Curt Gowdy Media Awards recipient Mike Breen speaks at the 2020 Basketball Hall of Fame awards tip-off celebration and awards gala Friday, May 14, 2021, in Uncasville, Conn. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
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As a senior in high school, Mike Breen applied to three colleges. He didn’t get into his first choice. On a visit to another, he knew it wasn’t the right fit. That’s why Breen ended up at Fordham University, about a 10-minute drive from his home in Yonkers, N.Y., even though he always thought he would go further away to school. Turns out, that choice played a pivotal role in his highly successful career and to lifelong friendships.
On Wednesday night, Breen will call Game 1 of the NBA finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks, the team he grew up rooting for and the franchise he has broadcast games for the past three decades. It will be the 21st consecutive year Breen will serve as the finals’ play-by-play voice for ABC/ESPN. The network has shuffled analysts but always kept around Breen, who won the prestigious Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020.
Breen, who turned 65 last month, is one of many Fordham alums who have had success in sports broadcasting, a source of pride for the Catholic school in the Bronx, N.Y., 15 miles from Madison Square Garden, where Breen will call Games 3 and 4 next Monday and Wednesday nights.
Fordham traces its sports announcing roots to 1947 with the introduction of WFUV, a 50,000-watt radio station that still exists and launched the careers of so many broadcasters, producers, reporters and communications executives. The most famous alum is Vin Scully, a 1949 graduate who played baseball at Fordham before embarking on a legendary career calling games for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers for 67 years.
“He always used to joke that when he would be in the outfield, that he would do the play-by-play for the games,” said Bobby Ciafardini, WFUV’s sports director who got to know Scully before his passing in 2022 at age 94. “I guess at some point he figured he was better at play-by-play than he was at playing baseball. I’ve always called him the patron saint of the program.”
Another pivotal moment occurred in the fall of 1974 when senior Malcolm Moran started One on One, a weekly sports call-in show on WFUV. It was a rarity at the time when only a few stations aired talk shows and occurred nearly 13 years before the first all-sports radio station (WFAN) began in July 1987. Moran, who is now a professor at Indiana University Indianapolis and director of the school’s Sports Capital Journalism Program, won the Curt Gowdy Award in 2007 after covering sports for Newsday, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.
Mike Breen Forms Friendship With Michael Kay
At Fordham, Breen called football and basketball games on WFUV and occasionally hosted One on One, which remains a fixture on the station. He even served as a DJ, including on Dec. 8, 1980, the night Beatles’ singer and guitarist John Lennon was murdered.
During college, Breen became close friends with Michael Kay, who is now the New York Yankees’ television play-by-play broadcaster on the YES Network. When Breen was a freshman, he was introverted and had trouble adjusting until he met Kay, an outgoing student who was a year older and accepted Breen into his social circle.
“That changed everything,” Breen said. “From then on, I spent every spare second at the radio station hanging out with him and some of the other guys. I always credit him. If it wasn’t for him, I may have quit.”
After college, Breen and Kay helped each other navigate the often difficult early years of a career. Kay started working at the New York Post, while Breen became a news reporter at a radio station in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., about 80 miles north of midtown Manhattan. He later became the morning news anchor and served as a play-by-play announcer once per week for the local high school. After two and a half years, he hit a crossroads.
“I wasn’t making any money,” Breen said. “I lived in this little tiny apartment, and I could barely afford the rent. I had to ask my parents to help me. I started getting a little discouraged.”
Still, Breen’s mother and father encouraged him to stick with it even after he lost out on a job opportunity calling Villanova athletics. But shortly after that rejection, a friend from Fordham told Breen about a part-time producer position one day a week at WNBC Radio in New York, which eventually led to a full-time role and an entry into a competitive market. He served as an analyst for Marist University and Seton Hall basketball games and as a high school basketball play-by-play announcer for SportsChannel America, a national cable network.
In 1990, Breen began reporting sports news for Imus in the Morning, a popular show on WFAN. Two years later, at the start of the 1992-93 season, he was hired as the Knicks’ radio voice by Mike McCarthy, an executive whom Breen had known through producing games.
“To this day, I still think that Mike McCarthy changed my life,” Breen said.
Mike Breen Inspires Other Broadcasters
Breen joined the Knicks’ booth at an opportune time when the franchise was the city’s most popular team and making deep playoff runs. That first season, the Knicks advanced to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 19 years, losing to the eventual champion Chicago Bulls in six games. The next season, they played in the NBA finals for the first time since 1973, losing to the Houston Rockets in seven games.
Breen made an impression on numerous Knicks’ fans, including Spero Dedes, an aspiring broadcaster from northern New Jersey who followed the team closely.
“There’s something about his sound that just instantly grabbed me,” Dedes said. “I was still in middle school when I was listening to Mike in the car, going to and from my sports practices and games. We’d get back home and I’d sit in the car and just listen to him calling games on the radio.”
When it came to explore college options, Dedes looked up where Breen went to school.
“If Mike didn’t go to Fordham, I probably would not have gone to Fordham,” Dedes said. “That’s how obsessed I was with Mike, just his whole journey. I didn’t know anything about the industry. I just found the guy that I wanted to emulate.”
After enrolling at Fordham in 1997, Dedes followed a similar path as Breen, getting involved with WFUV, calling games and hosting One on One. Dedes also covered professional games on a regular basis in the area, as WFUV secured credentials for student reporters for the Knicks, Yankees and other professional franchises, a perk that continues today. Before he could even drink alcohol legally, Dedes spent many nights interviewing Knicks stars such as Patrick Ewing and John Starks and filing reports.
Dedes and his classmates had an opportunity to meet Breen, Kay and other alums thanks to Bob Ahrens, WFUV’s former executive sports producer who taught classes and had close relationships with many broadcasters. Ciafardini, who replaced Ahrens after his retirement in 2017, continues the tradition now with students covering the local professional franchises as well as the Super Bowl, Baseball Hall of Fame induction weekend, Heisman Trophy ceremony, Belmont Stakes and other major events each year.
“I tell people all the time, the FUV broadcast program at Fordham is like this fantasy land for an aspiring broadcaster on so many levels,” Dedes said.
Mike Breen Offers Advice To Aspiring Sportscasters
Following graduation in 2001, Dedes worked as an overnight update anchor at WFAN and later hosted a nightly show on NBA TV, a nascent league-owned network. At 23 years old, he started working at the YES Network calling New Jersey Nets games as well as college basketball and football, which helped him get the Los Angeles Lakers’ radio job in 2005. Since 2010, he has worked at CBS, calling NFL games and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. He’s called NBA and college basketball games for TNT, as well.
Besides Dedes, other Fordham alums have idolized Breen, including Ryan Ruocco, who transferred to the school in 2005 after his freshman year at Loyola University in Maryland. Ruocco worked at WFUV and also served as the statistician for Kay during Yankees’ home games in college.
When Breen came to campus, Ruocco remembers that Breen always provided helpful tips that he still uses. For instance, he told Ruocco to always provide the score first when calling a game on the radio before offering other details because people can’t see the score on the screen like they can when watching television. Breen also mentioned to Ruocco and his classmates that each season he spent time in the stands before at least one game to remember his roots as a fan.
“He was amazingly helpful,” Ruocco said. “Mike was always amazing with me, giving me great feedback, pumping me up, really infusing me with belief.”
Ruocco is now a colleague with Breen at ESPN, where he is the lead WNBA and NCAA women’s basketball play-by-play announcer and a primary NBA announcer. In addition, he calls Nets and Yankees games for the YES Network, where he works alongside Fordham alums such as Kay, Yankees analyst Jack Curry and Yankees studio host Justin Shackil. Other Fordham alums calling games in the area include Chris Carrino, the Nets’ radio voice, and Bob Papa, the New York Giants’ radio voice.
“We have Fordham people all over the place,” Ruocco said. “It really does feel like this familial brotherhood where we all look out for each other.”
Mike Breen Prepares For A Special NBA Finals
Over the next week or two, Ruocco and others will be paying close attention to Breen, who is back in his element calling the NBA finals, although this one hits closer to home considering his history with the Knicks. In 1999, the last time the Knicks were in the finals, Breen was the team’s television broadcaster, so he didn’t get a chance to call the games because NBC had the exclusive rights. For much of the next two decades, Breen saw plenty of losing, as the Knicks only made the playoffs six times from 2001 to 2022, winning one postseason series. Now, after making it to the conference finals last year for the first time in 25 years, the Knicks are seeking their first title in 53 years.
“It’s different now because of social media, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the city so electrified by a Knicks’ team,” Breen said. “It’s not just the fact that they’re winning, but how they play. They really play so well together. They’re so connected. There’s such sacrifice there. There’s such happiness for each other’s success. It’s very reminiscent of the 70 and 73 championship teams.”
Back then, Breen was a young fan rooting for the Knicks, just like his father and five brothers. He is now the NBA’s leading voice and longtime broadcast partner and friend of Walt Frazier, the star guard on those 1970 and 1973 teams who’s called Knicks’ games alongside Breen on MSG Network since the 1990s. Still, Breen remains grateful and appreciative of what he’s accomplished. He’s always willing to help, visiting WFUV often, including this spring with Kay to conduct a workshop and speak with students.
“He’s obviously reached the pinnacle of the industry, but what makes Mike unique and really special is he’s just a really good salt of the earth kind of guy,” Dedes said. “He’s the kind of guy who gave you confidence as a young aspiring broadcaster because he never forgot where he came from. He never forgot what it felt like to be in our shoes.”