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The aroma of gameday is discernible to those within the college football tailgate scene, a vivid scent that lights an enduring flame replete with tradition, dedication and passion. Although the sport can take its fans on a rollercoaster fluctuating between peaks and valleys, the legion of ardent fans pack stadiums and bring a collective zeal on a weekly basis. ESPN Radio strives to transport listeners to the environment and immerse them within the collection of customs, grandeur and competition.
With an exhilarating college football season on the precipice featuring an expanded 12-team playoff, the conversations within ESPN Radio began early this year to resume broadcasting from campuses across the country. Amid changes such as the transfer portal, conference realignment and the ability for athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness, the national radio network has strived to remain at the forefront of coverage and continue serving its fans. Jonathan Zaslow has played a critical role throughout the process as the host of College Football Tailgate, a Saturday morning show to prepare listeners for kickoff and familiarize them with the environment.
“We have people around us because we have speakers that blast the show,” Zaslow explained, “and [I] say, ‘Bring me food; bring me gifts. Who wants to feed me?,’ and that’s been one of the fun things that people will [do is] bring us food to try, specific items that are specific to the town that we’re in.”
Over the last several years, ESPN Radio has broadcast a program to prepare listeners for the Saturday slate of games across multiple conferences, but the outlet looked to enhance the offering through on-site broadcasts. The network had previously traveled on a College GameDay tour for seven years preceding the onset of the global pandemic, which delayed a pursuit of new ideas about the undertaking.
“We haven’t been on the road in this kind of mobile tour fashion since I’ve been with ESPN Radio,” said Megan Judge, senior director of marketing and events for ESPN Radio, “and so to build something from scratch with a team of people who are just as excited about doing it as I was and then seeing it come to life and knowing that the sponsors are loving it and the fans are having a good time with it and the talent is already thinking about, ‘We could do this next year. We could do that next year,’ it’s just been, all and all, it’s really been a wonderful experience.”
Since that time, ESPN Radio has expanded its audio partnership with Good Karma Brands through local marketing agreements, station operations and responsibility for sales of the radio and podcast networks. Additionally, the network reached a deal with Roadwerx to lease an Airstream trailer that functions as a mobile studio and is complete with ESPN Radio branding to use for events.
Despite not having a tangible proof of concept relating to this specific idea, Judge believes that previous event successes, ability of talent and a cogent presentation outlining the vision helped procure sponsors. At the same time, she acknowledges that these brands, including Monster Energy, Servpro, GNC, Verizon and SiriusXM, decided to take leaps of faith and that ESPN Radio has sought to satisfy their ambitions.
“I think the nerves we had and the butterflies we had before the first market quickly turned into the excitement of, ‘This is working,’” Judge said, “and each week has gotten better – week after week of the season as we’ve tweaked things and added things and started a list of all the great things that we want to add for next year.
Program director Mike Urrunaga, who oversees evening and weekend shows on ESPN Radio, crafted the schedule with an intent that spanned beyond traveling to marquee matchups, factoring intangibles spanning beyond the gridiron. While there have been some changes throughout the year, he ensured to create a schedule enabling the network to maximize the tailgating environment on its shows. For example, the show was initially supposed to visit the reigning national champion Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor, Mich. once this season, but after a stellar experience and better alignment of start times, it ended up returning to the university last Saturday.
“Really the games themselves weren’t necessarily the No. 1 factor of going,” Urrunaga said. “It was much more about going to the tailgating location and going to the place where we could really showcase that.”
Urrunaga works alongside weekend program director Stosh Cienki to oversee the execution of the two road broadcasts each week, beginning with a special edition of Amber & Ian on Friday nights. Whereas the weekday show discusses the national sports landscape, albeit with extra emphasis on college football at week’s end, the Saturday morning lead-in program hones in exclusively on establishing the schedule.
“What I consider successful with this thing is us being in the heart of a tailgate area where we’re surrounded by fans, people having fun [and] bringing some energy to add to what we’re already doing,” Cienki said. “I think that’s important to this whole thing – just being able to be in locations where we’re surrounded by crazy fans and just taking advantage of the campus atmosphere each week.”
Zaslow was ecstatic to be offered the chance to be part of the project, and he has observed an augmented passion for college football as a whole. On Friday mornings during the season, he flies to the given destination and completes his preparation. The original intention was to have Zaslow co-host with Amber Wilson, reuniting a midday duo that worked together on 790 The Ticket in Miami, Fla., and adding former running back Rashad Jennings. Wilson has not been on the show since its first week after taking maternity leave, leading to the venture primarily becoming a two-person program.
“One of the fun parts that I’ve liked about it is because he’s a former player, he never experienced tailgating,” Zaslow said of Jennings. “It’s likely a foreign concept to most players, so I like being able to lean into him experiencing this atmosphere that I’m also experiencing to an extent.”
“I think Amber and Jonathan are both people who are really good at what they do, and when Amber went out and had a baby, it was just such a natural transition, an easy adjustment to make,” Cienki added. “All you’re missing really is the extra voice.”
Wilson has been asking Urrunaga every week when she can return, and the network is looking forward to having her back on the road hosting programming. The road edition of Amber & Ian has broadcast from several unique locations, such as inside Michigan Stadium, a sportsbook and various sports bars.
For the College Football Tailgate show on the next day, the Airstream studio provides a distinct brand identity that has become a popular destination for photographs and gathering spot for an assemblage of listeners. This unit allows ESPN Radio to quickly and efficiently move between locations and broadcast national radio programming. The arrangement has generated intrigue and rendered a nimble spirit, leading the company to plan on equipping the unit again for other signature events, including the College Football Playoff, the NFL Draft and potentially Super Bowl LIX.
“We’re thinking about things that we can do with some of our other shows and properties, like UnSportsmanLike and even some of our podcasts,” Judge said. “The way we built it out means that it’ll work for radio, it’ll work for podcasting, and it’s a fun experience when you’re driving down the road and you see the big football – it’s either coming at you or in front of you – so we want to take as much advantage of it as we can for as many shows as we can.”
Monster Energy has sent regional and local activation teams to the Airstream trailer to promote its products, achieving its ambition of being situated in high-traffic locations. The company sought for consumers to sample its product at the epicenter of college campuses while also connecting with retailers. Conversations about residual benefits to facilitate marketing concepts and subsequent strategies to extend product reach have actualized into palpable results, ostensibly providing a business lift that will be evaluated in its totality once the journey concludes later this month.
As part of the tour, local stations have partnered with ESPN Radio to air the Saturday morning show, including affiliates within the cluster, and personalities have joined for segments as guests. Fans can also consume the programming using digital and web-based platforms, along with evincing visuals of the action through social media. The network has brought its social media team to every event and could aim to expand that facet of its coverage in the future.
“We like to go around to different spots in the cities we visit and shoot social content, which I think puts a spotlight on some great college towns,” Cienki said. “Continuing to come up with creative ways to include social in our overall presentation will be important. In terms of catering to different audiences, our goal is to set the table for the day in college football, so while it’s important to include our live audience in some of the fun, we also have to have the big picture in mind.”
During a recent outing in Nashville, Tenn., a young couple attended the roadshow as part of their bachelor and bachelorette parties. The soon-to-be newlyweds took pictures with Zaslow and Jennings, and the network decided to give them helmets off the side of the truck so they could have them for their celebration. In return, the couple stated that they would bring those helmets to their wedding and put them on the table, demonstrating the impact of the gesture.
“They knew ESPN Radio, they talked to us about the individual shows that they listen to, and for me, if somebody’s enjoying us on radio, that’s awesome,” Judge said. “If somebody’s enjoying us in the form of a podcast, that’s great. What we want to do is serve the fan in whatever way they want to engage with our content. Whatever platform they’re listening to, we want to be there, and from that young people through the older, more established alumni who are there at the game, we’re never going in somewhere where people don’t know ESPN and ESPN Radio and they don’t have a sense of kind of where we fit in that celebration of sports.”
At the conclusion of every show, Zaslow makes his pick for the local game amid the crowd of fans, and he is indifferent towards the overall reaction. In a similar concept of the longstanding tradition of analyst Lee Corso on College GameDay donning the mascot headgear of the team he thinks will win, Zaslow wears a foam finger of his projected victor. In correspondence with this practice, he throws the foam finger of the other team into the crowd, a memento for a lucky fan.
“I know it comes out of my mouth, and it sounds stupid, but these people in every college town that we’re at, every campus, every stadium we’re at, they love college football more than I love anything in my life,” Zaslow said. “They love it so much, it really is their lives. It’s the most important event for them every single week.”
ESPN Radio would like to continue the roadshow enterprise in the future, and Judge hopes that the programming team feels good about the ability of talent to provide strong programming. A common thread across the board is in solving the occasional gaps between showtime and gametime. Urrunaga also wants to explore adding a video streaming element to the shows.
“I want to investigate as many as we can to see which ones really are the best, and there’s a ton of places,” Urrunaga said. “I have on my board in my office a list of places that I want to try and hit for 2025, and it doesn’t even put a dent in the [complete] list of places that I really want to go overall.”
In addition to these innovations, Judge wants to continue working with the sponsors next year to take their ventures even further while also revisiting companies who passed and exploring new prospects. The ESPN Radio team intends to evaluate both quantitative and qualitative data in reviewing the project when it is completed this year, serving as a barometer for how to raise the bar going forward. Through it all, the audio division is striving to keep serving the sports fan and create a peerless value proposition to garner patronization through time spent listening and retention.
“The opportunity for us to go out to where the fans are is an incredible experience,” Judge said. “We’re very known for our national brands and for the main national shows that we have. When people see that brought to them – and not just brought to their market, but a celebration of their market – it’s phenomenal for us from just a fan relationship and fan loyalty perspective. It doesn’t hurt to have a mobile billboard driving a couple thousand miles and kind of always being in the midst of the excitement of the game.”
Derek Futterman is a former associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. Find him on X @derekfutterman.
