Bowling Green State University Athletics
ESPN's Jay Crawford to appear April 29 at BGSU
April 25, 2005 | General
April 25, 2005
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - The pizza will be hot when ESPN's Jay Crawford appears April 29 at Bowling Green State University. The co-host of "Cold Pizza" is scheduled to emcee the student kick-off event for Building Dreams: The Centennial Campaign for Bowling Green State University.
BGSU mascots Frieda and Freddie Falcon and the Falcon cheerleaders will be on hand to greet Crawford, who is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. in the Falcon's Nest of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. He will talk about his experiences as a student at BGSU and how they prepared him for a career in sports broadcasting.
A question-and-answer period will follow his talk, and word has it that he'll be bringing some special ESPN door prizes for those in the audience. There also will be plenty of free pizza.
A Sandusky native and 1987 BGSU graduate, Crawford joined ESPN to co-host "Cold Pizza." The two-hour program, launched in 2003, is a unique blend of sports, lifestyle features and pop culture.
Crawford likes the fact that "Cold Pizza" moved from its original 7 a.m. slot to 8 a.m. this year. He no longer has to get up in the middle of the night to do the show. As he told the Columbus Dispatch last fall, "It's just an hour, but sleep in the morning is like dog years--an extra 15 minutes in the morning can feel like two hours." The time change also has been great for "Cold Pizza" viewers, whose numbers continue to grow.
The BGSU grad also hosts a 30-minute, daily edition of "1st and 10" with commentators Woody Paige and Skip Bayless for the cable sports network.
Before going to ESPN, Crawford spent five years as sports director for WFTS-TV in Tampa, Fla., where he covered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl championship in 2003. The previous five years he was sports director for WBNS-TV in Columbus.
A graduate of Perkins High School in Sandusky, Crawford earned a bachelor's degree in radio, television and film at BGSU. He began his career in 1987 at WYMT-TV in Lexington, Ky., and later worked at WYUN-TV in Charleston, W. Va., and WTIC-TV in Hartford, Conn.
The winner of four regional Emmy Awards and the Best Sportscaster Kentucky AP Award, he has been a Children's Miracle Network host and Special Olympics volunteer.
