DJ Shockley wasn’t nervous before playing the 2005 Southeastern Conference title game.
The Georgia Dome lights didn’t faze the Bulldogs quarterback — another four quarters of the same game.
But the brightness of lights on a television studio set?
That is different ball game.
“Live TV? Everybody gets to see you,” the former Georgia quarterback said. “… If you mess up, guess what? You’re not doing it again.”
Shockley, who was a reserve for the Atlanta Falcons from 2006-10 and had a brief stint with the UFL’s Omaha Nighthawks, has been entrenched in the Atlanta radio and broadcast world since 2011 as a co-host on several CSS shows and 790 The Zone’s Falcons postgame show and as an analyst for WSB-TV high school football coverage.
The 30-year-old has been at it for about two years, and live TV still gets him.
“The lights are on. The camera’s hot. They’re beaming. You just go forward,” Shockley said.
Shockley’s predecessor under center at Georgia is new to the in-front-of-camera gig. David Greene, who is business partners with former Bulldog offensive lineman Matt Stinchcomb at a commercial insurance firm in Atlanta, is coming up on one month with ESPN’s Longhorn Network as a color analyst.
Pretty simple stuff for the once-four-year starter, Stinchcomb says.
“I think that he’s a natural at pretty much anything he tries his hand at,” the two-time All-American said of Greene. “I think he’d be natural at cross stitch. He could pick something and he’d probably be pretty good at it.”
Shockley’s co-host on CSS’s The Dawg Report, Maria Taylor, who attended Georgia from 2005-08 and played volleyball and basketball, has worked her way into a full slate of college football games this season as a sideline reporter with ESPN and ABC. This fall marks the second year Shockley and Taylor host The Dawg Report together.
Taylor calls live TV a roller coaster.
“You get to the top of the hill and you’re like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ And then you get going and you’re like, ‘Because it’s the best thing ever.’ That’s why I do it every time,” she said.
And then there is Stinchcomb. He was dragged “kicking and screaming” into his college football color commentary role with ESPN. It is almost exactly what he expected it to be.
Almost.
“I never thought of wearing this much make-up,” joked Stinchcomb, who played from 1995-98.
The most visible of all former Georgia athletes also was named an All-American more times in college than the aforementioned former Bulldogs. And that makes David Pollack a resource for his fellow Bulldogs and now broadcast colleagues.
“I’ve reached out to Pollack [for advice] as well because obviously he’s done extremely well being on the ESPN College GameDay Crew,” Greene said.
Shockley, Greene, Taylor, Stinchcomb and Pollack, most of whom have either worked with or crossed paths with one another working in television, will on be on the sidelines, in broadcasts booths or ready on pre- and post-game sets this weekend during No. 9 Georgia’s first of two bye weeks. And a few are pitted against one another on the broadcast schedule.
“I think the opening weekend I was right after Pollack’s broadcast on Thursday, so it’s going to happen at some point where you’re all on air at the same time,” Taylor said. “And I think it’s crazy that we all, not from the same background, but you come from the same school, so it’s kind of cool to have that when you see each other on the road.”
Added Shockley: “People to want our expertise and trust us enough to put us in front of a camera or whatever it is to talk about sports and all that.”
Greene, the most recent of the bunch to join the broadcast ranks, landed his spot after a trying to become “The Next Knuckler.”
He was contacted by someone with the Major League Baseball Network in January about a reality competition show that was going to put former college and professional quarterbacks against one another. All in the name of mastering the knuckleball, as taught by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.
It was an unexpected opportunity Greene was too intrigued by to turn down.
“Then I just got a call from ESPN and they said, ‘Hey, you looked like you had a lot of fun on camera. You were comfortable. Would you say yes to ever doing any TV?’” Greene recalled.
Sure, why not? Greene boarded a plane to Charlotte, N.C., for a short screen test in May and soon after learned ESPN executives wanted him to get his start with the Longhorn Network.
Greene was in the broadcast booth for Texas’ first football game that season.
He’s had to learn on the fly and adjust to talking at a camera while trying to engage viewers at home. But Greene said he likes to do it on the fly. Memorizing lines isn’t what he wants to do. Going off the cuff is more his style.
“Greeney is so good at just about anything he does that anyone who gives him advice other than, ‘Just do what you would’ve done before you asked me that question,’ is doing him a disservice,” Stinchcomb joked.
Taylor, who got her start with International Sports Properties, which had rights to the Georgia athletic association’s website before IMG, is the only one of the bunch who graduated with a degree from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications. She hasn’t had her feet stuck on any one single rung of the ladder on her climb up the broadcast ladder, working volleyball, basketball and smaller football games for CSS. Taylor’s call up came just before she was preparing for another season on the sidelines for CSS.
“I could’ve dropped the phone on the floor because I just didn’t expect to get that call. It was out of nowhere to just getting a call from Bristol all of the sudden,” said Taylor, who was the sideline reporter for the Southeastern Conference opener between Vanderbilt and Ole Miss on Aug. 29. The Alpharetta native has also been the sideline reporter for Georgia’s spring football game, G-Day.
She doesn’t like to watch herself on film, though she’s likely to send footage to her mentors — former Grady instructor Steve Smith, Grady alumnus and ESPN reporter Mark Schlabach and ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jay Harris — for feedback.
Slow down, she has to remember. Be prepared but flexible throughout a broadcast.
“There’s always time to get your thought across and slowing down is always a key in TV because you always think you have to rush through something to make sure you get your full thought out, but you really don’t,” Taylor said. “I guess it’s all about poise. And just getting more reps and experience is key on TV.”
Shockley and Greene use the term reps when referring to takes, segments or live shows on television. Fitting coming from two former quarterbacks.
But both said that’s part of the reason they enjoy broadcast, the similarities it shares with their sport of choice. Taking on broadcasting as a full-time gig, in Shockley’s case, or part-time gig, in Greene’s case, has altered their habits as viewers.
“Last year I was sitting on a couch with my 5 year old and 2 year old, it’s like WWE in my den every night and I’m not paying attention to the game,” Greene said. “… Now doing the analyst role, I’m watching the game and I’m studying it like I did when I was a player.”
Shockley put his speech communication major to use as an offseason intern during his four-year stint with the Atlanta Falcons (2006-10) and did a day-in-the-life segment with his teammates during the season. But since making broadcast his primary career path, Shockley has been forced out of his football comfort zone, having to study up on his soccer and volleyball.
It comes with the job, he says emphasizing his reps on camera.
“When the lights come on and it’s time to do it, my mind frame has always been, ‘Hey, put your best foot forward. Go out and do the best you can and let everything else take care of itself,’” he said.
Stinchcomb was introduced to several on-air personalities during promotion of a charity event he organizes with Greene, Countdown to Kickoff. He soon began working Saturdays with former Georgia athlete Buck Belue on 680 The Fan before a 10-minute segment with ESPN during Georgia’s G-Day eventually bumped him up to his role now.
“It’s a good excuse to pretend to still be involved in the game. There’s not a lot of church league football teams out there, so once you’re done playing, you’re kind of done forever,” Stinchcomb said. “So the counter to that, it gives you a chance to be in and around the game but not really getting bruised or banged up.
“You don’t really require a lot of surgeries from broadcasting football.”
Stinchcomb doesn’t get nervous before broadcasts, except about that make-up he wears. He says he probably should be more on edge, but the play-by-play talent he works with makes it seem as though he is just shooting the breeze with buddies while chowing down on some chicken wings. All while they have producers chattering in their earpieces.
“They can weave in and out of conversation. It’s unbelievable how good those guys are,” Greene said. “Them being able to just keep the program flowing. There’s no way in the world I could do what they do.”
Stinchcomb’s younger brother, Jon, who was on the 2009 Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints team and a two-time Pro Bowler before retiring, was offered a three-game pre-game broadcast gig with the Fox affiliate in New Orleans to provide color commentary for his former team this preseason.
It’s fun, he says, but that chattering in the ear and the travel made him happy the deal was a temporary one. But he will watch his brother on Saturdays for as long as the older Stinchcomb will offer up his two cents.
“As a player what bothered me most was listening to guys talk, people talk about your team or your position or just any subject really, and they are clueless or misinformed or forming an opinion on just a small piece of information,” Jon Stinchcomb said. “So when you hear somebody who commentates that has done their homework and has an informed point of view I think as a player that’s what I appreciated most. Luckily, thankfully, that’s what Matt does when he’s done his broadcasts.”
Greene’s and Matt Stinchcomb’s frequent flyer miles may reach free-trip-to-Hawaii status in the near future with their weekend travel to assignments and back to Georgia for work with their Seacrest Partners firm. But Stinchcomb says it hasn’t been too much of a pain to schedule around their broadcast side projects thus far. He’s grown to like the broadcast booth and deal with the make-up for his favorite game.
“I’m going to do this as long it’s fun and they’ll still let me do it,” Matt Stinchcomb said. “That’s a two-way street. I might walk up one day and my hair’s parted wrong and they’ll say, ‘We’ve heard enough out of you.’ That’ll be all she wrote.”