The following is our weekly roundup of some of the sportscasting news that has been making headlines recently.
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On behalf of the ASA Board of Directors Jim Nantz, Bill Walton, Lesley Visser and Jon Miller, I would like to wish our Members and Friends a Happy, Healthy and Successful New Year.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to family and friends of Ed Aschoff, ESPN SEC reporter, who passed away on December 24, his 34th birthday, after a nearly month long battle with pneumonia.
Aschoff , an Oxford, Miss. native, graduated from the University of Florida with a journalism degree in 2008. He covered Gators football, basketball, and baseball for The Gainesville Sun before being hired by ESPN in 2011. He rose through the ranks to become a sideline reporter which included national coverage starting in 2017.
Aschoff revealed on Instagram that he came down with pneumonia while covering last month’s Ohio State-Michigan game and posted on Twitter that he had a virus two weeks before that and turned into multifocal pneumonia.
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Another untimely passing occurred on December 17 as aspiring sportscaster Austin Denton, known as "The Voice" of La Cueva high school in New Mexico, passed away due to complications from a spinal cord tumor. He was just 18.
Although Denton had been relegated to a wheel chair after years of battling the tumor on his spine which was discovered when he was just 2, he never let his condition stop him from his dream of becoming a sportscaster. He did public address and play-by-play at his high school and was even hired by local ESPN Radio station KQTM and ProView Networks to assist with high school football and basketball coverage.
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Jamie Jarrin, legendary Spanish-language announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was named as one of the Honored Guests for the 131st Rose Parade. The parade, hosted by the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, is held annually on New Year's Day to mark the start of the Rose Bowl.
We want to wish a speedy recovery to Bill Hillgrove, Lifetime ASA member and longtime voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers and University of Pittsburgh football and basketball, who underwent back surgery. Hillgrove has not missed a Steelers game since taking over as the head play-by-play man in 1994 and has been the voice of Pitt since the 1970s.
David Fizdale, former coach of the New York Knicks, will return to ESPN as an NBA analyst. Fizdale, who was fired by the Knicks in early December, had done some work for ESPN between head coaching jobs with the Memphis Grizzlies and in New York.
Pat Hughes, radio voice of the Chicago Cubs, has paid tribute to longtime NBC broadcaster Bob Costas with the latest edition of his "Baseball Voices" CD. The audio compilation features many of the greatest calls and memorable moments from the ASA Advisory Board Member's illustrious career as voice of NBC's "Game of the Week," the MLB Network and more.
It looks as though CBS will not renew its contract with SEC Football when it expires in 2023. All indications point to ESPN/ABC taking over the package.
Tim Rosaforte, well respected golf writer and broadcaster for nearly 40 years, announced he will be retiring at year's end. Rosaforte, an award winning writer for Golf Digest and Gold Week, has served as an Insider for the Golf Channel since 2007.