Lights, camera and football: An inside look on UTRGV’s athletic’s communications team

EDINBURG – Athletics communication director provided an inside look behind his role at the press box and broadcast team for UTRGV athletics, a dedication of nearly 15 years.

Jonah Goldberg is the senior associate athletic director for communications and championships, the voice behind UTRGV’s sport broadcast team.

Behind the bright lights, rowdy crowds and drumline Goldberg works with a team of at least 20 people per football game to get the proper statistics correct. Goldberg said one of the main challenges of a fast game, such as football, is being in two places at once.

“With something like football, we’re scoring more than 4 times a game,” Goldberg said. “So, how did we handle that? We had one of our marketing senior workers standing in the endzone trying to record scores. I would actually step outside the press box and pull out my phone and grab it.”

Aside from quick action, Goldberg said memorizing the football players’ names is much more efficient. He recalls a time he was asked to help with stats unexpectedly.

“Especially the first time I didn’t bring binoculars because I didn’t realize I was [going to] have to do this so, sometimes it could be hard to see the numbers from where I was,” Goldberg said. “It can be a fast-paced game and you don’t always have a lot of time to look at them. So, when you see the number, you need to know who they are.”

Goldberg also shared although his focus is sports a part of his duty during games is to provide seating, electricity and WI-FI to anyone inside the press box.

Matthew Cavazos, assistant director of athletic communications, said working with Goldberg has been a learning experience for him.

“Working with Jonah has been a lot of fun, a lot of learning. especially work in football. i mean, it’s just it was such a unique experience that so few people can talk about work in the first season for, for any, i guess, collegiate team out there. start football working the first season for them. seeing it all built from scratch,” Cavazos said.

Cavazos said he is just one piece of the broadcast team puzzle.

“I’m just one really small part of a big wheel that’s turning around, a big engine that’s moving, and one, one gear that helps make this a success,” Cavazos said. “I’m just really proud of all the work that we put in, all the preparation, that planning phase.”

Aside from making it easy for the broadcast team, Goldberg works to lighten the load on athletes by scheduling news conferences all at once so they can focus on their studies and being students.