He later learned you could be on the air as a freshman. It had a picture of a student wearing a radio headset. He grew up wanting to be a disc jockey, not necessarily a sports radio guy, and was trying to figure out where to go to college when he got a flyer in the mail from tiny Bethany College in West Virginia. "The Madison Square Garden crowds were so crazy, and you could hear it on the radio, that it just felt so special," Ted said. He would score the game on graph paper as Albert described Knicks games. He got the radio bug listening to WABC and especially, to famed sportscaster Marv Albert calling Knicks' games. His dad commuted into the city every day, and Ted was a huge Mets and Knicks fan. Ted grew up in Darien, Connecticut, but is a New York guy at heart. He teared up and called her the most incredible human being he's ever met. Only once, during about three hours of interviews with me over several days, did he get emotional, when he talked about Laurie, his wife of nearly 33 years. Nor would you know that in recent years, he has held it together while his wife has fought a courageous and so far successful battle against cancer. It also resulted in 11 engagements and two marriages.Īnd given Ted's very private nature, you surely don't know what a loving, doting father he is, and how much he loves his wife. The show resulted in numerous bad dates and a ton of drama, which were described in detail on his show. If you liked what you heard, he hooked you up on a date. until midnight, where he would solicit calls from eligible men and women. He's done radio broadcasts from hot air balloons and once traveled around the country investigating gruesome murders for a national cable TV show.Īnd long before anyone had thought of The Bachelor, he did a two-hour love song radio show, from 10 p.m. That stunt garnered a short segment on the Larry King show on Mutual Radio. Meals were hoisted up to him in a bucket and he raised a boatload of money. He was once camped out on the top of a Roy Rogers restaurant for a week to raise money for hospice in Frederick, Maryland. You don't know the outrageous things he's done on radio shows from West Virginia to Maryland to Georgia. You don't know that he was once arrested – handcuffed and taken away by the police – for selling encyclopedias door to door without a license. Yet, he quickly hit the street and found part-time work that led to full-time work, without missing a beat. There's not much that's scarier than being told the paycheck and healthcare ends next week. Yet there's a lot you don't know about Ted, that he's a survivor, who as a husband and the father of two daughters, he was twice fired, with little notice, and had to hustle to pay the bills and feed his family. When many fans think of ODU, they think of Ted. He does hundreds of videos for ODU's web site on a multitude of sports, not just football and basketball. He has emceed the State of the University address and a multitude of other meetings for the academic side of the University. He never says no when asked to work a gig for ODU. Ted also emcees countless fundraising events, banquets and charity events. "All the standups and the goofy stuff he does, that's Ted," said Andy Mashaw, the color commentator for ODU football since the team began playing in 2009. In videos he's done for ODU he's stood in a pool, jumped into a pool, sat poolside wearing a pair of slick shades and even accidentally kicked a basketball player's cell phone into a pool. The guy does his homework.Īnd he's creative, especially when it comes to pools – swimming pools, that is, largely in hotels on the road. He pores over stats, biographies, anything he can find on the internet. You struggle to keep up with him as he walks, and no matter how hard you work, you'll never know more than he does about ODU athletics or the opponents for games he is about to call. Shut the mic off, and he's just the same: full of joy, laughter, one-liners, friendly sarcasm and always on the move. "You never know what you're going to hear next from Ted, and that's a good thing." "Sometimes, I don't think our fans realize how good they have it. "I've never heard a better game broadcaster than Ted Alexander," ODU athletic director Wood Selig said. When the microphone is on, he is always talking, spitting out statistics, jokes, trivia and the best radio play-by-play description of college football, basketball and baseball you will hear anywhere. The radio voice of Old Dominion basketball since 2007 and football since 2009, Alexander is the Energizer Bunny of college sports broadcasters. There is no such thing as dead airtime with Ted Alexander.
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