No planes, trains or automobiles

One of a boatload of songs made famous by Johnny Cash was “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

In staccato auctioneer fashion, Cash rattled off places like Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Boston, Charleston, Dayton and Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Colorado, Ellensburg, Rexburg and so on…

And not unlike the world of sports play-by-play guy Larry Weir, the voice of Eastern Washington University basketball and football, he has broadcast games from just about everywhere.

He has called games in 38 different states and most recently even from the comfort of his own home.

From big to small, generic to historic, for the past five decades Weir has made his living with a microphone. He’s been the play-by-play voice of EWU sports since 1991 and every-once-in-a-while Weir’s simply not been able to clone himself to allow calling two sports in vastly different geographic realms.

One of those instances occurred last week when Eastern football was in Bozeman to face Montana State. But Eagle basketball was engaged in a cross-country journey that took them from Salt Lake City to Oxford, Mississippi to Cincinnati, all in the course of a torturesome seven days.

In all those years, Weir has missed adjust two football broadcasts when basketball conflicted on the calendar. One of those came in 2005 when Weir was at the Great Alaska Shootout and Eastern football had a playoff game against Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, while the second came in 2021’s COVID-induced spring season.

But through the modern miracles of today’s communication, Weir was seemingly everywhere last week — and getting from Montana to Mississippi is not at all easy, if in fact impossible on such short notice.

“I did the game at Ole Miss on Friday from the hotel room in Bozeman,” Weir said. And Sunday’s call from Cincy came in the comfort of home in Spokane.

Unlike the past, there were no planes, trains and automobiles involved in a hectic travel itinerary when football and basketball overlapped.

This time high-speed internet provided the game’s video feed on one monitor while another featured the real-time statistical feed. That allowed Weir to provide the story of Eastern’s “Murder’s Row” preseason hoop’s schedule that includes eight Power-5 Conference schools.

In normal times Weir’s been to some of the cathedrals of college sports — mostly in basketball — during his career following the Eagles.

“No. 1 on the list is Paul Galen Fieldhouse in Kansas,” Weir recalled. “Eastern was there in 2007ish.”

He’s been to Assembly Hall, home court of the Indiana Hoosiers who the Eagles upset 88-86 in 2014. There’s Minnesota who plays in Williams Arena, built in the 1920s and Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena which has been around since the 1930s.

The list is long for Weir who cherishes vintage arenas. “I like the places with history that have been around for a long time,” he said.

Travels with Eastern football allowed Weir to broadcast from 88,000 seat Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, home of the Florida Gators who the Eagles played in 2022.

“Florida was probably the best just because it’s the only SEC (Southeast Conference) place that we’ve been,” Weir said. But he’s watched memorable contests closer to home in Martin Stadium at Pullman, Husky Stadium and Reiser Stadium where Eastern topped then nationally ranked Oregon State in 2013.

But economics are now dictating how companies like Learfield, owners of the rights to Eastern broadcasts and Weir’s employer, do business.

“In the old days you had to have somebody go (to broadcast),” Weir said. “Now the company doesn’t have to have somebody go and I think that may be kind of where we’re headed.”

First dabbled with during COVID when play-by-play people worked remotely, now many still work from the comfort of their homes.

“COVID showed us that we could do this,” Weir said. “We’ve already seen it with a lot of ESPN telecasts.”

Things have certainly come a long way calling games from when Weir began broadcasting for a station in Toppenish, Washington. That’s when he’d have to “McGyver” the handset of a rotary-dial telephone to connect the simple electronics.

The phone might be on the other end of 100-feet or more of cord — and likely in another office in the gym or school. A collect call to the radio station got things started, but the receiver was left off the hook.

And sometimes a person might wander into that office, see the phone and innocently hang it up, thus ending the call — and interrupting the broadcast.

Today the equipment is much better and more reliable allowing Weir to bring the action back home to fans whether he’s in a faraway press box or at his kitchen table?