Dave Hunziker

Oral History Interview

with

Dave Hunziker

Interview Conducted by Jerry Gill December 7, 2010

O-State Stories Oral History Project

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Interview History

Interviewer: Jerry Gill Transcriber: Adam Evans Editors: Ashley Sarchet, Micki White, Tanya Finchum

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The purpose of O-State Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU).

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Dave Hunziker is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on December 7, 2010.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

About Dave Hunziker…

“Pistols firing!” Anyone who listens to Oklahoma State University football games recognizes that phrase, made famous by sports announcer Dave Hunziker. Before becoming the voice of the Cowboys, Hunziker got his start in Missouri. He grew up in Kahoka, Missouri, and spent countless hours with his dad by the radio listening to baseball games. He had a strong interest in sports at an early age, but he knew his strength wasn’t in playing them. In high school, he was the statistician for the basketball team, and he recorded video for the football team. Listening to the best professional play-by-play sports announcers on the radio for the better part of his youth, he had no doubts about his future career. When he was seventeen and still in high school, he got a job with KMEM, the radio station in Memphis, Missouri, doing live radio reports on his hometown sporting events. He soon earned a slot for a Sunday night show and then high school live broadcasts. Before long, he was doing color and play-by-play for games.

After he graduated high school in 1984, Hunziker enrolled at the University of Missouri in the School of Journalism, and during breaks he went back to Memphis to work at KMEM, broadcasting news and reports. He graduated in 1988, and immediately went to work for KFRU in Columbia, Missouri. After a year there, he went to Radford, Virginia, where he worked in the Big South conference, hosting a television show and doing play-by-play for the basketball team. He also managed the handful of stations there and sold ads, as well. He stayed there for eight years and then spent a year at Western Kentucky University, focusing on football and men’s basketball. In 2001, he came to Stillwater which immediately felt like home, thanks to the hospitality and generosity of the locals.

During his time broadcasting football and basketball at OSU, Hunziker has had a front-row seat for coaching changes, athletic facility transformations, player arrivals and departures, and collegiate conference realignment. The ongoing changes didn’t scare him away, however, and he stuck to his guns and by his Cowboys. He even became a lecturer in the School of Media and Strategic Communications where he teaches sports broadcasting performance. Hunziker has earned a special place in the hearts of OSU fans, and is a recipient of the Bill Teegins Excellence in Sportscasting Award for his outstanding work.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Dave Hunziker

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Jerry Gill December 7, 2010 Stillwater, Oklahoma

Gill My name is Jerry Gill. Today is December 7, 2010. I’m visiting with Dave Hunziker on the Oklahoma State University Campus here in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This interview is for the O-State Stories project of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Dave, I know you’ve got lots of things going on this week, and I appreciate you stopping by and taking time from your professional duties to visit with us today.

Hunziker Oh, absolutely. My pleasure.

Gill You’re highly visible and recognizable to Oklahoma State University alumni and fans as the voice of the Cowboys and handling play-by-play for OSU football and basketball. I want to talk about that, but first of all let’s back up, Dave. I want to ask you a little about your early life...

Hunziker Sure.

Gill …where you grew up, your parents. Could you share some of that with us?

Hunziker Oh, absolutely. I grew up in Kahoka, Missouri, which is in the far northeast corner of the state, the furthest northeast county, as a matter of fact, adjacent to Illinois and Iowa. I spent my entire childhood there. My father was the manager, sort of the business manager, of a rock quarry, and my mother was a librarian and sold some things on the side. That was the first thing she did. I have an older brother who is three years older and an older sister who is nine years older. Probably the unfortunate, most challenging part of my childhood without a doubt was the fact that I lost my father when I was twelve to cancer. He was older. Dad was forty-two when I was born. I was the youngest of the three. That was probably the biggest challenge, obviously, of my childhood is that I really didn’t get to know my father very well. You think that in twelve years, you hopefully get a chance to really get to know them, but

you really don’t. But it was a wonderful place to grow up. It was a small town.

Gill What was the population?

Hunziker Two thousand, one hundred seven. Robust folks, like many communities here where we have great fans. I mean, that’s why I think I’ve enjoyed it so much here is that it reminds me a lot of home. You could ride your bike anywhere, and we played ball all the time. Whatever season it was, we played. I guess it was not different than any other childhood except, boy, did I ever have a passion for sports. I wasn’t any good. That was the issue. I had to figure out another way I could stay with it so I did this. Even though Dad passed away, I can’t say that I had, by any means, a bad childhood. Mom was great. She was very strong for us and let us do a lot of different things and try different things. For the most part, we had a lot of fun, did a lot of fun things, played a lot of ball. That’s what we wanted to do.

Gill What about school and community activities? What were you involved in?

Hunziker I played in high school. I ended up being a statistician for basketball after I realized as a sophomore I just wasn’t good enough. We had good teams. We had teams that won our conference every year. I played high school golf, although not very well. Ran cross country. Not very good at that either. Probably my best sport was baseball. I was a pitcher, played a little outfield. Didn’t throw very hard, but I could throw to spots and change speeds and make the ball move a little bit so I could manage my way around. Then I helped out the football team with shooting video and things of that nature. I was involved in the National Honor Society and Quiz Bowl, you know, the old quick-thinking, hit-the-dinger stuff, which was fun. I had a blast doing that. Probably my passion was always broadcasting and sports. When I was seventeen, before I got out of high school, I was able to do that. I got hired part-time at the radio station next town over, Memphis, Missouri.

Gill Let me back up and ask about that. If I understand, you were seventeen years old.

Hunziker Seventeen.

Gill There’s got to be a story. I mean, how did you get…

Hunziker There is.

Gill First of all, let me back up a bit. You obviously developed an interest in

broadcasting early in life.

Hunziker Yes.

Gill Can you kind of talk about when that developed, where that came from, and then I want to talk to you about that first job.

Hunziker Yes. Two things, really. When Dad was alive, we spent a lot of time—he had to get to work early. He would have to leave the house, well, I say early. It seemed early to me. He’d have to leave the house a little after six and head in so he’d go to bed pretty early, and I’d go in there and lay in bed with him and listen to the Cardinals. Listened to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon broadcast Cardinal games, so that’s where it started. I can remember listening to those games and thinking that St. Louis, even though it was only 150 miles away, was like another universe away. It really felt that way. I think I got to go to two games with Dad in St. Louis before he died. The first one when I was eight, we went down and watched the Atlanta Braves and Hank Aaron at that time, which was a huge deal. They could have been playing anybody. I wouldn’t have cared. It was a huge deal. So that’s really where it started, and then after Dad passed away, I still had a lot of interest not only in sports but in listening to games. I had one of these, it was called APBA [American Professional Baseball Association] baseball games. It was like one of those card games where you…

Gill APBA?

Hunziker Yes, a simulation game. As I discovered this game when I was in seventh grade, I would play baseball games in the living room where no one hung out much and get the radio on. I’d listen to the Cardinals, and I’d listen to the Royals. My goodness, I could get the Cardinals, the Royals, the Twins, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Indians, the Yankees, the Rangers on AM. My goodness. Old WLW Cincinnati, could listen to them. I had listened to a ton of games, and I’d just flip the dial and listen to different guys, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, John Rooney doing the Twins.

Gill Those are great mentors.

Hunziker Oh, gosh. So that’s what I did. If we weren’t out playing ball, I’d be in there playing that card baseball game, sort of broadcasting games in my mind and listening to the legends do it.

Gill Interesting. How did you get the job at seventeen at the radio station in Memphis, Missouri?

Hunziker In Memphis, Missouri, KMEM, which was 96.7 FM then. Its 100.5, now. They switched dial positions several years ago. I knew one of the guys that worked up there was from my county. He was from a little town called Wyaconda. His name was Rick Fisher. He was six-eight, a huge man, a wonderful fellow. He and his brother were baseball players, and we’d become acquainted. He was much older than I was, but everybody knows each other in a place like that. Anyway, we were acquainted with each other, and he knew I had an interest in broadcasting.

During my senior year of high school, that station had only been on the air about a year. It went on the air in 1983 so actually it had only been on the air less than a year, I guess, when I started working for them. They wanted some reports from Clark County sporting events that they weren’t broadcasting so this really started, I guess, in basketball. I did a little bit for football, but mainly with basketball because they didn’t broadcast all our basketball games. They usually would do our football game and a couple others of the local high schools so they asked me to do these reports. Well, I called them in. I did about three of them to start the basketball season, about seven-fifteen in the morning. I remember being so unbelievably nervous doing this and did them live!

Gill Now, were you actually broadcasting the game?

Hunziker No, just a report. Just a report. The next morning, would give a little report, seven-fifteen, seven-twenty in the morning. I’d done about three or four of those, and then Rick calls, my friend Rick Fisher, and says, “What would you think about working up here?” “What would I think? What do you want me to do? I’m there!” They said, “Well, we need somebody to do the Sunday night oldies show but also help out doing some high school broadcasts.” I’m like, “Well, absolutely.” The trick was, it was five to midnight on Sunday night, and it’s a twenty-four mile drive from Memphis to Kahoka so I had to see what Mom thought. I was a senior in high school, and Mom was all for it. She was like, “I have no doubt you can balance your school work and get it done. You’ve proven that. I have absolute faith in you. I trust you to drive. Go for it.” So I went for it. It wasn’t long before they actually had a Sunday afternoon slot open up, and I ended up moving into that, which was a little better with trying to get some sleep on Sunday night. Then, invariably, one night a week, Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d be off, not necessarily doing my school, Clark County, but somebody else’s.

The first game I did, I did color. They didn’t let me do play-by-play until I got about a month into it, but then they let me start doing some play- by-play. The first game was Putnam County-Scotland County girls in the semifinals of the Putnam County Tournament. On a Wednesday night, I

studied for a trig test with my notecards on the way to Unionville. It was about a seventy-five mile drive. Now, at that time, it’s a fifty-five mile per hour speed limit on two-lane roads. That’s an hour and forty minute jaunt. You’ve got to go through three towns to get there. I’ll never forget that. Getting in that car and going, doing a game for the first time, and just thinking, “Man, have I just hit the jackpot.” So I did that. I finished off high school, and then during semester breaks from Mizzou I went back to KMEM and worked, started doing some news for them, covering school board meetings and just doing all kinds of stuff. It was a great small-town radio operation. I couldn’t have landed in a better spot, especially for being in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri, to learn this profession. These guys, for another town of two thousand, they really did a good job running the station.

Gill You graduated in the spring of…

Hunziker Eighty-four, from high school, yes.

Gill Did you then enroll at the University of Missouri that fall?

Hunziker I did, sure did.

Gill Why Mizzou? Of course, it’s your home state, but…

Hunziker Home state. Journalism school is as good as any on the planet.

Gill Great broadcasting program.

Hunziker Oh, absolutely, and the good thing is it’s right there so it’s in-state. I looked into Northwestern, as well, but I wasn’t ready for Chicago. Chicago wasn’t ready for me, either.

Gill (Laughter) Got the swagger back.

Hunziker Yes, I got the swagger back. I had grown up a Mizzou fan so it was sort of like a dream come true. I could get the best education that you can get in my desired field, and I could go follow the teams I’d been growing up following for years. I’d never been to a Missouri football game before I went to Columbia. I’d been to one Mizzou basketball game. Shoot. How much better could it get?

Gill Was Norm Stewart the coach at that time?

Hunziker He was, and here’s a little sideline on that. My mother was born in Shelbyville, Missouri. She grew up with Norm Stewart. They were very close friends growing up in Shelbyville. They were the same age. They

spent a lot of time together growing up. Norm sent my mom a wonderful note when she was terminally ill with cancer in ’99, and it’s not like they stayed connected. Norm went his way, and Mom went hers. But, yes, I went to Norm Stewart’s basketball camp. The one game we did go to when I was a kid, we went down and visited with Norm a little bit. It’s interesting, that connection. The Mizzou blood ran pretty deep in our house, particularly with the ties to Coach Stewart and men’s basketball. We were very, very passionate about following it. You didn’t get many games on television so, there again, the roots of the radio career start by listening to Bob Costas do Missouri basketball on the radio, to John Rooney doing it, Kevin Harlan. I mean, that list of guys that did Missouri football and basketball is pretty amazing. I was very fortunate to get to listen to those guys, and hopefully a little bit of it stuck. I hope so.

Gill Are there any highlights in your Missouri experience there at the university?

Hunziker Oh, gosh, it’s just like Stillwater. It’s just such a fun place to be. Made so many great friends. I had great advice from the mayor of our home town in Kahoka. I was from a little town. Our high school, I graduated 84 in ’84. That was our graduating class. We had 84. Guy’s name was Gene Daniels. Good friend of the family. He had the Chevrolet dealership in town. He told me about three weeks before I left for school, he’s like, “So you feel a little overwhelmed?” “Yes.” He’s like, “You know how many people live in Kahoka?” “Twenty-one hundred or so.” He said, “Do you know all those people well?” “No, I don’t.” “Then why do you think you have to worry about knowing all 24,000 students at the University of Missouri? Don’t you have your little clique that you like here that you like to run around with, just a pretty small group of people?” “Yes.” He said, “That’s going to happen there except these people will be better friends with you than you’ve ever made in your life because you’ll have more in common with them and you’ve got more to choose from.”

Man, you talk about perfect advice. Just exactly what happened to me. My best friends to this day—and I have some from my home town, but my very closest friends are the ones I made at Missouri. The journalism experience was terrific. You get so much hands-on experience there. It’s very rigorous. You work. It’s almost like working full-time and then the rest of your class load. Whatever is non-journalism is kind of like, well, you got to get that done, too. We had great years in Columbia. It’s ironic. Football had been winning until I showed up down there. Then it went in the toilet, just in time for me to arrive. My goodness. (Laughter) I was all excited about being down there for all those Missouri games, and they won three games, one game, three games, and five games while

I was in Columbia. Oh well.

Gill What year did you graduate, Dave?

Hunziker Eighty-eight, 1988.

Gill You’ve been in major college sports now for about seventeen years, wouldn’t you say? Can you review some of your career before you came to Oklahoma State and point out some highlights in your career?

Hunziker Yes, I sure can. Took a job right after college at KFRU in Columbia doing pre- and post-game for Missouri, not doing the game’s play-by- play, but just being involved in pre- and post-. Did some NAIA [National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics] games at little six- hundred-student Columbia College. It was on the north side of Columbia. Just had a blast doing that. Heck, I drove the bus for that matter. We’d drive to Florida and take turns driving the bus. I’d take my turn, and we’d drive those people-mover buses wherever we needed to go and didn’t think twice about it. Ended up working full-time for them for a year.

Then, really, the move that I think changed my career was when I went to Radford in Virginia in the Big South Conference. It was my first Division I job. I was so excited. There were a lot of cool things that came with that job. I got to host the TV show for basketball and do the basketball play-by-play. We only had three stations that carried our games, but somebody had to manage it, make sure that the stations were happy, and sell the advertising. I did all of that. Did that for eight years, and the last four years of that, did television play-by-play for our conference TV package, which is another thing I got to branch into. So a lot of things really fell into place at Radford.

Then spent one year at Western Kentucky [University], basically doing the same type thing except on a bigger, broader scale. We were up to sixteen radio stations carrying the games by the time I left. I was only there fifty-four weeks and doing football and men’s basketball, and then in 2001 came here. So those are some highlights, but really enjoyed both those previous stops. Both the girls were born in Virginia, our two daughters, and we really had a great time there. We had a good team in basketball. We went to the NCAA once, but we had twenty-win teams on a pretty regular basis. Wonderful people. Just right in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains and just a beautiful place to live with terrific weather. We had a ball there. As crazy as it sounds, we could have stayed there forever, but the university started to change, and you could see it became very unsettled. You could see where athletics could be very negatively impacted so it became pretty clear to me. It’s like,

“Okay, it might be time to head to the next stop if we’re lucky enough to find it.”

Gill And Oklahoma State was that next stop. Is there a story about how you got to Oklahoma State?

Hunziker Yes. It’s interesting how the whole Mizzou thing works. The two people that were most involved in getting me here, really putting me up at the top in terms of the list of candidates for the job after the accident, the plane crash, were Joe Castiglione, athletic director still at the University of Oklahoma, who I knew when he was an associate AD and later athletic director at Missouri, and a gentleman named Dave Hart, Sr., who was the longtime athletic director at Missouri and commissioner of the southern conference. He was AD at Louisville. I got to know him when he was retired in Asheville, North Carolina. He helped Asheville host the Big South Basketball Tournament, and since I was the television voice, he involved me as the MC in helping them with some of their functions promoting the tournament. We didn’t really know each other before then, but we had all these Missouri ties.

What’s ironic is, is that the athletic director who made the decision to hire me was Terry Don Phillips whose first job in college athletics was at the University of Missouri with Joe Castiglione and with Dave Hart as director of athletics. So when those two gentlemen were kind enough to really speak nicely of me to Terry Don and really push me for the job, I think that’s what convinced Terry Don that maybe I was the right guy. I was very fortunate to get here, but without their help, I wouldn’t be here. Terry Don told me as much, that their endorsement meant a lot to him because Missouri was very proactive in the broadcast area, had a long history of great play-by-play announcers. As I mentioned earlier, Bob Costas, Kevin Harlan, Bill Wilkerson, John Rooney, Tom Dore who is in Chicago, are all guys that were national level talent, and so I think Terry Don trusted Dave Hart and Joe Castiglione’s opinion. Thankfully it worked out so we could be here.

Gill Did you interview with anyone else other than just the athletic director?

Hunziker I did with Learfield [Sports], the rights holder at that time. It was a very low key process, and I think that was because of the circumstances. We were talking three to four months after the accident. It was a very, very low key process. I spoke to the Learfield folks, but really that was it. It was with Terry Don and a phone interview with some other administrators, Dave Martin, Senior Associate AD, sat in on that. I believe Steve Buzzard, who was the Media Relations Associate AD at that time, sat in on that, so it was very low key. John Anderson, who is one of my dear friends from college, ESPN SportsCenter anchor, and the

host of that great Wipeout show on ABC, that game show, also was a big help to me in the process because he knew people at Oklahoma State from his time at Tulsa in the television business so that certainly helped and played a role in it. But it was a very, very low key process, I think, just because of the circumstances.

Gill The person that preceded you was…

Hunziker Bill Teegins.

Gill Bill Teegins, who died in the plane crash.

Hunziker He died in the plane crash.

Gill So you got here in, what year was that?

Hunziker Two thousand one.

Gill In 2001. What surprised you the most about Oklahoma State University?

Hunziker I’ll tell you the thing I didn’t know that really got my attention. I don’t know if I would say it was surprising, but it got my attention, was how wonderful the people were from day one, from absolute day one. How supportive they were of myself and my family, given the circumstances of our arrival. Just how doggone nice they were. Just call it what it is, just how unbelievably nice they were. I don’t know how many plates of cookies ended up at our house when we first moved here just from people that lived in the neighborhood. What a wonderful place, what a family it was. We thought it was like that at Radford, but it wasn’t anything like this. We were at Radford eight years. Just how it really seemed to be a place where I felt pretty comfortable right out of the gate because, again, a lot of the people reminded me of the people I grew up with back home, a place I think very fondly of. I think that’s what probably caught me a little bit by surprise was, “Wow, these people are just unbelievably good people. If I can do the job well enough and survive it, this could really be a neat place to be.”

Gill You’ve been here, what, going on your tenth year now?

Hunziker Yes, it’s ten years.

Gill Man, time flies. Can you share your general assessment of the OSU athletics program currently and where you think it’s going?

Hunziker I tell you what, when I got here—it’s mind boggling to think about how quickly things have happened in ten years. When we got here, football

was unfortunately in one of its reeling times. We’d just made a coaching change. Bob Simmons had been let go. Les Miles had been brought in so we came in at the same season. The football stadium was, as they called it, Rustoleum Stadium, whatever you want to call it. You need a tetanus shot to go in, etcetera, etcetera. But you knew there were a lot of people had great passion for this place and wanted to see it succeed, and at the top of that list was Boone Pickens. He wanted to make this thing click and take this football program and entire athletic program to a new level. Then you just started to see it happen. It all started (I really believe this) is when the Cowboys, with only three wins, a twenty-seven-point underdog in the regular season finale in Les Miles’ first season in 2001, go to Norman and knock OU out of the national championship game with the last game of the regular season 16-13 win.

That’s the game, to me, that changed everything because I think it convinced a lot of people, and it may well be something that helped convince Boone. This could happen. It could happen sooner than we think. It just brought great pride to our fans and our program, that we could buck up to the Sooners at their best and beat them on their home field. Never been done. I don’t know if it had ever been done before, not in those circumstances, to beat them on the road and knock them out of the national championship game. I don’t know that that had ever been done before. Been some big games and some big wins, but I don’t know if there had been one like that. Well, then we come back the next year, get hot at the end, go to a bowl game. Everything’s moving along. Next thing you know: Next Level Campaign, Boone Pickens with his incredible generosity. As these things typically go, others jump right in and fall in line.

Gill Dave, the Next Level Campaign was for the sports…

Hunziker For the stadium, yes, for the football stadium campaign. We’d already refurbished Gallagher Iba, and it was just gorgeous so we had that piece done. Then it was all about the football stadium. Oh, to even think back. We fly to basketball or football games, and if I get a seat on the right side of the plane I can get a good view of the stadium from the air. To look down at that horseshoe, the Gallagher Iba Arena at the end of the horseshoe, the open end, and think about what a magnificent yet very unique and charming place we have to play. It’s just mind boggling to think about where we were and where we are now. I’m not sure there’s a venue that has more charm in America than our place. I said before the first broadcast of this season, “We play in the Wrigley Field of college football.” Where else do extra points ricochet off the basketball arena? You’ve got two churches within a block so if you get too wild at the football game, you’ve got a place where you can go to Catholic confession or go over to the Christian church, settle the score with the

highest authority and the person that’s most important. You’ve got a convenience store. It’s right here in the middle of everything. There’s no place else like that, and then the brick is just gorgeous. I absolutely love the charm we have. It is so unique and is absolutely fabulous.

So what’s happened to our athletic program? It’s skyrocketed. What’s happened to our mentality? Les Miles, we sat in Mexico Joe’s here in Stillwater two weeks after I arrived. I said, “Les, what’s the biggest challenge you face in this job?” He didn’t even hesitate. “Creating a winning mood.” He did that. If he did anything for this program—he did lots of things, but the biggest thing he left us was creating a winning mood, an expectation to win. No longer hoping to win, but expecting to win. We’ve done that in wrestling. We’ve done that in men’s golf. We’ve done that in men’s basketball and some other sports on occasion. Baseball, certainly, we had done that, but we never thought that way in football. Well, that’s changed now. Now there’s an expectation of success. We have the facilities. We have the pride. We have the support. That’s a long answer to your question, but it has been an unbelievably quick revelation, a real renaissance in our athletic program.

Gill Sort of a wrap to that question, what do you think the strengths of the OSU program are currently?

Hunziker Oh, the facilities are out of this world. The football facility is unmatched in America. In fact, we’ve had lots of people come in and say that. I know Jerry Jones felt like, when he had the chance to come through here and take a look that, it was the best locker room facility in American football, college or pro. Barry Switzer issued the warning, the longtime Oklahoma coach, in a group of people in Tulsa a few years ago that, “You know what? If you’re an Oklahoma fan, you need to be scared because it’s coming, and it’s coming quick, and it’s coming from the people you hate the most, down the road in Stillwater. If you’re not scared, you might want to start getting that way because I’ve seen it firsthand.” The facilities are just fabulous, and basketball not only has the arena but the locker room facilities that, again, are probably the best in America.

So I think the facilities have a lot to do with it, but you don’t have facilities if you don’t have support, if you don’t have great fans, because who pays for it? Money doesn’t fall out of the sky. You have to have passionate fans, enthusiastic fans. We have good fans. Sometimes when you have some success, the bar of expectations can make people act a little funny and they get to expecting too much. While our expectations have changed, I still think for the most part our people are positive. They’re very supportive. You don’t hear our student athletes booed. You don’t hear them just being dogged on the radio. Our fans are very

passionate, very supportive. They’ve done it not only by buying tickets and wearing their orange, but they’ve done it at times when they’ve had to reach down into their savings account or into their retirement accounts and say, “I believe in this. I’m going to do as much as I can to help out with the football campaign,” or whatever the case may be. That’s just not true everywhere.

Gill You get a chance to see a broad perspective of intercollegiate athletics across the country. Do you see any ways you think OSU is going to need to change or do differently in the future to continue to have success and achieve greater success?

Hunziker Yes, I think probably the biggest thing is that the football fan base will just have to continue to grow. We’re sitting at the 40,000 range in season tickets. I think the day will come where we’ll really need to fill all 60,000 seats. I think that day will come. It will require a longer run of success even than what we have right now. We do have a limited population base in Oklahoma. It’s not like we’re a state like Ohio or Illinois that has a huge population base to pull from. There’s limitations on the numbers, but I still think there’s enough. That’s true in men’s basketball, as well. You’ve just got to keep adding to those numbers and keep building that fan base and continuing to enhance those revenue streams. Beyond that, there will be a point in time where we get all the athletic facilities done and the athletic village complete. I think that’s of the essence for the other programs to enjoy long-term success. Whether it’s baseball, whether it’s track and field, some of the other sports that may be involved, a lot of our sports are in really good shape.

Gill Soccer.

Hunziker Soccer needs it definitely. In golf, we’re in great shape. That’s probably the best collegiate facility in the world at Karsten Creek. We’re in good shape in basketball. We’re in great shape in football. Some of the other sports will need those facilities, and those are coming. It’s just a matter of getting the athletic village completed.

Gill You talked about OSU fans earlier, Dave, about their loyalty. In your opinion, how do they compare to fans at other schools? You get the chance to observe fan behavior, obviously, where you are. How do OSU fans compare? Better? Worse?

Hunziker Oh, I think they’re better. I think people that have come here to games would tell you that. They’re really just kind of blown away by how nice people are. You see these letters to the editor in the newspaper from fans from other schools. When Georgia came here in 2009, season opener, two top-fifteen teams in the preseason going head to head, biggest game

in Oklahoma State history at that time as regular season games go, in terms of the preseason hype, etcetera, etcetera, and their fans were just blown away. “We can’t believe how nice these people are.” And that’s consistent. I think that’s as much of it as anything. Our fans treat our visitors with a lot of respect. You don’t hear our fans cussing the other fans, or you don’t hear them just really being obnoxious. They’re very supportive of our team, but they’re also very considerate and respectful of the visiting fans as well. The loyalty is there. It’s a positive fan base. You don’t get a whole lot of negative stuff, but that’s not true everywhere. People at other schools can really jump on the negative side in a hurry if things look like they’re going downhill.

Gill We won’t name names.

Hunziker (Laughter) No, let’s not get into all that.

Gill Another one of these “from your perspective” questions, you have the opportunity to interact with media, officials from other schools across the country. How do you think OSU’s sports program is perceived externally, outside the state of Oklahoma by other schools and other programs and other people?

Hunziker It’s interesting because I think—I don’t know that we ever get the credit we deserve. I don’t think if you asked even most ESPN SportsCenter anchors the question, “Where does Oklahoma State rank,” they would have no idea that we’ve won fifty national championships. They would have no idea. I think we’re a little bit undervalued. Football is helping to change that because I guess when it all comes down to it, that’s the one that people pay the most attention to. So the rise and the consistency of the football program, as we speak today, a record five consecutive bowl appearances for Oklahoma State, I think that’s helped change things pretty considerably.

Eddie Sutton deserves tremendous credit for giving a lot of national attention to Oklahoma State and really starting this process where the image of our program was enhanced. Not only was football struggling in the early ’90s, but basketball was right there with it, not able to get over the hump. Coach Sutton comes back to his alma mater, the winning starts immediately. Final Fours, two of them,’95 and ’04. That’s what really triggered, from a national perspective, an enhancement of the image of Oklahoma State athletics. I think the modern situation we’re in now, the modern perception, which is greatly enhanced, it all started with Coach Sutton. He’s the one that started that process back I guess it would’ve been the early ’90s.

Gill Dave, could you do something with me? Take me through a typical week

of preparation for a football game. How do you prepare for the game day duties, all the activities, the interaction with coaches, the media? Could you sort of take me through a week and what it’s like?

Hunziker Absolutely. It’s about—oh, it depends on the week. It could be twenty- five to thirty-five hours to get ready for a football game. I’ll start on Sunday with some initial reading and maybe put a few things on a chart. I have a spotter chart that has offense and defense on it and has the players in their proper positions so I can refer to it during the broadcast. Then, Mondays there’s a little bit more work on that chart. We have media day on Mondays where we have interview opportunities with players and Coach Gundy and so forth. Tuesdays brings more chart work and more reading and research and practice on Tuesdays to see how the team is doing, and Coach Gundy’s radio show is on Tuesday night where fans can call in. Usually Wednesday is a little more practice. That’s my biggest chart day in terms of putting my spotter chart together, and usually a couple of interviews after Wednesday practice. Thursday we meet with the coordinators and discuss the game with them, get their thoughts as we get ready for the game and get close to game day. Usually I’ll watch film of the opposing team during the week and then also again on Thursday morning, so part of that prep time for my charts, say Tuesday/Wednesday, may very well be watching DVDs.

Gill You’re doing something similar to what the football players are, getting ready.

Hunziker Yes!

Gill You’re doing your scouting report, viewing video, viewing what we used to call film, video now…

Hunziker Yes.

Gill …of the team, etcetera, so it’s almost like you’re a player.

Hunziker It’s funny that you say that because they actually give us the players’ DVDs, offense, defense and special teams for us to watch, which we’re very lucky that they’re so accommodating, and just very nice of them to give us that. But, yes, in a lot of ways it is because just like the players, we don’t want to get caught not knowing something is coming. If a team has got a weird formation that we’re playing or some strange plays that they run, if you’ve seen it before, you know how to describe it. If you get caught with some strange play and you haven’t seen it before, the mind’s not quick enough to be able to describe the play accurately as it unfolds. A little bit of video study, and, you know, “I’ve seen that.” “Now, what is that?” If you don’t know, you ask somebody, whether it’s

a coordinator or the head coach. “I’ve never seen this formation before. What is that, and why does it work?” Thursdays, as I mentioned, some video study, and put the pregame show together on Thursday afternoon usually with making sure all the interviews are edited and ready to go and we’ve got everything organized so that we can pull off a two-hour pregame show. Friday is usually a day I don’t do much. I try to sort of relax on Fridays and maybe do things around the house, do things I should be doing, and maybe play a little golf if I get in the mood, just to get away from it for a few hours. Friday nights, some more study. Then Saturday at the game, usually, oh goodness, we’re on the air two hours before game time, and I’m there two to two and a half hours before that, so it’s about four hours before kickoff.

Gill Dave, can we continue with that kind of conversation from there, what I’d call the art and science of broadcasting. There’s a lot to this. People hear it and think it just happens, but can you talk about behind the scenes, who’s involved with you and the broadcast team, and how that all comes together and happens?

Hunziker Oh, gosh. It’s a big crew. We’ll have—let me do the counting real quick. Three of us on the air, sideline, analyst and myself, play-by-play, a producer/engineer who is Joe Riddle who’s been involved in this for four decades, so he’s done this a long time. A spotter is as important as anyone. That’s someone who’s helping me. It’s sort of my second set of eyes, helping me know who the tackler is on a given play, making sure I know who’s in the backfield for a given play, identifying who may have tipped a pass or blocked a punt. That’s Eddie Neundorf, and he’s done it for twenty years. He’s wonderful.

Gill Does he give it to you through your ear?

Hunziker No, he points. Some guys have it in their ear where they have them actually talking on a mic, and it’s what we would call the cue circuit where I can hear them, but it doesn’t go on the air. I just prefer for them to point. I’ve done television so I’m used to people talking in my ear, but he’ll point to my spotter boards and tell me what’s what. Danny Randolph has been our statistician for the past several years so he’s keeping stats for us. Then we’ve got someone helping Robert on the sideline, helping us get some really good crowd noise, and Dennis Smith has done that for a long time, sort of a sideline engineer. And then two production assistants that help the producer/engineer and just help us with anything we might need in the booth. So you’re looking at nine people that are involved in this thing, and that doesn’t count the person that’s punching the buttons back at our network studios in Jefferson City, Missouri. It’s a big operation, and my daughter has been in the booth now for the past five years, and she helps out in some areas.

Gill Just kind of a well-oiled machine, isn’t it?

Hunziker Hopefully. That’s the hope!

Gill It sounds like it just happens. You turn on your radio, and, wow, it just happens.

Hunziker There’s a lot that goes into it. There is a lot that goes into it. We probably have a little bigger crew than some, but we try to do some things that are unique, and to do that, you need people.

Gill Contrast that with basketball. How would your preparation for a basketball game or games in a week’s time for basketball, how does that differ from football?

Hunziker Well, in football, for example, you’ve got starters on offense and defense on both sides of the ball so you’re looking at forty-four players you need to have something organized about. We haven’t got to specialists yet. Basketball, nine guys may actually play for each team so the number of players involved is considerably less. There’s not as much dead time in basketball. The game sort of calls itself in basketball. It’s a ten-hour preparation, probably, maximum because you don’t need to know that many players. There’s not a lot of dead time. You still want to have a scouting report. You still want to know what’s going on. “Smith passes it to Jones. Jones passes it to Brown.” It’s a point-to-point game where it’s easy to follow the ball and easy to sort of follow the action once you figure out the speed of it. Whereas football, you’ve got one play, and there’s four or five people that have a very significant involvement in the outcome of that play. Really more than that, but four or five for sure, and you’ve got two or three guys that may touch the ball on a given play. So you’re trying to describe all of that, whereas basketball, the ball is going here, the ball is going here, how is it passed? Here to here to here to here. It’s what I would call a point-to-point existence. Frankly, to me, it’s a lot easier. It’s faster. For young broadcasters, basketball eats them alive because they can’t keep up with the speed of it, but once you do it, I think basketball is much, much easier to do than football. That’s just me.

Gill Are the coaches accommodating for you, for example, Coach Ford, if you’ve got some questions that you’re trying to figure out, say, “Coach Ford, what do you know about this team?” Is he willing to have conversations with you and talk to you about things?

Hunziker Absolutely. Coach Sutton was, too, and Travis is very open, and they share the scouting reports with us. He’ll sit down with us even after we

do the formal interview for the radio pregame show. He’ll sit down with us for however long we need and really give us his truthful thoughts on not only the opponent but how some of his guys are doing. Does he really like how they’re playing, does he not like how they’re playing, is one of them sick, etcetera. So, no, he’s fantastic that way and very, very accessible. For that matter, the football coaches are that way, too. We’re fortunate. That’s not true everywhere, but it is definitely true here, and it surely makes our job a lot easier, and I think it makes for a better broadcast. We can get into a lot more detail about things, not only about our team but about the opponents, and that’s because the coaches let us have access. If they didn’t, we couldn’t do all the things we do.

Gill Having talked about football and basketball, do you have a preference, one you like better than the other?

Hunziker I’m glad I get to do both because they’re so different. I’ve done a lot more basketball than football because we didn’t have football at Radford. I went eight years without doing a football game, which is a long layoff, but when I went to Western Kentucky, it came back faster than I was afraid it might. I was a little bit concerned, but I guess if you do games, you do games, and you get better as you go along in any sport. But if you’ve done it, you’ve done it. You can usually jump back on the horse pretty quickly. But they’re so different, as I mentioned. Basketball is so fast. It’s a point-to-point game. Football, there’s so much happening on a given play that you need to somehow accurately describe—I like the contrast. I like doing both. I wouldn’t want to pick one or the other because I wouldn’t want to give the other one up. I like how different they are. That makes it fun.

Gill Have you ever thought about baseball?

Hunziker A little bit.

Gill From your early experiences?

Hunziker Yes, a little bit but not much. I have to admit, by the time I get through the end of basketball, I’m probably ready to be done.

Gill You’re fried by that time, huh?

Hunziker Yes, mentally, I don’t know how much I have left. Baseball moves a lot slower, and you have to be a terrific storyteller. I think what happens is by the time you get through a football and basketball season—I think to do baseball, you have to be really, really mentally on top of your game, especially because there’s so many games in a college season, fifty-five, sixty games.

Gill So much filler time.

Hunziker Oh, gosh yes, and all the action really occurs between two people: the pitcher and the catcher. A lot of things to talk about beyond that. It requires a ton of preparation. People wouldn’t think that it would, but, oh goodness, you’ve really got to prepare for it.

Gill Dave, back to the art and the science of broadcasting, what are some of the nuances, your personal traits in terms of—I’m trying to ask the question the right way. How do you get the feel for it? What’s easy for you about the broadcast? What is the tougher part of it for you? How does it flow for you?

Hunziker I teach Sports Broadcasting Performance, and we talk about five basic elements of play-by-play. Giving the time and score as often as possible, we talk about description, that is, what does the play look like? How was the ball thrown? Was it lobbed? Was it tossed? Was it fired? We talk about location. Was the ball in the right flat, the left flat? Was it over the middle? Did he run off-guard? Is it down the right sideline, left sideline, etcetera? We talk about excitement, which is when is it appropriate to be excited, when is it not? And then preparation, which is all the work you do to get ready. So those are the five basic elements that we teach.

Gill So the five, again?

Hunziker Time and score, description, location, preparation and excitement. Those are the five. Probably excitement, gosh, I don’t have any problem getting excited so that’s not really a problem, and I love the preparation part. The thing that you always find yourself working on is the description, making sure that you adequately describe the play, which you have to react quickly and really give the play justice. I think that’s the most challenging part. That’s the one you’re always evaluating and saying, “I have to do this better,” or, “I really am not satisfied with how I called that particular play.”

Gill At Oklahoma State in the last ten years, can you think of some of the exciting moments that you reflect on?

Hunziker Oh, we covered one earlier with the Bedlam win in 2001 when we beat Oklahoma in Norman and knocked them out of the national championship game as a twenty-seven-point underdog, and then to come back here the next year and really bust them pretty good in an almost similar set of circumstances. It was great fun. Those two wins really energized our football program. It was terrific. The ’04 run to the Final Four was just a blast. What’s crazy about that is (and I don’t know if that

many people remember this) that team started conference play with a twenty-five-point loss on the road to Texas Tech. We went out to Lubbock and just got smashed. We turned the ball over. We couldn’t guard a soul. It was not good.

Gill Of course, this was a Bobby Knight team, too.

Hunziker That’s exactly right. It was a Bob Knight team, and Coach Sutton liked to beat Bob Knight. We came back home the next Wednesday and played Oklahoma. We drilled them pretty good and then went to Kansas State the next Saturday. It was one of those late afternoon, funky five o’clock games. K-State wasn’t very good, ended up a .500 team. Ran that triangle offense, and they had Jim Wooldridge coaching it so they wanted to run that triple post. We always had a hard time guarding that. Doggone, I think we got down sixteen points in the second half, thinking, “Well, gosh, here we go again.” But we end up rallying and winning that game. I don’t think they scored more than two or four points in the last ten, eleven minutes. Just really guarded them. Then went down to Texas and beat Texas on the road.

Then all of a sudden, it’s like, “Uh-oh. Here we go.” Couple weeks later, go to Iowa State and do something you never do. Go up to Ames and beat them by twenty points on a Saturday afternoon. Come home and beat Kansas by twenty on Big Monday. Bill Self’s first return game to Stillwater as OSU graduate head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks, and came in here and clocked them. I mean, we just smashed them. That was great fun because you just felt it. By about the end of January, it’s like, “Oh, wow, this is going to be something special. This team has really got it going.” To beat St. Joseph’s on a shot in the last ten seconds in the Elite Eight to get to the Final Four, beat four conference champions to get to the Final Four, which is as tough a path as you can go through, it was great fun.

The recent success in football has been great. The win at Missouri, which was a huge deal in ’08. Beating the third-ranked team, depending on who you believe, the second-ranked team in the country on their home field. That was the big game, I think, that got Mike Gundy’s program really ratcheted up a notch. Been to bowl games the previous two years. That took us to where we are now, which is a regular member of the top fifteen in America. That was certainly a highlight, especially beating my alma mater. I like to beat those guys. It doesn’t bother me a bit to go up there, as I know where my allegiances are now, and so it’s kind of a pride thing. I like to go up there and win. To beat them when they were ranked so high, that was a lot of fun.

Gill We’ve talked about special moments and special memories. Have there

been some embarrassing moments, some humorous moments for you as a broadcaster?

Hunziker Goodness gracious, where do we start? I didn’t take the headsets to Colorado one time, the microphones. That was a problem. (Laughter) Joe Riddle is our producer/engineer, and we’d split the gear up. I think he needed it to get back to Tulsa to go on the radio early the next morning after a game, so I said, “Let me tear down the equipment. I’ll pack it up and take it home. I’ll just bring it to the bus to go to the airport to Colorado.” So show up Saturday, get on the plane, we fly out to Boulder. It’s a Sunday afternoon game so it’s Saturday when we went out there. Joe’s setting up Saturday night at our practice at the event center in Boulder, and he looks around and says, “Dave, where are the headsets?” “They’d be in Stillwater, Joe.” “Well, how do you propose we’re going to get to do a game on the radio if we don’t have any headsets?” Thankfully, Mark Johnson, the voice of the Buffs, is a dear friend. Called him up, “MJ, you got any headsets we can borrow because I left ours in Stillwater.” He’s like, “Oh, yes, no problem. I’ll bring them to you tomorrow.” So we dodged that bullet. Gosh, there’s all kinds of things.

Gill Faux pas on air, anything like that?

Hunziker Oh, there’s all kinds of things that happen on the air that are funny. Instead of a fresh toasted sub at Iowa State—we were up at Iowa State, Gundy’s first year, and we were really struggling. We won four games and had two or three games with seven turnovers in football, and this was one of them up in Ames. So we’re kind of grinding through the fourth quarter because we were way behind. I said “Subway fresh toasted stub.” Not a sub. A stub. So we bantered that around for five or ten minutes. Oh, gosh. One thing our crew does do, we have a lot of fun together. On the air, off the air, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We take the job seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Those are two that come—I’m trying to think of any others that come immediately to mind. Those are the two that I think of probably the most often.

Gill Flubs or stubs.

Hunziker Oh, yes.

Gill Many listeners identify with your signature expression, “Pistols Firing.” That’s kind of your signature expression. When did you first use this phrase, and where did it come from?

Hunziker Well, it was just for fun. I decided to throw it out there just to see if it

stuck. It was the second game of my career, and we were playing Louisiana Tech. We’d lost the first game in ’01 at Southern Miss, 17-10, so we played Louisiana Tech. Well, that game we had a lot more scoring so I just sort of threw it out there. I just made it up, threw it out there and thought, “Well, I’m going to try this and see what happens.”

Gill Had you thought about it before the game?

Hunziker Oh, yes. I thought about it, and, “Well, let’s just throw it out there and see what happens.”

Gill Why pistols, I mean, just…

Hunziker Oh, the whole Pistol Pete, Cowboy thing. It just seemed like a natural tie in so just throw it out there. Well, people liked it so we’ll keep doing it.

Gill This was the Louisiana Tech game in September of 2001, for the record, when it was first used. We know now.

Hunziker Oh, yes. I think it was September 5 or 6, somewhere in that timeframe, or actually later, September 10 or 11, in September of 2001.

Gill Dave, you talk about Pistol Pete, and speaking of Pete, actually, OSU has two sports symbols, if you will. I say “symbols” because they’re more than just mascots: Pistol Pete and the Spirit Rider.

Hunziker Oh, absolutely.

Gill Still, Pete is primary, but you’ve had a chance to observe this as an outsider and part of it now as one of us after ten years. Why is Pistol Pete so popular? What do you think Pete symbolizes for OSU alumni and fans, and what endears him so much to them?

Hunziker Oh, I think he’s so unique. I think that has a lot to do with it. There’s nothing like him in America, I mean, with the big head and all the appropriate cowboy gear that goes with it and the fact that he shoots a gun. Nobody else out there doing that. You’ve got some riflemen, Mountaineers at West Virginia and so forth, but there is nothing like Pistol Pete. I think he really symbolizes not only the history of Oklahoma but really, I think, the perseverance and the hardworking spirit of Oklahoma State people. As a land-grant institution, that really is who we are. That’s what any land-grant institution is. You think of that, you think of people that are farmers and ranchers, but they’re hardworking, good people. That sort of is the tie-in. I think he’s a wonderful symbol of that, again, also with the ties to Frank Eaton, but the history of Oklahoma. So it just sort of brings everything into an

umbrella, but I think from a national perspective, he’s just so unique. It’s so funny to see people when they haven’t been here before, and they’re in the basketball arena, and he shoots that gun off, and they jump out of their shoes. It is absolutely hilarious. I was one of those people twenty- five years ago so I know what that feels like when you’re not expecting that gun to go off.

Gill You touched on this, but to kind of push it a little further, you’ve seen mascots at dozens of other schools through the years in football and basketball. How is Pete different from a Wildcat, a Husker, a Buffalo? What’s different about him?

Hunziker I think, he’s a person, number one. He’s a person who actually is someone with ties to another real person, Frank Eaton. You don’t see that. There really isn’t anything like that. You think about our conference. There’s nothing even remotely close to that. It has a real historical tie to a figure in history, which I think makes it very, very unique. Obviously, as I mentioned before, the big head, the costume, the cowboy gear, the gun that actually is used, all those things add to it, but I think as much as anything, the fact that it ties to a true historical figure makes it very, very unique. I’m trying to think of anybody else that really falls into that realm. I don’t think there’s another one in the country that falls into that realm.

Gill How do media people view Pete?

Hunziker You know, I’m not certain.

Gill They’re pretty cool, and they don’t say much, but surely they’ve got to…

Hunziker Well, you know, the guy’s got a gun so they’re scared to say too much. (Laughter) They’re afraid of how that thing might be used! Some mascots, you look at them, you don’t even really know for sure who they’re associated with. That happens a lot. “Who is that? Who’s playing?” One look at Pistol Pete, you know who’s on the field. You know who’s on the court. It’s Oklahoma State. I think the biggest thing is he is so recognizable, and there is an absolute, immediate tie to Oklahoma State. That’s probably the biggest thing. That separates him from many other mascots, I think. Yes, a lot of people know who Truman the Tiger is, but they probably don’t know who he is in Radford, Virginia. They see Pistol Pete, they know who he is, and they know who he represents.

Gill That’s a great answer. We have Pistol Pete. Does anyone ask you why we have two mascots, and what do you tell them? Why do we need two mascots?

Hunziker You know, I’ve never really been asked that before, but there again, I think it goes back to our heritage and to Oklahoma history. The Spirit Rider, particularly at football games, that is such a unique part of Oklahoma State’s football culture, if you will, and Bullet, and it separates us from everyone else. I think people look at them and say, “Well, they’re two separate entities, and they each have their role,” but I don’t know that they necessarily tie the two together. Both symbolize Oklahoma State. Both certainly add to the culture, if you will, of this campus and our athletic program, but I don’t know that I’ve had anyone, nationally anyway, ask that question, “Why are there two?” I think they view them as each sort of having their role within the pageantry of our athletic program and our school.

Gill You sort of touched on the Spirit Rider and Bullet, because you’ve got the horse motif, and what they symbolize for Oklahoma State University fans and for our university.

Hunziker Oh, they do. Again, that goes back to our history as a land-grant institution and where we are as farmers and ranchers and cowboys. It’s a terrific symbol. The thing is, when Bullet comes out on football game day, everybody knows business is at hand, folks. It’s time. That’s part of what I think is cool about it, too. It’s like a lot of things. If you do things all the time, they’re not special. The way that I think the Spirit Rider and Bullet are used, it’s perfect because if they’re involved and if they’re there, it’s a big deal. They don’t just show up anywhere. It’s a football game. It’s a parade of significance. It’s an event of significance. When they’re there, you know it’s a high-ante, high-stakes event. I think that’s great. I think it adds to the aura of it, and the fact that Bullet has a stall that can be home when it needs to be underneath the stadium, people are very interested in that. When they take a tour of the stadium, it really shows how important and how endeared we are to Bullet and the Spirit Rider, the fact that we built the west end zone, there’s a place for Bullet.

Gill Dave, I think you might have already partially answered that, but I might ask you to expand on it. What does the Spirit Rider bring to game day events on the field that is special and unique? You touched on it just a little bit previously.

Hunziker Anytime you’re involving a live animal in the game day experience, especially when you’re cowboys—it’s a horse. You think about things you read about. Of course, it still exists today, but you think about history. Particularly before we had automobiles, a man and his horse in ranches and on the prairie across our state and in the west, they were one in the same. They were kindred spirits. They had to be otherwise the jobs couldn’t be done. I think of it in the same way when it comes to the

Spirit Rider coming out. It’s sort of a tribute in some ways to the cowboy and the horse, the kindred spirit, one in the same. We work together to do a job. I think in some ways it sort of symbolizes team sports because the same thing applies. While it’s not an animal involved, it’s still the same thought process of, “We are one. We are here together. We are cowboys. We are here to do our job.” I think there’s a connection there that is pretty unique.

Gill So we were talking about the Spirit Rider. I appreciate all your thoughts on that, Dave. What I want to ask you right quick that I meant to ask you earlier if you don’t mind me jumping in at this point, your relationship with Learfield Sports, broadcast rights and how you relate to them as opposed to the university, and how your contract works. Do you mind, not a lot of details, but just sharing some of that?

Hunziker No. Basically what happens is, in our case, Learfield Sports is a multimedia company, and they purchase from the university the rights to sell the advertising and operate the radio and television networks for Oklahoma State. Then with Oklahoma State’s approval they hire the announcers. That’s where I come into the equation. I sign a contract with Learfield. Learfield handles all the radio and television network advertising as well as the production, and the university approves everything. In essence, the athletic director and president are my bosses because if they think I need to be done tomorrow, then I’ll be done tomorrow. (Laughs) So it’s pretty simple how that plays out when you kind of cut through all the paperwork.

Gill And Learfield has the contract for basketball and football?

Hunziker Yes, they do. They have the entire Athletic Department rights. This is year two, and the contract spans ten years so they’ll be here for a while.

Gill An interesting issue arose a few months ago, last summer, called conference realignment.

Hunziker Oh, gosh.

Gill How do you feel about the recent alignment issues, and has it really been resolved, long-term?

Hunziker I’ll be honest. I don’t think it has. I think in four years, three to four years, we’ll be right back where we were. The core of the problem in the Big Twelve (we lost Colorado and Nebraska) has been to a large extent television money and how it’s distributed. From what I understand, the split of the television money in our league is more lopsided than it is in any other conference. The amount of television money has not been as

high, either. For example, last year, which would’ve been 2009, I guess it would’ve been, Missouri I believe was third or fourth in our conference in television appearances, and I think they made ten or eleven million dollars in television money.

A few years ago, the Big Ten Network was instituted by the Big Ten conference as a television network, which shows games and other programming promoting their member schools. Indiana was a terrible football team in ’09. They got twenty-two million dollars in revenue. That’s a twelve million dollar difference between a team that was flirting with a BCS Bowl, near the top of the league, and one that was at the bottom of the Big Ten. So they managed to find a way to get everybody to come together and get on the same page for a while. I think it’s just a matter of time before it happens again. I think the issues are still there. I don’t think we’ve buried them. I know Mike Holder, our current athletic director, feels that way, [that in] another three or four years we’ll be right back where we were. I think the key for us at Oklahoma State is, “Are we still in the position of being attractive to other conferences as we were this time around?”

The Pac-Ten offer was in our hands. We could have taken it had we chosen to do so. The trick with that league is they’ve added two. They’ve added Utah and Colorado. If they go to sixteen, there’s only room for four mouths at that table. Here are the mouths that need to be fed, should we go through this again: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State. That’s five. There’s four spots. Would someone go to the SEC? That’s possible. That was talked about with Texas A&M when all this shuffling took about, but I don’t think we’re done. I think in three to four years we’re right back where we were, although it’s unfortunate. I like how the league is set up now with a true basketball champion and an eighteen-game conference schedule and a football true, round-robin schedule where each team plays each other in football conference play. Unfortunately, I’m afraid, it won’t last very long.

Gill Dave, what do you see eventually in five, ten, fifteen years out on conferences? There’s talk about mega conferences.

Hunziker That’s probably where we will go. It surely seems to be headed in that direction. The Big Ten has always said (and I don’t know how public they’ve been about this) they want to get into southern markets with a large amount of television households because they want to add money to that pot from the Big Ten Television Network. They want to gain penetration of the Big Ten Network into as many large TV markets as possible. The Nebraska addition really didn’t help them in that regard, but they’d love to get their hands on schools down south or a University

of Maryland where you could get into a Baltimore, Washington DC, Atlanta, if Georgia Tech were to be added, because it’s a seventy-five cents-per-household dollar figure that gets kicked back to the Big Ten. For every household that has the Big Ten Network, it’s like seventy-five cents to the league. When you start doing the math on that, it’s a huge amount of money so I think we’re headed that direction. I think the mega-conference days are coming. I don’t know that I necessarily like them. Would that precipitate a football playoff? I used to be for Bowls and not for a playoff. After watching the Cowboys’ opportunity to play in the BCS basically go away like that the last two years in the regular season, I’m ready for a playoff. It’s too hard and seemingly very unfair for a whole season’s work to just go away in one game. I’ve now been converted. I’m on the other side now, which probably won’t make many of the BCS people happy.

Gill From your perspective, how do you see intercollegiate athletics changing, and how would it be different in future marketing, promotion, media? I’m not talking about the x’s and o’s, but the promotion of it, the media coverage, the marketing, etcetera.

Hunziker We’re at a real crossroads, I think. That’s really great that you asked that because I think we’re at a crossroads. Tennis is going down. Particularly, you think about men’s basketball. If we’re sitting here in December, that’s at the forefront of our minds. Tennis is down across the board. We are in a marketplace of instant gratification. If you want information, you log on to the Internet. You get whatever you want, whenever you want it. Now games can be distributed on the Internet. Game broadcasts you can get on your phone on video. There is this ability to have instant entertainment gratification. We can DVR television shows. My kids do that. A Disney show they want to watch, well, shoot, the DVR is set to record every single one of them over a week, and they can go back and watch them whenever they want.

Back in the 1990s, even the1980s, you may not have even had cable television. If you did have cable TV, there may be a lot of nights where there was nothing on TV you wanted to watch, and you didn’t have the Internet to get on the computer and entertain you if you didn’t like what television was showing. I think college sports will have to become more like pro sports in their approach to marketing and their creativity and making it about more than just the actual contest. It’s got to be an event. It’s got to be something that will get people away from their DVRs and their high definition television sets and their computers and make them want to come to games. Otherwise, it’s just too easy to sit at home. There’s just too many options for entertainment.

Gill Could you sell those games through those outlets you’re talking about?

Hunziker Oh, I think you could.

Gill A person not being here in the seats in the stadium, is there opportunity for conferences and individual schools to then sell that to their fans?

Hunziker I think one way or the other there’s going to have to be a revenue stream that way. Otherwise, the financial hit that everyone takes by the lack of folks in the seats, not only in terms of ticket sales, but in terms of concessions, parking, things of that nature, becomes a major hurdle to overcome. You’ve seen some of that. I think you’ll see more of it because college athletic departments need to generate money. You already see it in professional sports, and you see some of it going on in college sports, as well, where you can pay for content. I think the quality and the number of events that will be offered in that “pay per view” type environment will just continue to grow and it’ll become a revenue stream.

Right now I think we’re just getting started. Advertisers have grown a little more comfortable in buying advertisements on websites. It’s such an unknown entity because you don’t really know for sure how many people are seeing your message. You may know how many hits something is getting, but it’s a little hard to measure, I think, how many people actually see it. Whereas, on television and radio, you have ways to measure that. Yes, I think they’ll have to develop revenue streams in those areas because I think the hit that they’ll take from a ticketing standpoint will probably be substantial. There’s just too many choices.

Gill Favorite OSU memories, particularly of coaches, former student athletes, in your mind? Not just the All Americans, just if there’s been in your mind some special coaches, student athletes in your ten years that you’ve been here that you think about?

Hunziker Coach Sutton was just wonderful. He was so good to me, especially under the circumstances, and to sit in those practice sessions and learn the game. I thought I knew basketball, then I came here. To watch him teach the game in parables, really, he really taught the game in parables. He took what could be a very complicated game and made it simple.

Gill A parable is just where you tell stories or…

Hunziker Yes. For example, if you’re on the opposite side, and the play is over here, you need to walk your dog. What he meant by “walking the dog” is you don’t stand still on offense. You sort of move back and forth on the court so that the defender guarding you can’t cheat over and overplay the play that’s going on on the other end. If he has to honor what you’re

doing there—if you were to back-cut him and go to the basket and he isn’t paying attention, it’s a layup. You’ve got to keep him occupied. That’s one that I always…

Gill Walking the dog.

Hunziker Yes, you’ve got to walk the dog, those types of little sayings, but they were effective. The attention to detail, all the basics of the game. I always told people, “You go to a few Eddie Sutton practices, and even if you were ten or eleven years old, just by sitting there and listening, you could improve tremendously because you understand that it’s as complicated as you want to make this game.” In basketball, it’s all about the details. It’s about being fundamentally sound, handling the basketball, being in a triple threat position, staying down and guarding people defensively, understanding help defense, all those things. I mean, they’re really pretty simplistic thoughts, yet he gave them great detail. As a result, we could execute to perfection. Just had a blast with that.

Travis Ford was that way, too, but you’d give him an opponent and he could come up with the doggonedest scheme to drive them nuts. He could come up with something. He was an innovator. He spent a lot of time studying the NBA, very fascinated by the NBA, so a lot of the things that we did on offense and defense with Travis’ coaching were based on concepts derived from the NBA. Some of the game plans we had, my goodness. We beat Kansas State in Manhattan. They were ranked in the top ten in America. We just lost our starting point guard to injury. We had some great schemes for that game. We had a 1-3-1, three-quarter court trap defense that Travis created himself. Other teams would run it, but not the way we ran it. I asked him afterwards, I said, “Where did you get that?” He said, “Well, actually, I came up with that.” So where we trapped and how we guarded certain things, it drove Kansas State completely crazy. They couldn’t figure out how to attack it. We beat Kansas in Gallagher Iba that same year. They were ranked number one in the country. We had a great scheme so he was a guy that could, my goodness. You look at a game and say, “No chance.” He’d scheme something up defensively, and next thing you know you’re right there. So he was fun.

Mike Gundy was a great coach and also a guy that was an innovator. The thing about Mike, though, was as he grew and added years to his experience coaching, he understood that the best thing you need to do as a head football coach is surround yourself with the right people. As we sit here in 2010, he probably has one of the top four or five coaching staffs in America. Also the fact that maybe it would be best if he didn’t call the offensive plays. That’s what he did. I guess it would’ve been his first five years as head coach is he was the play caller. He gave that up.

As a result, he could coach effort. He could monitor the team’s mind as the team went through some tough stretches in games, and it probably helped us win some games here in 2010 because he was able to monitor the mood of the team in tough times.

Les Miles, as I mentioned, really created a winning mood here. He was ready to take on the Sooners and smack them in the mouth, and he didn’t care how hard they hit back. He was going to let them know, “I’m going to hit you, and if you want to hit back and knock me out that’s fine, but understand this fist is coming at you.” Our fans took on that mentality. We got knocked out a couple times in that process, but it gave our fans the thought and the mood of “Don’t back down. Don’t bow to them. Don’t kiss their rings. We will rear back and hit you. You may hit me back harder, but I’m going to hit you.” That was a huge change in how we thought in terms of athletes, my goodness.

Of course, all the great players were fun. I loved Andre Williams because he was such a unique character. He was on the team when the plane crashed. He was a guy that thought outside the box. He always used to like to give me a hard time about things, and he’d sit up in the front of the plane. The other players would go in the back of the plane when we’d fly to basketball games. Andre would sit in the front with Joe Riddle and I and visit. We had a funny story. I’d like to listen back to the games, when we’d get on the plane to go home, to evaluate my work. So I’d done that coming back from A&M, and the next game was at Nebraska. We get on the plane, and Andre sits up front. He looks over, “Hunziker, are you going to listen to that game all the way home and ignore us?” I said, “No, as a matter of fact, and I don’t think I ever fouled out in eight minutes of play either.” (Laughter) I still zing him with that one from time to time. He fouled out in eight minutes in Lincoln that night. So he was a favorite.

There were many, many others, gosh. Loved the Graham twins [Joey and Stephen] who were on the Final Four team. They were such delightful young men. They were so good to kids. They were great with my daughters. They just adored Joey and Stevie. Tony Allen, the epitome of toughness, and I loved Chicago basketball, anyway, having watched a lot of it growing up in north Missouri. We get the Illinois State basketball tournament on TV so I had a special admiration for the Chicago guys. They were great, great fun. I was really happy that Byron Eaton and Terrel Harris had a chance to play in the NCAA tournament because of the rough years they went through here. I had a lot of admiration and respect for Sean [Sutton]. He was a wonderful person to deal with media-wise and a terrific offensive coach. If you had to draw up a play at the end of a game to win it and you picked four people to do it, he’d be on the list of four. You’d say, “Hey, I want him to draw up

the play.”

Football-wise, when I think about particular players, I think a lot about Russell Okung, who was an All American lineman but who was just an absolutely fabulous person. Just a fabulous, fabulous person. He was great fun. Billy Bajema was always a favorite as a true student athlete who now has just had a—been in the NFL ever since he graduated. So much for the medical school. He’s been playing in the pros. He was great fun to be around. Those are just a few of the names. Loved watching Kevin Williams play in the defensive interior. One that is only a sophomore but I really enjoy being around is Justin Blackmon. All American wide receiver this year. He’s going to be a long-term, big-time player. A cornerback here now named Andrew McGee, who’s a terrific Christian young man, played the last half of this season with a cast. Still got five interceptions on the year. I think he had three of those with that big cast on his left hand. Don’t have many of those come along where a guy really gets the big picture of life and competes in athletics and football at this level. He’s a rare treat, I’ll tell you.

Gill Dave, what have we not covered? Final question or two before you go.

Hunziker Oh, gosh.

Gill Is there anything you want to share, thinking that maybe twenty years from now someone might be thinking back on OSU athletics at this time? Broadcast, media marketing, anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with us?

Hunziker Oh, gosh, I’m trying to think if there’s anything that comes to mind. Can’t think of anything off the top of my head. We covered a lot of stuff.

Gill You’ve got to go to class. Give a plug. You actually teach?

Hunziker Yes.

Gill You teach as an adjunct professor in the School of Journalism.

Hunziker I do. Teach Sports Broadcasting Performance and have done that, I guess, now for the past four years, and we really get into the play-by- play part of it and the performance on camera part of it. It’s lots of fun.

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