Within the corridors of Barclays Center, Fox Sports is preparing to air a women’s college basketball doubleheader featuring star players, storied programs and invested patrons. Fans cheering on the Tennessee Lady Volunteers and Louisville Cardinals are dispersed around the arena bowl, and the crowd expands as the day goes on with attendees showcasing their pride for the Iowa Hawkeyes and UConn Huskies.
Situated courtside across from the center circle is the broadcast table, which is where the national commentary team of play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti and analyst Sarah Kustok will call the doubleheader action live on Fox. Out of public view are the luggage and other traveling bags that the tandem has packed in preparation for a subsequent flight to Phoenix, Ariz., where they will call an NFL game the very next day.
The 48-hour undertaking that will shuttle Benetti and Kustok across the country between two different sports is par for the course across the business. Many sports media professionals take on multiple jobs throughout the year, demonstrating their versatility across various sports. For now, Benetti and Kustok are focused on offering a compelling broadcast product that leverages their preparation, perspective and knowledge of the sport while delivering for the audience.
“The last thing I ever want to do is go back and watch the end of a game and think, ‘Oh, I was lagging a little bit,'” Benetti said. “Even if I don’t notice it in real time, I want to make sure I have that punch, make sure that if something big happens, it gets its complete due. Because nobody at home cares that Billy Joel is doing his 30th appearance in 28 nights. They just want to hear ‘The Stranger.'”
Ahead of the on-air presentation, Benetti and Kustok rehearse their open at the broadcast table and communicate with producers. While there is a producer and other staff on-site, the majority of the production operates remotely from Los Angeles. As the broadcasters review their notes and other storylines, the players warm up on the court.
“[T]here, for me, is no greater joy [than] having the opportunity to call live sporting events, and I think really so much of what I would attribute [to] who I am as a professional dates back to my upbringing as an athlete,” Kustok said. “I think we have always been so conditioned to discipline, to commitment, to just being able to keep yourself at a peak level of performance when you’re doing something you’re really passionate about and you’ve poured preparation into.”
The broadcast table itself features an array of game notes, charts and other resources to be utilized throughout the game. An assortment of monitors placed at its edge display the program feed, scorebug and live statistics, and the network has a dedicated card screen featuring sponsorship and promotional reads. Kustok also happens to keep a polychromatic array of highlighters in front of her, which help her stay organized and ready to execute her role.
“People tend to tease me about that because I am very systematic,” Kustok said. “I think that’s part of doing the job and the preparation with it and keeping everything kind of compartmentalized of making sure you have this information that you need at the moments you need it. I have kind of, through the course of the year, created a system that works best for me.”
Kustok estimates that she only uses approximately 10% of the background information that she compiles ahead of a given broadcast. Benetti added that the key for interacting with his boards is to extrapolate the information most relevant to the game and recollect what insights he obtained through his preparation.
Adhering to this principle, Benetti remembered talking to a Tennessee coach about their experience leading a group to victory in Division II. The coach mentioned the memory of confetti raining down upon the win, something Benetti realized is seldom seen at that level. The anecdote made it to the airwaves in the fleeting moments of the opening game and added context to the season at large.
“With a minute left, Sarah and I were just talking about something, and I just found that piece of information so human and so interesting that, in a blowout, you can have a little more leeway for something that doesn’t necessarily have a natural hook,” Benetti said. “But as we talked about it, it was really about how she wants to get Tennessee to the level where they’re winning championships, which gave us a reason to talk about that detail.”
Both of these broadcasters have studied and worked in professions that also require mental acuity and critical thinking. Benetti, who holds a law degree, first met Kustok when he was calling DePaul women’s basketball games out of college. Kustok was an assistant coach at that time after she had played for the team over four years as an undergraduate student, and she ended up broadcasting locally in Chicago. Since Benetti and Kustok have been colleagues at Fox Sports, the duo has worked together on several national college basketball and football broadcasts around the country.
While Benetti was providing the play-by-play call for both sports on this particular weekend, Kustok was working in a hybrid analyst and reporter role. Once the Tennessee-Louisville game reached its conclusion, she stepped in front of the broadcast table and traded her analyst headset for a handheld microphone flanked with a Fox Sports logo.
Kustok interviewed Louisville G Imari Berry, who collected the first double-double of her career in the 24-point victory. In order to balance her analysis and reporting jobs, Kustok blends what she sees during the game with what she learned beforehand.
“There’s observations that happen through the course of the game and the storylines of the game,” Kustok said, “but I also think a big part of it does come from prior preparation, whether it’s prior conversations or going through things.”
In addition to her role with Fox Sports, Kustok works as the television analyst for the Brooklyn Nets on YES Network. Kustok made history entering the position as the first woman to serve as a full-time solo television analyst for an NBA team. She continues to maintain a national presence as an analyst on Unrivaled Basketball games airing on TNT Sports, along with occasional NBA games on ESPN Radio.
“I think through the course of my career, I have been in a lot of different roles, and whether it’s hosting in a studio, whether it’s the analyst role, whether it’s a sideline role, that kind of had been a part of my weaving into broadcasting of learning all those different nuances,” Kustok said. “And I think, for me, I actually really appreciate the challenge and the flexibility of being able to tap into those different skillsets because they are very different.”
Throughout the opening matchup, Kustok views the competition live on the floor but is also aware of what is being displayed on television. Most of the time, she scans the program monitor when there is an out-of-bounds violation or a replay being presented to the viewing audience. The same principle applies with specific graphics that impart key information such as recent performances, season averages and the overall standings. Kustok estimates that she is focused on the basketball court for 90% of the time while gameplay occurs, but she nonetheless values how the Fox Sports team documents the action.
“The best support you can give the truck as they support you is to be talking to the pictures you’re seeing on the screen,” Kustok said. “And so if I’m talking about Connecticut, but they’re showing images of Tennessee players, it’s in our best broadcast interest for me to transition into conversation about Tennessee so people at home are viewing the same type of pictures as they are to words, and I think the synchronicity of that always is most helpful.”
The vantage point afforded behind the broadcast table allows for Benetti and Kustok to hear players, coaches and officials as they perform their roles. Benetti observed one player shouting that the team had five seconds to move the basketball over the timeline off an inbound, and he disclosed that information to the viewers.
Like Kustok, Benetti primarily watched the game action in front of him, periodically jotting down statistical information beneath the names of players on his game charts and meticulously reviewing the official box score sheets as they were ushered to the table.
“Prep is really about giving me all of those touchstones in my mind to make sure that when something happens in the game that’s really relevant to something that we unearthed in the prep, we get there — but only when it makes sense through the flow of the game, which is why I mentioned that note in the blowout,” Benetti said. “In a 30-point game, you’re not really beholden to the action as much, so then you can go wander a little bit more in the Bill Walton sense – God love him – but the purpose of my prep now is to make sure that I’m ready for everything that happens.”
Benetti is able to observe different trends in the game in part thanks to the assistance of Ed Sfida, an industry veteran who tracks and writes down key statistical metrics, such as points off the bench, different scoring runs and points scored off turnovers. Benetti believes Sfida is “the best in the business” and appreciates that he provides the necessary context to accompany the numbers.
“There’s a reason we have eyewitness testimony studies in the law,” Benetti said, noting that the eye-test may not always match reality. “Maybe one play happened that suggested that UConn was crushing Iowa on the fast break. But what if that’s not true? What if we just remember a couple of moments that obviously really stood out like neon?”
As Iowa and UConn warm up for their afternoon matchup, Benetti reviews his game notes and statistics over a quick lunch to maintain the necessary energy for the next call. “Eating seems so rudimentary, but I know myself enough to know that if I don’t have breakfast, I’m not as good,” Benetti said. “I just need to have some level of energy inside of me to make sure that I’ve got the punch to make it feel important because it is.”
When Kustok is calling games, she tries to ensure she keeps information that is the most relevant at the forefront. The challenge is not always having time to review notes amid game action, and the broadcast flow can be somewhat governed by what occurs on the floor. Ahead of games, she studies film, reviews statistics and reads articles to make sure she arrives at the arena with enough knowledge to account for any turn the game might take.
“There’s a blend of all of those things that I think kind of leads me into, when I’m about to start a broadcast, having all those different components of knowing what may be useful and what may be just kind of on the side of [something that] doesn’t necessarily get brought up,” Kustok said. “But I think for me, still, it’s helpful to have that knowledge going into the broadcast so you’re prepared for whatever it is you need to tap into.”
With UConn beating Iowa by 26 points and an NFL doubleheader looming later in the day, the broadcast worked to keep people interested.
“I think of it as a bell curve honestly,” Benetti said. “You put a hundred announcers in our seats. How many of them are keeping the audience interested in a game where the scoreboard suggests that maybe calling your niece might be a good idea in the second half or playing a board game, right? But if there are a hundred announcers, how many can really have, informationally, stuff that’s interesting enough to lock in the viewer?”
When the game ended, Kustok interviewed UConn head coach Geno Auriemma and star G Azzi Fudd before the broadcasters signed off for the day.
“They don’t care if I got six hours of sleep or four hours of sleep or the headset wasn’t working or whatever – they just want to watch the game they tuned in for,” Benetti said. “So in order to do that justice, you have to have the energy to make this one play that’s happening right now feel like the only play that’s happening all day or else you’re shortchanging it.”
Once the on-site broadcast ended, Benetti and Kustok grabbed their luggage from under the broadcast table and hurried out of Barclays Center to catch a cross-country flight out of Newark Liberty International Airport to call the NFL game between the Arizona Cardinals and Atlanta Falcons.
“It was like Steve Martin and John Candy, ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ for a day, but it really helps to have people you like around you, and that’s what we were dealing with,” Benetti said. “….[A] lot of people have a lot harder jobs, so if the worst part of our travel day is a five-hour flight to Phoenix to go do an NFL game, we’re doing okay.”
“I think the opportunity to be around people that you can have fun with and bring a sense of energy and light is something that is through those moments – even when me and Jason were headed to the airport and getting on the plane, and you turn around and you’re waking up early,” Kustok added. “It’s like there are not many things that are better than this, and so I think that’s something that always remains at the forefront of my mind no matter what I’m doing.”
