It's been a great year for Long Horn football this year, and the guy that has called every single play and by the way, has kept me company a lot. On Saturday afternoons and Saturday evenings, the voice of the long Horns, the one and only Craig Wait, joins us.
Good morning, Craig, Good morning, And it begs the eternal question, what in the world are you doing with your saturdays otherwise?
But you know, I've found myself recently taking you on my walks On Saturday. I walk about for about an hour and I am streaming you on the iHeartRadio app and listening to the football games. And as I'm making my way through the Brushy Creek Trail, I feel like I'm right there sitting at dk R with the game. I love listening to sports on the radio. I love it. I like watching on TV, too, but I just think radio is just different.
And I'm netflix guy for football.
And I will say this, I've been blessed enough and fortunate enough to where I do quite a bit of both, mainly radio, but the high school football state championships on television and done some other television assignments. A Cowboys preseason game, I've done several other things. But I'm with you, Sandy, and I think we're all kind of in agreement with this, since we're all kind of you know, radio hanks and have been for some time that there is something extra
special about the radio. We do have more of a canvas, and we are really responsible for painting a proper picture on that TV that you know, there are pictures to go with it, so you have to kind of pick your spots and you don't have to overtalk it unless, of course, it's a simulcast, and we've had that with some early season Texas basketball games. And I'll say that up front. You know, we walcome the simulcast of our radio call, so people won't say, you know, why in
the hell is he talking so much? I mean, that's an eternal question about me anyway, But especially with regard to a game, and unless it's a simulcas as, television is different than radio, but on radio you have to be the eyes of the years. You have to do the proper things to make sure people understand left from right and what color of the uniforms, and how the stadium looks and north to south and things like that. Those are all part of the responsibility.
I think I love it when you say left to right on your radio dial. Okay, now I can picture which way the Longhorns are going. I got that. You guys are also on TV. Now we got the local call. I saw this weekend on one of the ESPN channels. I think you can listen to Craig call on the radio on television. That's really cool. Is that new?
It's been around a few years, but the ESPN has put this in on their coverage of the telecast in the college football Playoff now. Of course, until this year, it was a four team playoff for the prior nine seasons, so it was in the semifinals and it was up there last year when Texas played in the Sugar bubl they'll do is in addition to their regular feed, and they have about six or seven feeds, because they realize
a lot of people are dialed into that. So instead of putting on on one of their other channels, you know whatever, bowling or or or you know what, the dog jumping competitions and things like that, poker shows, things like that, they realized they could give fans a lot of different angles. So what they'll do is they'll have the regular telecast, and they'll have a feed in Spanish. They'll also have what they call a skycam look and you're looking from up top of the skycam. They'll have
an All twenty two. They'll have a room with a bunch of coaches sitting around talking about it throughout the course of the game. But one of the things they provide is they feed and they call it the hometown radio broadcast, so they'll have the broadcast feeds of both of the competing team's radio network. Now sometimes, like they did last week, they pair it like with a skycam. Add somebody you know text me and say, hey, I really enjoyed you broadcast, but looking at it from the
skycap made me dizzy, and I get that. But they also made it available i think on ESPN Plus to where you get the regular feed with our broadcast. So it's a service and it's nice of ESPN to do that because they know there's a lot of people out there who probably want to listen to their radio guy who's been calling it all year long and for several years, and so they provide that for both teams, which I think is a good thing.
Craig Way is our guest the voice of the Longhorns. Longhorns playing Saturday in the Cotton Bowl at AT and T Stadium in Arlington against Ohio State. Craig thanks again for taking the time to visit with you, JB. I feel like I'm hogging all this. You got something for crag I do.
I'd love to get you because you've been covering long Horn football for a long time, and then so much has changed in the last year SCC for the Longhorns, the transfer portal nil and it's funny I forgot you covered like state championship high school too.
I watched that.
I watched some of that game, and it looked like college football.
I watched college football.
It looks like pro football.
Pro football is in the stratosphere right now.
But give me your overall thoughts on this status in the state of Longhorn football in this new era, because you've been there when it was I mean, I was there dog days of the eighties and then you know, it was such a heyday, the Vince Young, mac Brown, Colt McCoy era, then a slump for a decade and this is like on a level we've never seen.
I agree with you at JB. On a lot of levels. My first year on the network was nineteen eighty eight, when I was the studio anchor for four seasons on the old Southwest Conference Radio network when they used to bring in all the broadcast into one studio in Dallas, when I was living and working in Dallas at the time, And my first season in the booth was nineteen ninety two. Is the analyst to Bill Shooning. We did ten football and nine basketball seasons together before he left to become
the play by play voice of the Spurs. So I moved over to the play by play in the O one o two season and during that time, that's my twenty fourth year in the play by play role. I've seen a lot of change with it. I mean, you go all the way back and Matt Brown was the coach then, and you mentioned Vince Young. In the Great Run, they had ten consecutive seasons of nine or more wins. They had nine consecutive seasons of ten or more, and
there was a complacency there from the fan base. There invariably is no matter how good or how bad you are, but there was. And then when the Long Orange hit lean times, it was kind of tough there was basically a decade where they just, you know it, really struggled to get back up there. And then they had a few years where they were winning and getting the bowl games, but there didn't seem to be any real heavy duty
upward mobility of the program. And it took Sark, I think, coming in three years ago, going up four years ago to really make this work where we just passed the four year anniversary when he was actually announced when he came in, and I think what Sark has brought to the program is because he spent time in the NFL, because he spent time with the program like Alabama, understanding to your point how it he has kind of elevated to an almost NFL style level, and he's kind of
brought that in terms of what his offensive playbook is, what the program's expectations are. You mentioned nil and transfer portal, and you know, with the additional money that goes into it and things of that nature, all of that is really really big. I think that what he's done is the broadened what the scope of long Horn football is supposed to be all about. And now now in this expanded playoff, think about it, Texas is about to play
its sixteenth game for the season. They've never done that before. They've never won more than thirteen games, and that was the national championship year of five in the year they lost Alabama in the championship game, you know nine, they won thirteen each of those. They won thirteen this year and they're trying to get to a program record fourteenth And even if they get that, they only won the
national title yet though, I have one more game. So it is a different world in college football, and I think Sark has proven to be the guy to lead them into that next generation of what college football was all about.
Craig Way is our guest. We're gonna take a quick break and come back with more with Craig in just a moment. But during the break, Craig, I want you to ask you a question. I want you to think about it. If you had to do one of the Longhorned sports, football, basketball, or baseball for free, which one would you do? Okay, I hope none, But if you had to, which one would you do for free? And Tricia, you got to jump in here and have something for Craig,
So think about a question. Okay, we don't want to leave you out all right, stay with us more with Craig Way, the voice of the Longhorns, coming up on Austin's eighties station, What three point one