Radio man dedicates career to OU sports broadcasting
Radio man dedicates career to OU sports broadcasting

Michael Dean

Shane Magness
Homeschool

Junior

What do radio commercials and radio engineering have in common?

At University of Oklahoma sports events, one man is in charge of both. Michael Dean has been working in the radio business for a long time.

“Counting everything all the way back to high school, I’ve done this for 43 years,” Dean said.

Radio was something Dean had always wanted to do. He got his first radio job when he was a junior in high school as the night and weekend DJ at a station in Idabel.

When he was a senior in high school, he got his first play-by-play job.

He broadcasted local high school football and basketball games.

Since then, he has worked at stations in Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

While working for 92.5 KOMA in 1991, he was given the opportunity to join the OU radio team when KOMA started broadcasting the OU basketball and football games.

Today, he is in his 17th season with OU.

Dean is in charge of setting up all the equipment and making sure everything is good to go on game days.

For home football games, Dean starts preparing for the broadcast on Friday.

On game days, he arrives at the stadium five hours before kickoff and sets up all the equipment on Saturday.

After the broadcast, he is in charge of the takedown. When the team is on the road, he has to do everything on Saturday.

“At home, I have one or two hours to take everything down and pack it up,” he said. “But on the road, everything that took an hour and a half to set up has to be torn down and loaded on the bus in 15 minutes.”

Basketball games are much simpler.

Dean arrives at the arena two hours before tipoff, and sets the equipment up, which takes about 10 minutes.

After the postgame show and interviews, Dean packs everything up in about 10 minutes. For road games, he sets up the equipment during the Saturday morning shoot-around.

“The best thing about working with Michael is he is able to correct any technical issue we may encounter, and he always has a positive attitude,” said Mike Houck, color commentator for OU basketball.

“Without [Michael], we wouldn’t have a broadcast,” said Bob Barry, the play-by-play voice for OU football and basketball.

The best advice Dean can give to those who want to go into sports broadcasting is to be involved with or be around sports as much as possible.

“I would go to all the high school football games, sit in the bleachers and do play-by-play, either in my head or actually say it out loud,” Dean said. “That way, I was around the game, and I also was practicing my play-by-play.”

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