“I like the challenge. Can you make the people at home enjoy the game as much as you are enjoying the game in the booth? That’s what’s exciting about it.”
Dan Gresham is familiar to viewers at home who tune in to see the Lamar Cardinals play. Whether it’s football, basketball or volleyball, Gresham brings Cardinal sports to life on ESPN+ as the play-by-play voice.
As Cardinal basketball begins its 2024-25 season, Gresham is entering his 45th season covering the Lamar Cardinals. He said playing and watching sports has been a central part of his life since childhood.
“We’d go to my grandparents’ house, have dinner and watch football,” he said.
“There’d be 25 people crammed into this little house watching a football game. That’s just a Texas thing, I guess.”
Gresham was raised in Longview. After graduating from Baylor University, Gresham worked as a sports reporter and talk show host in radio and television. In 1987, he joined KFDM Channel 6 in Beaumont and became the host of the four-and-a-half-hour Morning Show. Gresham retired from KFDM in December 2023.
Gresham’s first experience in sports commentary came in radio, when a friend asked him to call a high school football game.
“I did not know if I could do it or not, but I said, ‘Sure,’ because there was no audience,” he said. “In radio, you paint the picture for the listeners — ‘Johnson goes down the right side, cuts across the middle, the pass – completed!’”
In 2010, Gresham became the play-by-play announcer for the Cardinal Sports Network which airs on ESPN+. Gresham said he found the role of commentator to be different on television than on radio.
“On television, suddenly you realize that everybody sees what you see,” he said. “You have to bring value by adding things that people don’t know. Like, you may not know that the defensive tackle played quarterback in high school.”
When Gresham sits at his commentary table with his headset on, he has dozens of sheets of charts and statistics in front of him. While commenting on the game, he simultaneously navigates through the stack of numbers, looking for background information about players and teams.
“A lot of play-by-play is as much about what you do before the game as it is about what you do during the game,” Gresham said. “When I go into a game, I come in with charts and pieces of paper that I spend two hours collecting as much information as I can about each player, team and coach. And you can use that information during the course of the broadcast.”
During most broadcasts, while Gresham is doing the play-by-play commentary, he is joined by a color commentator whose job it is to analyze the plays.
“They should be bringing two different things to the table,” he said. “The play-by-play commentator is describing what’s going on. He’s setting the stage. The color commentator adds flavor and insight to the game; ‘Why did they do that? Why did or didn’t it work?’”
When doing play-by-play commentary, it is important to not get too technical, Gresham said.
“For example, in volleyball, I could say, ‘They’re setting up a one attack and they’re trying to get into the two spot,’” he said. “But the average person may not know what that means. You’ve got to keep it insightful enough that the person who does know the game understands, but also the person who may never have watched the game gets an idea of what you are describing.”
As a commentator, he must remain unbiased and not become a “homer,” Gresham said.
“I think the biggest missing piece in sports broadcasting, especially in smaller college sports, is objectivity,” he said. “It sometimes becomes the home team broadcast. Maybe that comes from my journalistic background, but I want to be unbiased and for (it to be) a good game. I want to be an observer, not a fan.”
One of Gresham’s most cherished memories with Lamar is the men’s basketball team’s Sweet Sixteen run. The historic 1979-80 season under head coach Billy Tubbs saw Lamar push past Weber State and Oregon State, before ultimately falling to Clemson in the round of 16.
“That’s definitely one I will always remember,” Gresham said. “We went out to Tucson, Arizona, covered basketball and did live reports.”
Basketball was the first sport that Gresham covered with Lamar. To this day, it remains his favorite sport.
“If I had to pick only one sport that I was going to do, basketball might be number one,” he said. “The pace is great, it’s very quick, up and down.
“But right after basketball would be volleyball. For me, it’s the most underappreciated sport sometimes. Volleyball is nonstop action and it requires a lot of intensity to play the game. It’s not just about hitting, but also about defense and anticipation.”
Even after 45 years, Gresham’s enthusiasm for sports broadcasting hasn’t waned. While he may not have to get up early for his Morning Show shift anymore, Gresham has no plans to step away from commentating any time soon.
“It still excites me,” he said.
The Lamar Cardinals men’s basketball will take on Sam Houston at 4 p.m., Nov. 17, in the Neches Arena at the Montagne Center. The women’s basketball team will face SMU in Dallas, Nov. 22.
Read Luis Lemmen's companion piece on Gresham in The Beaumont Enterprise.
