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t's what a seasoned broadcaster would call meeting the moment. As NBA star Carmelo Anthony skirts a defender and elevates for the game-winning jump shot, the silky smooth announcer captures the action with a precision that builds to a crescendo.
“Anthony with two … Anthony for the win ... GOT IT!!!”
Anthony hits the buzzer beater, and a teenage Jacob Tobey, BA ’18, tosses his Xbox controller and sprints out the door.
That call, fit for ESPN or TNT, was actually captured on a friend’s cell phone during a game of NBA 2K in 2015. The incongruity of a 17-year-old sounding so polished only intensifies when he bounds back in moments later to finish what he started.
“CARMELO ANTHONY WITH THE GAME-WINNER!!!”
Most kids dream of taking the big shot; Tobey wanted to voice it. Re-creating Johnny Most’s famous cry of, “Havlicek stole the ball!” during a preteen visit to the Basketball Hall of Fame started his path to the broadcast booth, and he refused to let dismal odds deter him.
That’s because if there’s a foundational truth about Jacob Tobey, it’s that obstacles exist solely to be scaled, dodged, or obliterated. At a high school without football, he spearheaded homecoming weekend for the soccer team (and started a radio station from scratch to boot). At Suffolk, he applied skills learned in Studio 73 to work Celtics games, where he met Brian Anderson, an esteemed national broadcaster who became a mentor and guardian angel. When he learned of a Native American basketball tournament broadcast by ESPN, Tobey, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, successfully pitched himself to call it.
His journey took him to sports anchor desks at local news outlets in Tulsa and Denver. And yet, he never declined a freelance sports play-by-play assignment, even if it meant driving through the night to Wyoming or hopping a plane to Oregon.
And then, magic. When the NBA season opened last October, Tobey sat courtside as the TV voice of the San Antonio Spurs. Then just 27 years old, he was one of the youngest announcers in the league, calling the action for a marquee franchise led by 7-foot-3 French wunderkind Victor Wembanyama.
What reads like an overnight success story required hard work, relentless dedication, and the kind of luck that finds those who make their own.
“I’m that same 10-year-old kid that thought, ‘Why not me?’” Tobey said. “And, man, I got the job. So why not me? Why not?”
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spring 2025
By John Tomase
Photography by Adam DeTour
Junior Amanda Fagan (left) and sophomore Abigail Morin (right) got a crash course in retail management when they helped open Thrift-o-RAMa, a student-run thrift store located in the Sawyer Building. Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
While at Suffolk, Jacob Tobey covered the Boston Celtics as a student intern. When he returned to the TD Garden this February, it was as the San Antonio Spurs’ play-by-play announcer (below, with one of his broadcast partners, P.J. Carlesimo).
ell, for starters, it might be easier to play in the NBA than broadcast a game.
The league’s 60 local TV and radio play-by-play jobs tend to be lifetime appointments. Tobey’s childhood hero, Mike Gorman, called the Celtics for more than 40 years. The man Tobey replaced in San Antonio, Bill Land, was an institution for two decades. The longest-tenured team broadcaster in NBA history, Al McCoy, called Phoenix Suns games for a staggering 51 years.
Tobey was a kid from Sandwich, Massachusetts, the oldest town on the Cape and not far from Mashpee, an ancestral home of the Wampanoag tribe. He graduated from a public charter school repurposed from an old furniture store. Then he arrived at Suffolk, surveyed the many journalism, broadcasting, internship, and experience building-opportunities the University offers, and immersed himself in every one that he could.
“Early on, when I told people I wanted to do this for a living, they gave me looks like, ‘Dude, no one gets those jobs,’” Tobey said. “But it never stopped me.”
It helps that Tobey was born with a voice you can’t teach and the timing and rhythms of a musician—gifts he inherited from his guitarist father, Dana. Tobey, who's also a musician who performs live, was a finalist on the Boston version of American Idol, and his broadcast delivery is part singer-songwriter and part point guard as he sets up partner Sean Elliott, a Spurs legend.
“I never tried to change his voice,” Anderson said. “He always had a real easy, silky voice with a great presence. It hit the right timbre. It was kind of like, ‘Man, he’s got a 95-mph fastball; let me try to help him with some pitching mechanics so he can throw strikes.’”
Spurs Director of Broadcasting Mike Kickirillo uses a different comparison.
“His favorite singer is Ed Sheeran, who’s kind of a mellow, easygoing guy,” Kickirillo said. “And I think you can equate his delivery to the Ed Sheeran of broadcasters.”
It takes more than a voice, though, and Tobey never feared work. His mom, Christine, organizes medical records at a local hospital, and his dad followed 25 years as a state trooper with a career in construction while moonlighting as a DJ.
They encouraged Tobey to follow his passions. He found himself drawn to music, but loved sports, especially basketball, graduating from the Sturgis Charter Public School as its first 1,000-point scorer.
One of Tobey’s teachers, Jim Barrasso, worked at ESPN College Gameday and in the sports department of the Boston Herald. Barrasso’s brother, Tom, was a Hall of Fame goalie who won a pair of Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
“When I was a young man, I got to be around Bobby Orr a lot because he advised my older brother,” Barrasso said of the Boston Bruins legend. “Bobby Orr was the most humble and kind person, and Jacob’s humility reminds me a lot of Bobby Orr.”
Tobey fixated on becoming an NBA broadcaster. He’d call the action while playing one-on-one in the driveway, while mashing buttons on the Xbox with the sound muted. He’d even act as his own public address announcer.
“My parents must’ve thought I was nuts,” he said.
Sturgis was the kind of place where a student could want to start a radio station and make it happen. His friend and co-founder, Kevin Agostinelli, remembered using this “janky” (and now defunct) website BlogTalkRadio.com to set it up. They found local advertisers to fund the microphones and equipment, launching with the state baseball tournament, with Tobey on play-by-play and Barrasso providing color commentary.
Barrasso, who had crossed paths with young ESPN personalities like Chris Fowler and Mike Tirico, recognized Tobey’s potential.
“I could tell he had the skills to be a major television personality,” Barrasso said. “He had the look, the voice, the talent, and the presence to do it.”
He just needed to take the next step. And that brought him to Suffolk.
“I never tried to change his voice. He always had a real easy, silky voice with a great presence. It hit the right timbre. It was kind of like, ‘Man, he’s got a 95-mph fastball; let me try to help him with some pitching mechanics so he can throw strikes.’”
—Mentor Brian Anderson, Milwaukee Brewers’ play-by-play announcer
obey had options coming out of high school, but when he saw the Suffolk broadcast studio and met Jerry Glendye, the director of broadcast facilities, he knew his search had ended.
“I walked in the TV studio, saw him, saw what he was working with, and thought, ‘This guy is so cool,’” Tobey said with a laugh.
Glendye is a Boston media production fixture. He operates the Jumbotron at TD Garden, has worked at Boston College for ESPN and the ACC Network, and is a producer with Dirty Water Media. He conceived of Suffolk in the City, the partnership with New England Cable News and NBC Boston that has been putting students live on the air throughout New England for more than a decade. More than a few Suffolk graduates now working at anchor desks around the country credit Glendye for being instrumental in launching their careers. He puts his students to work in Studio 73, and Tobey arrived with a voracious appetite.
“Jacob was one of those kids, when he first walked through my door, I knew he was going to be a go-getter,” Glendye said.
At Suffolk, students learn to work both sides of a camera. Through initiatives like Suffolk in the City, where Tobey was a student reporter, Glendye exposes students to every aspect of production: operating the camera, mixing audio, producing news packages, and running the prompter, the video switcher, and the lighting board. “So, basically,” said Glendye, “you’re getting a hands-on smorgasbord of everything.”
Tobey called Rams basketball games, hosted the Suffolk Sports Report, and developed the skills to broadcast 42 Cape Cod League baseball games in 48 nights during summer break.
Being in the heart of the city—surrounded by pro sports teams, TV stations, and news outlets—was a tremendous motivator, Tobey said. “It gave me the opportunity to see the highest-level work when I was at a young age. Suffolk just kept the fire going that I had lit when I was 10 or 12. It just kept putting logs on the fire to keep that dream alive”—giving him the opportunity to learn every aspect of the broadcast business. Simply put, he said, “It helped prepare me for where I am today.”
“He just totally shined at Suffolk,” Christine Tobey said. “It’s the best decision he ever made.”
It also led Tobey to the encounter that shaped the course of his career.
While back in Boston, Tobey paid a visit to Professor Skip Perham’s Business of Sports and the Media class. “If you want to be a good on-air announcer,” he told students, “you have to be open to learn everything—how to write, produce, shoot video. You need to understand the whole production crew to be successful.”
obey took an internship with Boston-based CLNS media that allowed him to shoot Celtics press conferences at TD Garden, among other responsibilities. Interviewing players didn’t faze him, but meeting his real heroes left him a little starstruck. In 2018 he spied Anderson, the voice of baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers, and a prominent NBA broadcaster for TNT.
Tobey asked how Anderson prepared his notes and explained he was chasing a similar career. Anderson immediately admired the hustle.
“He had a camera in his hand, and that always intrigues me, because I started as a camera operator myself,” Anderson said. “He doesn’t think he’s above putting a camera on his shoulder or editing tape or chasing down sound, which is the lifeblood of our industry. Not a lot of announcers do that. I just took a shine to him right away.”
Anderson offered his Brewers email address and they began corresponding, the veteran offering feedback to the talented neophyte. Lesson No. 1, which Anderson said eliminates 99% of would-be mentees: Listen to yourself call a game.
"I can tell you it’s one of the most agonizing things you can do,” Anderson said. “And I would say most people cannot get through that part of it, because it just eats you alive.”
Tobey was different. He embraced Anderson’s critiques. He practiced breathing exercises to ensure his diaphragm could punch a big call. He approached each game with a desire to sound interested instead of interesting, because curiosity trumps showiness. He stopped copying well-known broadcasters like the bombastic Kevin Harlan or the composed Mike Breen. Anderson leaned on Tobey’s musical background, instructing him to call the action “like jazz and not marching band.”
Tobey incorporated the feedback into his broadcasts with Fox and the Pac-12 Network, gigs he had picked up during six years as a weekend news sports anchor. His primary responsibility working for 9News in Denver or 2News in Tulsa might involve lugging a camera to a high school football game, but his bosses signed off on the pursuit of his passion. In one case, that meant flying to Los Angeles to call the debut of USC freshman Bronny James, son of NBA superstar LeBron James, and then returning immediately to work in Denver.
All the while, Tobey considered Anderson’s lessons.
“The biggest thing he told me is to think about announcing on a scale of one to ten,” Tobey said. “I think about it all the time, like when to be a ten and when to be a six or a five. Even to this day, I still try to make sure I’m in the correct range.”
There was no dialing back the excitement in 2021, however, when the NBA came calling.
obey’s first interview was more of a get-your-feet-wet experience to be the radio play-by-play voice of the Milwaukee Bucks. He practiced calling games on a Zoom split screen with Anderson, but wasn’t a finalist.
That experience, however, prepared him for the next opening, and it was a whopper. With the Celtics’ Mike Gorman retiring, Tobey’s hometown team needed a TV voice to apprentice throughout the 2023–24 season before taking over full time. Tobey received word during a friend’s bachelor party in Austin, Texas, and the weekend morphed into a celebration of the guest instead of the groom.
His dream job felt meant to be. He already had a rapport with analyst and former Celtic Brian Scalabrine, who praised their practice broadcast. The planets seemed to be aligning, and the sky was green.
“We were all over the moon, thinking, ‘How can he not get it?’” his mom recalled.
When Tobey returned to Massachusetts, he popped champagne. He was 26 years old and on the verge of the inconceivable.
And then the job went to someone else: a young broadcaster named Drew Carter, whom Tobey had befriended on the Cape. It was a gut punch. He tried writing a song to process his disappointment, but never finished.
“There was a grieving period, yeah,” Tobey said. “I have so much respect for Mike, he is the GOAT and someone I wanted to be. But then I said, ‘I got this far. Someone else is going to give me a chance.’”
That someone was situated nearly 2,000 miles away, in a city where they remember the Alamo and love their Spurs.
an Antonio isn’t like other NBA markets. The Spurs are the only team in town, and they possess a rich history that includes five championships from 1999 to 2014. Bill Land, a folksy Midwesterner known for his signature call of, “Oh, Mama!,” narrated the action for 21 years.
The organization already recognized Tobey’s chops because he broadcast their minor-league affiliate. Kickirillo arranged a dinner in San Antonio’s historic King William neighborhood. Among those attending were members of the production staff and Sean Elliott, Tobey’s potential partner. Famously irascible Head Coach Gregg Popovich stopped by the table.
“We were hoping for him to be able to handle a stressful situation without being so guarded and buttoned up,” Kickirillo said. “Would we get to the core of who he is? And I felt like we did.”
With Elliott on board, the Spurs had their man. Breaking the news became a “This Is Your Life”–style celebration for Tobey’s friends, family, mentors, teachers, and classmates.
“After he had a few close calls, it felt a little far-fetched,” Tobey’s high school friend Agostinelli said. “Is this one of those scenarios where friends are off Broadway, and they may never make it? I think everyone is still in shock. But we always, always knew he deserved to get there.”
And now Tobey is living the whirlwind. Everything is new, from the constant travel, to staying in five-star hotels, to where to sit on the team bus.
His biggest crash course is in San Antonio itself, starting with the name. East Coasters draw out “San” as if it rhymes with “Ann,” but natives softly flick it like the end of Au bon Pain. Conversely, the main drag of Blanco Road eschews the obvious Spanish pronunciation for a long “A.” And don’t even start on host Bexar County, pronounced “Bear County.”
“He’s gone out of his way to learn a lot about the history and tradition of San Antonio,” said Hall of Fame coach and occasional broadcast partner P.J. Carlesimo. “If you listen to the game, you wouldn’t say this is a new guy. He references things that happened in the past, and he’s very aware of the tradition of the Spurs, which usually takes a long time.”
Tobey’s growth is evident. He already describes long 3-pointers by Steph Castle as being from Castle Hills, a San Antonio enclave, and it’s possible Tobey will one day be an institution himself. He joins a Spurs organization on the ascent.
“Can we draw it up any better?” Kickirillo said. “It wasn’t our intention to get an announcer that’s going to grow with the team. It just worked out that way. And it’s just very poetic to envision what this will look like in the coming years.”
As for Tobey, the kid calling the Xbox action with perfect pipes is now in the NBA. He conducts a pregame ritual while making his way courtside that traces his journey.
“Every time I get to the arena at a home game, I enter the same way,” he said. “I walk down from the top section just to remind myself that I used to be up there, and now I get to be down here.”
