The advice that I give every student, intern, and young professional that I come in contact with is to do and learn as much as you can. Take on as many roles as you’re provided because you never know where your opportunity will come from.

Even 15+ years into my career, that still rings true.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been able to use my experience in television and my familiarity on the production side of the operation to work with The University of Alabama’s video team whenever they need a spot filled on a broadcast. Those jobs have been as basic as a grip carrying cables behind a camera to running the scorebug for a softball game to ADing a gymnastics meet. Some roles I’ve done before but others were brand new and called for training, but I never said no to a job if the schedule allowed.

That time and flexibility – along with the other work I’ve put in on the radio side as co-host for the Alabama pregame show and other on-air spots – put me in a position to get a chance to do something I never really thought about or envisioned: television play-by-play. With Eli Gold out for a couple days and the other usual broadcasters unavailable, I got a text asking if I’d be interested.

At first I thought it was a joke because it’s something I’ve never discussed with anyone. But they were serious. The game was in three days and no one was available on short notice. My first reaction was there was no way. Sure, I know how everything works behind the scenes but I’ve never taken direction from a producer while trying to form a thought, structure a sentence, and deliver it coherently. How do you set up a highlight package? What about the open? The idea of making a television debut calling SEC baseball in three days seemed overwhelming.

But what the hell, I thought. What’s the worse that can happen? I stumble around some or need a couple extra takes on the postgame hit? This might be the only time this opportunity comes along so follow your own advice and take it.

So I did.

As it turns out, rain ended up threatening the weekend games so Friday became a doubleheader and all of a sudden I had twice as much to prepare for. Of course that would happen.

I won’t go on too much more about the game itself. You can actually go see it right now on the Watch ESPN app if you’d like.

I also plan to post some highlights on this site in the near future. I will say that it went much smoother than I ever imagined and was a whole lot of fun. Having a good color analyst, producer, and director were a lot of help and made things easier. Plus, how many people can say they filled in for Eli Gold??

Who knows if this will need to anything more. Probably not but I’m pretty proud to have put myself out there and taken on a brand new challenge. Thank you to everyone that watched or sent a message. It meant a lot.