining the property after primarily hosting different events for NBC Sports over the years. The broadcast trio, along with director Charlie Dammeyer and producer Matt Marvin, is filled with vast, award-winning experience.
“No matter how good of a player you are – and I’m sure Tom Brady will find this out; there’s nobody better than him – but doing TV is different than playing,” Blackledge said. “It takes work; it takes preparation [and] it takes understanding [that] you’ve got to speak in small windows [and] you’ve got to know the cadence and rhythm of the guy that you’re working with.”
Blackledge has been working in sports media for over three decades and has no signs of slowing down any time soon. Joining B1G Ten Saturday on NBC has reinvigorated him and given him a new challenge to conquer as part of his illustrious playing and commentating career. The job has a surfeit of travel that starts around Labor Day and ends just before Christmas, but the destinations are somewhat unfamiliar for Blackledge this time around. While he has called games in many of the venues, it has been several years since that point, and he is looking forward to “taking in all the flavors” of each location.
“I haven’t been to a game at Illinois in many years, and I haven’t been to a game in Madison for several years,” Blackledge shared. “I’ve only done one game ever in my career at Iowa, [so] there are venues that are great places for college football that I’m looking forward to getting back to and kind of visiting.”
Blackledge wants to be able to look back on the first few weeks of the program and see sustained progress to help elevate the show to the best football broadcast on television, including going up against those of the NFL. As high of an expectation as it may be, he trusts that it is attainable and something everybody should want. He will never be satisfied and knows there is always room to redefine what doing your best encapsulates.
“I’ll be calling Guido a couple of times this year and still taking input on how to improve, but it’s exciting to try to do it now with a whole new group of friends and a whole new group of people,” Blackledge said. “I think it’s going to be really, really exciting.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
