When the team of Anish Shroff and Mike Golic, Jr. got the Duke’s Mayo Bowl assignment, they were through the moon.
Shroff told Brandon Contes on the latest episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast that it was a rather fitting assignment for his crew, which included himself, Golic and Taylor McGregor.
“We had sort of done some wacky, off-kilter stuff,” Shroff said. “It was three people, who like to have fun, who understand that this is sports, we’re not curing cancer. We can lighten the mood sometimes. Not everything has to be so serious.”
During the 2021 college football season, Golic had some serious fascination with some weird, awful foods, according to Shroff. However, that window of opportunity to do so on ESPN broadcast didn’t open until their producer contracted COVID-19 three or four days prior to kickoff.
ESPN producer Paul Irvin, who had done some college football in the past, but had been working on the NBA, dropped into producing the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Bowl between North Carolina and South Carolina. He told the crew that he was open to doing whatever it was that they wanted to do.
“And when you say that to our crew, we kind of felt like hyenas circling a zebra,” Shroff explained, as he couldn’t contain his laughter. ‘“Oh yeah, you want to go full sicko?’ We want to go full sicko. So, we started throwing out these crazy, wild ideas. And one of these ideas we had thrown out was maybe we could dip some random food in mayonnaise every quarter, just as a gag.”
And gag they did.
“The whole crux of the game, the reason people are watching is because of what’s gonna happen at the end—the coach is going to get doused with mayonnaise,” Shroff said. “So, what happened was, in the lead-up to the game, we found out that the actual mayo dump would not happen on live television, it would only happen on the app.”
Shroff and the fellow members of his crew were kind of bummed to find that out, especially because they wanted to be able to keep their viewers around for the endgame.
“Now we need to find a way to keep people watching and build up to this moment, which is going to be on the app,” he said.
Golic had the idea for dipping food into mayonnaise, with the caveat that Shroff got to pick the food.
Shroff had no idea what the food was going to be. Fortunately, before the game, they were down on the field and Golic had a 36-pack of Oreos, which Shroff said he was cradling like a football.
After Shroff questioned Golic about his bountiful amount of Oreos, Golic told him to just wait.
And we all certainly know the rest.
As it turns out, that ended up being the most fun Shroff had calling a game and it likely led to him getting one of his current roles as the radio voice of the Carolina Panthers.
“But I gotta be honest, the first year that we did that bowl, I don’t think I’ve had more fun broadcasting an event and tangentially, that in some ways helped me get the Panthers job,” he said. “Because that game was played in Charlotte at Bank of America Stadium, home of the Panthers. That was probably the most fun I’ve ever had calling a game.”
Listen to Shroff’s full appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast, which includes discussions about his experience on Dream Job, becoming the radio voice of the Panthers, and much more. Subscribe to the Awful Announcing Podcast and to Awful Announcing’s YouTube channel for the latest clips and highlights.
