My next guest on "Straight from the Source" is one of the voices you've undoubtedly heard, if you watch national game broadcasts in virtually any sport. Adam Amin calls the NFL and MLB for Fox, and is the TV voice of the Chicago Bulls for NBC Sports Chicago. But Adam has literally covered pretty much any sport you can imagine during his career, especially when he and I were coworkers at ESPN. In our conversation he offers a lot of really great advice for those seeking to get involved in this business. He also shares a lot about his upbringing in Chicago and how sports had an impact on his life at such an early age. We also spoke about something we have in common, being the son of immigrants, and how that has shaped his work ethic and drive. Also, stay for the story about Adam's dad and how he became a baseball fan because of the similarities to his favorite sport, from his home country of Pakistan. This was a great chat with a good friend, and I hope you enjoy it!
Stefano: All right, we got another episode of straight from the source on Facebook Bulletin. Our guest is a great friend and one of the premier voices in the sports that we all love. Whether it's baseball, football, basketball, softball, hell he's even called the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. What doesn't he do? My former coworker ESPN, he now calls the NFL and MLB for Fox Sports and he's the voice of the Chicago Bulls on NBC Sports Chicago. Adam Amin. Thanks for joining me.
Adam: Man it's so good to see your face, so good to hear your voice brother. It's a long way from eating dinner on a cold night, Minnesota during the NBA playoffs...I feel like we're a long ways away from there and from hanging out in your old home of Houston Texas, my man.
Stefano: Absolutely man. It's wild. It's wild, how different the world is since the last time we saw each other without a doubt. So basically, were you just not able to decide what sport you really wanted to dive into and just decided, 'oh what the hell, I'll just do them all?'
Adam: I appreciate that man. You know, it's funny. I think I look at the modern, I don't know if that's the right term for it, but like the current era of broadcasting. I think that is the expectation for a lot of us now. I think we're in a content driven world. Obviously, when it comes to digital media, whatever it is, whether it's anything cultural, you know, music, movies, and definitely sports, we want to feel like we're all encompassing, in a lot of ways. I don't think the days are gone, of being a one sport announcer or anything like that. But you look at everybody who's doing this at the highest levels, this has been the case for the last, you know, 20, 25, 30 years. Take Marv Albert, who was doing everything in New York back in the day. He would do the football game on radio during the day, and he would do a basketball game on the radio at night. Then he'd run to the studio and do the Sunday night local news. He was kind of the first one to do that on a high level, and I think a lot of us who have started to pick this up in the last three or four decades, and especially in the last one or two decades, I think the expectation was that you need to be versatile. You need to be able to do everything because you know, you need to show your value. But obviously you want to cover a lot of cool stuff. Like the fact that you get to cover so many cool things is probably the biggest draw. But I think part of it was just the expectation. Like in college when I was on a college radio station in Valparaiso, Indiana, I was doing everything. And that was just like, 'Alright, I guess in my next job, I'll just do whatever they asked me to do.' That helped when ESPN called and they were looking for somebody who could fill out a lot of different positions. They needed somebody who knew how to cover wrestling, which I had done during college, covering high school wrestling in the state of Iowa. They needed somebody who'd covered softball, which I'd done covering the division two, Women's College World Series. They needed somebody who did basketball and baseball, which I did a lot of high school, college and minor league baseball. I've done so many of those things that at that point, just the expectation was, 'Hey, you can do this. Do you want to do it? We need somebody who can.' I'm like, 'Nobody else is asking, so I'm happy to jump in. That's just kind of been my gig for the last 10 years. And believe it or not, it's narrowed down now...I only cover three sports now. So that's nuts. Right?
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