Sports broadcasting has always come with interesting debates about homerism. Degrees of homerism from local MLB, NBA, or NHL announcers are often seen, and they’re sometimes embraced and sometimes criticized. But homerism usually isn’t seen as much in football TV broadcasts, where most broadcasts are national. And it can sometimes be hard for former players to keep their allegiances off-air, as famed former CFL and NCAA player Tracy Ham has found out.
Ham is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame (inducted in 2007) and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (inducted in 2010). He shone for the Georgia Southern Eagles in college from 1983-86, helping them to back-to-back Division I-AA titles in 1985 and 1986 and becoming the first-ever collegiate player to pass for 5,000 yards and rush for 3,000 yards in a career. He was then drafted in the ninth round of the NFL draft by the Los Angeles Rams, but after finding out they wanted him to play running back, he instead went to the CFL. He’d play there from 1987-99 with Edmonton, Toronto, Baltimore (where he was part of the 1995 team that remains the only U.S.-based squad to win the Grey Cup), and Montreal.
Ham’s now back at Georgia Southern, working as the Eagles’ senior associate athletics director (administration). He recently spoke to Awful Announcing via email as part of a promotional campaign for Canadian casino guide CanadaCasino.ca, discussing the various leagues he played in, his current athletics role, and more. But, to start with, his comments on why broadcasting his school’s games didn’t work out for him are perhaps especially notable.
“I enjoyed doing the games here at Georgia Southern,” Ham said. “I did do a little college broadcasting here, but they kicked me out because I said ‘us’ and ‘we’ too much! I’d go, ‘Hey, we have to do this.’ ‘Oh, you can’t say ‘We gotta go.’ But that’s my team, right? So it was interesting.”
That perhaps is further evidence of the challenges we’ve seen many face in making the jump from playing to broadcasting. But despite calling games not working out for him, Ham said he has a lot of respect for those who do perform that role, as well as the media overall.
“I have a lot of respect for the media, the homework you have to do,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for the industry simply because a good interview is worth its weight in gold and it’s always based on the questions that you ask. So I have a lot of respect for the broadcast industry because their preparation calls for them to be the educational side of the game, and then you’re trying to educate people on what they see.”
And Ham said he’s encouraging some of the athletes he works with in his current athletic department role to check out broadcasting.
“It’s a lot of fun in our media department,” he said. “I watch our young kids now grow up in it. I’m always encouraging our kids to get involved in the broadcast side of it. We have our own ESPN production here on campus [for ESPN+ games and more], and so we have a really good group of kids that are getting into the industry. And I think it’s a great industry to get in.”
On his own playing career, Ham said the CFL was a particularly great experience for him, giving him a chance to go shine at quarterback that the NFL didn’t offer.
“The NFL was a tough experience for me because they moved me to running back and so I really was out of position,” he said. “But I really enjoyed the CFL as a quarterback, especially as an African-American quarterback coming up during the mid-eighties when we were moved positions. And Canada was always open arms to a quarterback that had a skill set that he can be mobile. It wasn’t really ‘What’s your stature,’ it was ‘What’s your ability?’”
Ham said he doesn’t always get to watch the CFL these days, but he loves what the league does offer (notable around some recent debates) when he is able to watch it. He said he’s checked out several recent games, and enjoys the focus on athleticism.
“You can see it’s still a very, mobile athletic league,” he said. “It’s a real skill set that lives in the CFL. And I think you find that that league produces this skill set.”
Ham said one of the biggest changes in the CFL since his career is the improvement in Canadian, or “national,” talent. Indeed, when he played for Baltimore in 1994 and 1995, part of the discussion about that remarkable team (which made two Grey Cups, winning one) was that they (like the rest of the CFL USA expansion teams) were exempted from the Canadian ratio rules. But Canadians have put up some of the best numbers at many positions in various seasons since then, and there are now even a few Canadians starting at quarterback (a position not covered by the ratio rules), including Nathan Rourke and Tre Ford. Ham said it’s incredible to see how good the Canadian talent is now.
“That the Canadian skill set that has caught up with the American skill set is one of the most amazing things to me,” he said. “You can’t tell who’s a Canadian, who’s American now. And I think that’s the beauty of the league now. …That’s what I really enjoy about the league now.”
Ham still has connections in Canada, and fondly looks back on his days playing there.
When I look back, I think about how I just really, really enjoyed it,” he said. “We still have some strong relationships in Canada, but my time in the CFL was just great.”
And he said he’s impressed with what the CFL’s current athletes and business leaders are doing.
“I just love the advancement of the league,” he said. ““I think this next generation of athletes in the CFL have carried the torch well. They have increased the game. They increased the availability, visibility of the game. They have enhanced the game.
“They play at a high level. And it’s good to see that the league has continued to grow. I like the fact that there are all new facilities now that are essentially really nice.
“At the time I was there, Edmonton was the only grass field. Now you have several grass fields there. They’ve done a good job of carrying the ball in the CFL and keeping the league at a high visible level.”
As per what Ham himself is up to, he said he’s loving working at Georgia Southern, where he’s been since 2014.
“I really enjoy it,” he said. “They call it work, but I just enjoy it so much it’s hard to say that it’s work. So I’m going to stay in the college environment.
“I’m in Statesboro, I’m going to retire here. And I get to watch sports and I enjoy being around the student athletes and just really helping them for the next step in their own careers.”
He said working with student-athletes is the best part of his job.
“I do a lot of programming for our student-athletes, preparing them for employment experiences. What we do is we connect our student athletes with our alumni base in the work community and the business community. That’s really been rewarding to me.”
And Ham said to keep an eye out for those athletes making wider impacts ahead.
“We’ve got a great group of young student-athletes that are just looking forward to charging into the world and making their mark.”