Welcome back to “On the Air,” in which Sports Media Watch Podcast co-host Armand Broady will offer in-depth breakdowns of broadcasters, on-air performance and career journeys, plus chronicle broader trends in the industry.
Mark Jones’ 36-year career at ESPN is coming to an end. Any broadcaster who can boast that kind of longevity at one network is to be commended, but Jones’ success at ESPN is extraordinary considering the way he has navigated the industry. When he began in 1990, Jones stepped into a sports television domain that looked vastly different from the one fans know today.
At that time, studio hosts and play-by-play announcers were largely expected to present the facts with no frills — just the foundational principles of who, what, when and where.
There was the occasional outlier. Brent Musburger had become a ubiquitous superstar at CBS, and his controversial exit from the network in April 1990 rocked sports media. ESPN’s Chris Berman had already been named National Sportscaster of the Year. His spirited delivery of highlights and his unusual player nicknames brought vitality to shows like “NFL Primetime,” “SportsCenter” and “NFL Gameday.”
But on the whole, presenters relied on a more modest approach, leaving room for their analysts to add the sizzle. Perhaps the most obvious example of this dynamic is the revered football broadcast duo Pat Summerall and John Madden who, by the time Jones began at ESPN, had long rested atop the field as the gold standard. Summerall’s minimalistic manner, shaped by longtime football voice Ray Scott, provided Madden with ample space to offer his eccentric analysis and become the game’s greatest and most influential television commentator.
This established backdrop made Jones’ unique method all the more noteworthy and, at times, a target of criticism. Jones, a proud African-Canadian, was different, in many ways — from his obvious look to his expansive lexicon to his frequent on-air references to hip hop music.
For decades, Jones has blended SAT-level vocabulary with urban slang and culturally relevant metaphors. “Davion Mitchell was in his face like acne,” Jones said during a 2023 NBA contest. “Put ’em on a flight like an IG model,” Jones once exclaimed to describe a player getting his defender in the air with a pump fake. When a player is on an offensive roll, he/she is “hotter than fish grease.”
Perhaps his most famous call came at the end of a Florida State-Georgia Tech football game broadcast in October 2015. Georgia Tech had just blocked a potential game-winning field goal and was returning the ball for a long TD run. Defensive back Lance Austin ran into the end zone while Jones shouted, “You can’t believe what just happened! What a time to be alive!” Jones’ voice-cracking call, a nod to the mixtape rappers Drake and Future had released the month prior, became an instant classic.
In the same breath, he would demonstrate his impressive command of the language by effortlessly tossing in words like “cataclysmic,” “effrontery,” and “prestidigitation” during a broadcast.
Over the years, Jones’ unconventional presentation has been met with pushback from viewers, fans, and even his own colleagues.
“There was a producer at ABC — this is 1991 — that did not like my style of broadcasting,” Jones told the Sports Media Watch Podcast last year. “When Greg Hill scored the touchdown, he said ‘he takes it to the house.’ Nobody knows what he’s talking about. He shouldn’t be on our air saying that. There was a producer in the room, Kim Belton, an African American who stood up and said Mark speaks to a larger audience than people might be familiar with. A lot of people understand what he means. Two years later, it became OK. It became OK when Dan Patrick and Craig Kilborn started saying it, too, but I took a lot of bullets for it.”
The detractors persisted but so did an undeterred Jones. He became a prominent voice on ESPN’s college football, college basketball, WNBA and NBA coverage, working with bold-faced analysts like Todd Blackledge, Robert Griffin III, Bill Walton, Doris Burke, Jay Bilas, Mark Jackson, Jeff Van Gundy, and Hubie Brown.
While he was never elevated to a lead play-by-play role, Jones earned the respect of industry professionals by maintaining his authenticity. Years before Stuart Scott’s “Booyah!” and “cooler than the other side of the pillow” became iconic SportsCenter catchphrases, Jones was finding ways to color outside the lines of traditional play-by-play and studio hosting.
In 1990, ESPN took a risk on a young announcer determined to make a name for himself by staying true to his voice, to his brand of broadcasting. More than three decades later, that commitment has helped make Mark Jones one of the leading play-by-play personalities in the business, and something of a model for sports broadcasting hopefuls looking to cover the field with their own distinctive flavor.
Plus: A solution for ESPN’s #2 NFL booth
Last week, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported that ESPN is expected to change its secondary NFL booth of Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky and Louis Riddick. The move makes sense on multiple levels. As part of its agreements with the NFL, ESPN is no longer producing “Monday Night Football” doubleheaders. The seven extra games that are a part of the new deal are likely to be played internationally, which would not allow Fowler, still ESPN’s lead college football announcer, to be regularly available.
Orlovsky and Riddick, both observant and opinionated analysts, did not complement each other well. At times, their broadcasts felt like a competition for airtime. Both analysts have deep knowledge of the sport, but there were moments when they needed to pull back on the commentary and allow the broadcast to breathe.
The new backup booth provides ESPN with the opportunity to simplify the production and select a competent duo that can carry an uncluttered broadcast. That duo should be Dave Pasch and Kurt Warner, both of whom are listed in Marchand’s report as possible selections. Pasch, one of ESPN’s most polished game callers, has been the radio voice of the Arizona Cardinals since 2002. In fact, Pasch was at the microphone when Warner led the Cardinals on an improbable run to the Super Bowl in 2008.
Warner, meanwhile, has flown under the radar for years. Though he lacks the charisma of Tony Romo or the stature of Troy Aikman and Tom Brady, he’s been one of the NFL’s sharpest analysts for some time. His work as Westwood One lead analyst has been first-rate, and he’s been the strongest part of the NFL Network game broadcasts with boothmate Rich Eisen.
The signings of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman in 2022 gave ESPN the “A” crew it had long been craving. Naming Pasch and Warner to the secondary crew would be another home run for ESPN, as the network prepares for its first Super Bowl in February.
