John Strong launched his broadcast career at Oregon’s Lake Oswego High School, calling football games with a classmate from an internet station of their own making. His path later took him from the North End of Providence Park, in the founding days of the Timbers Army fan group for the Portland Timbers, to the broadcast booth of the same stadium as the radio play-by-play announcer for the MLS team he adored, and later to national broadcast work with NBC. Now, he’s along for the ride as Fox Sports’ lead voice on the sport.
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I like to think of myself as a product of the generation that’s now really coming of age and is still forming. Mine was the generation that was really the first that was informed by the 1994 World Cup; then we had MLS. I twisted my parents’ arms to get Fox Sports World on cable. Having the Timbers arrive when they did was massive for me. My son is going to grow up as exposed to this sport as anyone else in the world.”
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Photo by: CATHY CHENEY
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On entering the broadcast booth: The biggest thing for me is I had to stop being a fan. In 2011, the Timbers are in MLS, I’m calling the games, and I was still a fan. I still had the emotions, particularly when I called games on the radio. I sort of had to learn that, not even just because I had aspirations of being a national broadcaster, but if I had to do my job properly, I can’t live emotionally with the ups and the downs and the results.
On reaching the audience: There’s a little of that pressure of playing to the audience. I had that insecurity in 2011 of being seen as a sellout to these Timbers Army people I had known since high school. It’s what made 2012 such a difficult year. The team was struggling, and they wanted me to come on the radio and crush the team and the players. Every word I said was parsed. That’s where being a national broadcaster is a lot easier.
On his career development: It’s been a lot of being in the right place at the right time. In 2010, ESPN … went with all English voices for the World Cup. A few years later, the pendulum swung the other way, where networks were trying to find a young American that had grown up in the sport that had enough of a broadcasting base already. That’s exactly why I was hired by NBC and Fox. There was a stretch there where I was the only one. Now that’s changing.
On what’s ahead: One of the things that attracts me so much to what I do … is the ability to narrate this [generational] transformation in the same way that you can look back at the formative years of the NBA through the 1980s and 1990s with Brent Musburger and Marv Albert’s voices on those iconic moments. We have the opportunity collectively to write that same history for soccer. To be a part of that, to be working at the network that has the next few World Cups, the opportunity to be that voice that narrates that transformation of the sport in this country is insanely exciting to me.
— Eric Siemers, Portland Business Journal
