Dvoracek excited to be in booth for Saturday’s game
NORMAN — When Dusty Dvoracek was in high school, Thursday nights were special.
The nights before Lake Dallas High, where Dvoracek starred before making his way to OU, played football, Sandra Dvoracek didn't have to think about what she was cooking for dinner.
Often, teammates would come to the Dvoracek house to share the tradition of nightbefore-game chicken spaghetti.
“My mom is kind of famous for her chicken spaghetti because she puts way too much cheese and butter in there, which we all liked,” Dusty Dvoracek said this week.
Friday night, Dvoracek’s new team will come over to his house in Norman and have a pregame meal of chicken spaghetti cooked by Sandra Dvoracek.
Most weeks, Dvoracek is on the road somewhere farflung, as he continues to rise
in prominence as a college football analyst for ESPN.
This week, there was no need to get on airplane or stay in a hotel.
For the first time since he started analyzing games for the ESPN family of networks, Dvoracek will be in the television booth calling one of his alma mater’s games when Oklahoma hosts Baylor on Saturday (2:30 p.m., ABC).
“It’s crazy, it’s awesome, a little nerve-wracking,” Dvoracek said of his assignment, noting that being around his family over the weekend was the best part. “OU fans have been asking me since I’ve gotten this job — and this is my third year on ESPN — 'when are you going to go an OU game?'
“So now I finally get that.”
Dvoracek won't be the first former Sooners player or coach to call an OU game on national television. Dean Blevins was in the booth for an OU-Texas game during the John Blake era. Bud Wilkinson called games for ABC, including the 1971 "Game of the Century" between Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Dvoracek was a part of the broadcast of last year’s Oklahoma-Ohio State game on ESPN Radio.
“That’s a lot different than television,” Dvoracek said.
Usually, Dvoracek’s on-site prep work is compressed into Thursday and Friday. This week, it’s been a little bit different.
Tuesday, Dvoracek spent time with Sooners quarterback Kyler Murray for a piece that figures to air during the telecast.
“I think Kyler is one of the stars of college football and really America hasn’t been introduced to him ... we got the opportunity to meet him and I thought he was awesome,” Dvoracek said.
Dvoracek is paired this season with play-by-play voice Mark Jones and reporter Molly McGrath as well as producer Kim Belton.
“It’s been a fun ride,” Dvoracek said. “I did not think when I started this thing with ESPN, now in my third year, that I would be sitting her year No. 3 and I’d be getting ready to do OU-Baylor on ABC and in my second straight week that I’m calling a top six team in the country on an ABC time slot.
“I’m not complaining and I’m not saying I don’t love it and I don’t want more but at the same time, it’s gone really quickly, because when I got there I had never even called so much as a high school football game.”
Dvoracek credits preparation for getting him to this spot so quickly, saying he’s attacked preparing for broadcasts and working on improvement the same way he did at Lake Dallas, Oklahoma and in the NFL.
And that won’t change this week, even if he intimately knows one of the programs and talks Sooners football nearly every day on his radio show on WWLS.
“I’m treating it just like any other game, watching all my tape, taking all my notes,” Dvoracek said. “Obviously I know Oklahoma better than probably anyone else in the country, but you can’t take that for granted. It’s stressful because I want to do a good job. I’m confident in myself and it’s because I’m well-prepared.”
Dvoracek is thrilled to be home. Thrilled to be calling an Oklahoma game. Thrilled to be eating his mom’s spaghetti with the rest of his broadcast team Friday night.
But he’s also got a job to do.
“I'm going to try to, as much as I can as I call the game, put where I went to school, who I played football for to the side and just do my job no different as I did last week calling Georgia Tech-Clemson,” Dvoracek said. “And the thing is, that's easy to say, right? But for fans and your serious fans, the broadcasters are wrong a lot.”