SAN ANTONIO ?
ULM alum, veteran television sports announcer, and nationally recognized radio
personality Tim Brando received the College Sports Information Directors of America
(CoSIDA) Jake Wade Award Wednesday at the CoSIDA Convention in San Antonio,
Texas.
“CoSIDA has honored me beyond
comprehension with this award,” Brando said. “To be mentioned alongside the
past recipients, Keith Jackson, Dick Enberg, and Dick Vitale to name a
few, is truly humbling. It was just over 20 years ago when
Vitale and I came to [Fant] Ewing Coliseum to call an NCAA play in game that
brought national attention to the campus. It was so much fun to call that
game.”
The Jake Wade Award is presented
annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution in the media
to the field of intercollegiate athletics. Previous recipients include:
Keith Jackson, Furman Bisher, Dick Enberg, Jim Simpson, Dan Jenkins, Dick
Vitale, Robin Roberts, Christine Brennan and Billy Packer.
Brando was a visible presence at the
First Caddo/Bossier ULM Alumni Golf Tournament held earlier this month in
Shreveport, La. The event raised money towards endowing a scholarship for
students at ULM.
“It is nice to reconnect with the
University,” Brando said. “Led by [athletics director] Bobby
Staub, everyone at ULM is doing a great job of reaching out to alumni to bring them back to the
program. This extends to [football head coach] Charlie Weatherbie and his
staff and [men's basketball head coach] Orlando Early and his staff, who were
both at the golf tournament a few weeks ago when they could have easily been on
vacation.”
The award is named for Jake Wade, the
widely acclaimed sports journalist and national magazine contributor for the Charlotte
Observer and sports information director at the University of North
Carolina from 1946-62.
In a career that began as a 14-year old play-by-play personality for the
Neville High School Tigers, Brando joined CBS Sports in
1995 as a play-by-play announcer for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship and
has served as host of “College Football Today”, CBS's pre-game studio show,
since 1998. In addition, he has called play-by-play for “The NFL on CBS”
and has hosted “At the Half”, CBS Sports' college basketball halftime studio
show.
Brando also calls play-by-play for coverage of Southeastern Conference (SEC)
and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) basketball broadcasts. He hosts “The
Tim Brando Show” every afternoon on Sporting News radio. He has covered
more than 25 different sports throughout his broadcasting career.
Brando called play-by-play for CBS Sports' regular-season college football
coverage in 1997 and for the 1998 Fiesta Bowl. He has called play-by-play
for SEC football games and SportSouth Television's coverage of the NBA's
Atlanta Hawks and MLB's Atlanta Braves.
He was the studio host for
“SportsCenter”, for ESPN's college football halftime show (1986-94) and for
ESPN's coverage of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship (1987-90). In
addition, he served as a play-by-play announcer for TNT during the 1994 NBA
Playoffs. From 1981-86, he was the sports director at WAFB-TV Baton Rouge
and the voice of LSU basketball games.
