CINCINNATI -- Dan Hoard, the play-by-play announcer for the Bengals and both sets of University of Cincinnati Bearcats -- the ones who play on wood and the ones who play on grass -- managed just four hours of sleep in as many days over the weekend.
He doesn't mind.
"That's what coffee is for," he said.
That timespan took him from Cincinnati, where he called the UC basketball game Friday night, to Orlando Saturday morning for UC's football face-off against the University of Central Florida, to Baltimore for a Bengals game on Sunday.
He returned to Cincinnati Monday for another Bearcat basketball game -- this one against Western Michigan.
The scurry from one place to another is a process Hoard describes as his own personal Amazing Race.
"It was a dream come true," he said of his frantic weekend. "I'm surprised so many people seem to think this was hard."
Once he gets where he needs to be, each game on which Hoard commentates requires an extensive amount of preparation. Before he begins the play-by-play, he needs to know numbers, names, positions and statistics as well as a little about the recent history of both teams.
He doesn't mind that, either.
"It's not like calculus," he said. "I'm reading about sports teams, reading about interesting people and trying to tell their stories."
