Arizona Football: PAC-12 Analyst Yogi Roth brings humanity to everything he does
Announcing the Pac-12 is a dream job for Roth
Right now Yogi is fully enjoying his time working for the PAC-12 Network where he gets to live in Los Angeles and travel to the office in San Francisco and college towns for his weekly game. He has no complaints about his job, he is doing exactly what he wants to do, and doesn’t take anything for granted.
He doesn’t hold back when calling a game and knows the realities of playing and coaching which helps too. What he is very grateful for is getting to ride Ted Robinson’s coattails, a hall of fame broadcaster and the voice of the conference, “An Icon” as he called him.
Yogi cites Robinson as the mentor who has changed his life in the booth, including the art of announcing plays. “If Khalil Tate makes a play,” said Roth, “I gotta talk about the play and then after the replay, I can expound on that play, or I can weave his story into the play call. My job is simple, celebrate the game and coach the viewers. I call the game like I’m trying to coach my mom, that’s who we are talking too. We try to make it simple.”
He also listens to Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Collinsworth for inspiration and credits mentors, Steve Physioc (KC Royals), Kevin Calabro (Portland Trailblazers), and Michael Molinari (Pac-12 Producer) who have coached and trained him for the stage he is on now. Yogi feels he is getting a Ph.D. in his craft.
Pete Caroll is another huge mentor in Roth’s life, “I always say, ‘Pete took the clay my parents created and molded it.” He’s realized now at the age of 38, that since he was 19, having Caroll in his life is a gift. Caroll challenged him to put together a style, theme, philosophy for his life, “I thank Pete every step of the way.” Roth wrote the book, Win Forever–Live, Work, and Play like a Champion, along with Caroll.
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Roth has established a reliable pre-game weekly process. On Monday, Roth reviews film (every meaningful snap), reads as many articles as he can, and speaks to both SIDs reviewing injury reports and depth charts. On Tuesday, he flies to San Francisco for the Pac-12 football series show.
On Wednesday, he comes back to Los Angeles and it’s time for player reviews. He also holds production meetings to decide what highlights are needed from past games, discusses what’s going on in the league, and what graphics they want to use. He would like to be done by Wednesday night and he uses Thursday to review the plan and clean up his board.
Roth shares all of his information and intel with his staff. He is all about the teams’ success. He travels on Thursday night, and on Friday, he wakes up and does yoga.
After yoga, he brings the crew together to watch a film. He relies on body type and uniform style recognition to call the game because the press boxes are so high, it’s hard to see the numbers of the players. On Friday afternoon he interviews the local coaches and players, and on Saturday its go time!
When asked what stadium was his favorite for broadcasting, it was not an easy question to answer for Roth. “I bet wherever I lived, I probably would enjoy that stadium. If I lived in Eugene it would be Oregon –living in LA, USC/UCLA are really fun. SC has always been embedded in me a little bit more, I’m more intimate with the team, Clay has been phenomenal – I think I can be honest about them more than any other team.” As far as the best facilities, Washington and Cal are the best so far. He loves announcing games at Oregon where you can “feel the crowd” and the same with Utah which is so dynamic, but the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl are his favorite.
If that question was difficult, answering what goes into his announcing job that was easy. He loves everything about the game of football. It’s the ultimate team game when it’s a packed house, there is so much nostalgia, he told me, it’s the leaves changing and no one is bigger than the game. “Just going on the field when it’s empty, I will just walk the grass. When anyone thinks they are too big for the game they should rethink their job. I think you should have a reverence for the game — We don’t have jobs without the game. I tell the crew (40 of them), ‘We get to go do this, let’s go out and call the game like it’s the Natty for every game’ I get to do this.”
Yogi’s storytelling passion helps him announce football games. About three years ago Yogi met with a man named Ken Black who ran innovation at Nike for 25 years, and his favorite authors Kevin Carol and Jeremy Darlow wrote Athletes are Brands too.
He spent a lot of time with those three sports journalists. He realized the thesis of all he has done to this point in his career and life had come down to one lens, “To seek and uncover the humanity in sports in football and around the globe. So when I’m covering a game, I’m trying to seek and uncover the humanity in the game.”
He’s learned over 12 years, that you are more interested in the game if you know and “fall in love with the characters of the game” and that calling NFL games you can be more critical than when you announce a college game. “I just think it’s different from the NFL, it’s kind of fun, you can be more critical. [In college] There are 110 stories combined on the sideline right now, I can compete to tell as many as possible. Be truthful about when a player should have made a play, but don’t hammer it – that’s to me where the bridge of the human side comes out in your homework and if you love it or not.”
Roth points out how his mom heard sports broadcaster Lee Corso just tore apart her son during a game on a broadcast. It was extremely hurtful. Corso, who now dons mascot heads to predict games on College Gameday, lit him up as a player, he clowned him pretty hard in a game, and it was never forgotten by Roth. It has affected how he announces a game. For example, he told me about a time he changed what he was going to say about a player dropping a ball, he was less critical and the results were precious. The players’ parents took the time to thank him for calling the play in a positive way. He is keenly aware that parents and family, as well as a player, are paying attention to what he is saying on broadcasts.
Roth mentioned that being able to focus on Pac-12 teams helps him be more of an expert on the 12 teams than national announcers, because he knows the players and teams better.