Episode 68: Broadcasting Diverse Voices in Sports

This week, Adam Giardino ’11 (CLAS) tells us how he’s making sports broadcasting more welcoming and inclusive for diverse voices with the Black Play-by-Play Broadcaster Grant and Scholarship Fund; we meet Tyler Silverio ’21 (CLAS), the new UConn 360 student worker; and Tom canters through history with a look at UConn’s horses.

Transcript

Tom Breen: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 68 of UConn 360. That is the only podcast known to science that covers the University of Connecticut from every conceivable angle. It’s a very special episode because we have with us a new member of the UConn 360 team. Tyler Silverio is a student who’s joined us and he’s going to be joining us for the foreseeable future.

Tyler, welcome.

Tyler Silverio: [00:00:32] Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Tom Breen: [00:00:34] We’re happy to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tyler Silverio: [00:00:36] So I’m a senior at UConn. I’m a communications major, minoring in digital art. I enjoy things, just digital things in general. That’s why um I took this up. I’m excited to learn about digital production and I hope to see where this leads me in the future.

Tom Breen: [00:00:49] Excellent. Well, welcome aboard. We’re glad to have you.

Tyler Silverio: [00:00:52] Thank you.

Tom Breen: [00:00:52] Tyler, of course, joins our familiar crew of myself, Tom Breen. I’m your facilitator of sorts. My colleague, Julie [00:01:00] Bartucca.

Julie Bartucca: [00:01:00] Hello. So excited that we have Tyler here.

Tom Breen: [00:01:03] And of course Ken Best from the Mansfield Center Bureau.

Ken Best: [00:01:06] We are working today. Yes, we are functioning.

Julie Bartucca: [00:01:11] Barely.

Tom Breen: [00:01:12] Barely.

We are barely functioning.

Ken Best: [00:01:14] Well, I don’t know. I don’t have the technical problems today, so that’s always good.

Tom Breen: [00:01:17] No, it’s, it’s my turn today to have technical problems. But everything seems to be going well now, why don’t we, uh, why don’t we jump right off with a little news. Ken, you’ve got a news item for us. We won an award as I understand it.

Ken Best: [00:01:28] Yes. Just got notice of this yesterday that a, a UConn professor will receive an award from the National Communication Association at its annual conference in November, which of course is going to be conducted virtually. Communications professor Shardé M. Davis was named the recipient of the 2020 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association and the award honors the most outstanding scholarly monograph published during the previous calendar year.

Professor Davis was recognized for being a coauthor of the article, “The Strong Black Woman Collective Theory.” Determining the pro, pro social functions of strength regulation in groups of black women friends, which was published in The Journal of Communication. The monograph examines black women’s communication patterns in ways that call into question decades of assumptions of interpersonal communication research, which has largely been generated from white middle class college students in rural parts of the United States.

She’ll receive the award on November 21st at the NCA. Not the NCAA. It’s 106th annual convention. So congratulations to Professor Davis. I’ll probably talk with her about this at some point.

Tom Breen: [00:02:38] That’d be great. Yeah. Congratulations. And, uh, you know, speaking of new things, things we’ve just learned about, like I said, we, haven’t just learned about this, but it’s new. Julie.

Uh, you want to tell us about something new and exciting thing happening

Julie Bartucca: [00:02:49] I do! Today is the official launch of a new occasional interview series that we’re going to be hosting here on UConn 360 called Brave Space. So this is a project that came out of our office, University Communications. And I joined the team a little bit later in the game, and it’s going to be a series of framed conversations with students, faculty, staff, and other community members.

That’s going to amplify some diverse voices and hold space for the myriad issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The first official segment is actually going to run in our next episode in two weeks. But today I just talked briefly with two of our colleagues who were on the committee that came up with this idea and who we’ll be hearing from in the future.

Jes Zurell is the communications director for the School of Fine Arts. And Lisa Stiepock is the editor of UConn magazine.

How did Brave Space come to be? Where did this come from?

Jesele Zurell: [00:03:44] The Office of Communication at UConn put together a task force to just talk about issues on campus and off, but it just seemed like there was a real need to address diversity, equity and inclusion, at least within our office and see what we could do personally and immediately to really try to make a difference.

And then if it’s so happened that we had ideas that grew from there, that would be great. But we wanted to start from just what we could do. I really liked the idea of doing a podcast, either as like a live ongoing thing on Instagram and Facebook, or as a standalone podcast with UConn 360; we didn’t have a ton of ideas for the format it was going to take, but we knew it was important to give space to have these important conversations, these difficult conversations, and sometimes the awkward conversation that people are afraid to have because they think they’re going to say the wrong thing or use the wrong term, or get something wrong. This is really a space to just be brave and say what you want to say.

Talk about your experience on campus, your experience as a student, as a member of the faculty, as a member of the staff and just shed some light on these [00:05:00] areas that we don’t otherwise talk about and see what we can do to really improve the culture on campus and the community as a whole.

Julie Bartucca: [00:05:08] Lisa, you are the editor of UConn magazine.

So you have facilitated as the editor, as a writer and as somebody who edits other people’s work many different conversations about many different things, but this is something, a little new for you. What are you most excited about as we embark on this new series?

Lisa Stiepock: [00:05:28] So many things. I was excited to join Jes in this right away, as soon as she talked about it, because in my role over the last five or six years with the magazine, I’ve been blown away by the voices that we have on campus. And we talk all the time, Julie, about how many- how, there’s there are too many stories and not enough ways to tell them and not enough places to put them. And the combination of another way to tell these stories, another venue for them, with the timing of something that needs to be done now. I mean, it’s interesting, we’re doing this as part of a task force on a day that there is a scholar strike.

To… to say, we need more than task forces, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to need the conversations. I’m just excited to have these conversations. I’m excited to learn more about what I don’t know and share that with everyone else.

Julie Bartucca: [00:06:45] So I’m really excited. We actually already have our first three interviews kind of in process.

So these will be trickling out over the next couple months. I spoke with the director of the center for Judaic studies, Avi Pat. He. And I spoke a lot about some of the books that he’s coedited that have come out recently. One is about humor and the Holocaust and how people use humor to cope with different kinds of tough situations.

He co-edited another book recently about understanding and teaching the Holocaust. And we had a really great conversation about antisemitism today and how that kind of dovetails with everything else that’s going on in terms of discrimination and what we need to do about it. Jes, who did you speak to recently?

Jesele Zurell: [00:07:30] I spoke to Kelly Ha, who is a Master’s student in the school of social work. She has done a great deal of work with a campaign called I Am Not A Virus, which is in response to reports of outright displays of anti-Asian rhetoric and behavior related to COVID-19. We’ve profiled her on UConn Today before.

But it was really exciting to just talk to her about her experience, especially given the pandemic.

Julie Bartucca: [00:07:59] And Lisa, [00:08:00] you will be speaking to someone who actually has already been on the podcast and was a great guest. And we’re excited to hear from her again, tell us about that.

Lisa Stiepock: [00:08:08] Manisha Sinha is the Draper chair in American history here and she’s always got something fascinating to say, but the reason I want to speak to her right now is that the day after Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate, Professor Sinha had a piece in the New York Times about what that means to her personally, as an Indian American, and I just can’t wait to hear more about that.

Julie Bartucca: [00:08:39] Awesome. Well, we’re super excited to get going with Brave Space and thank you both for telling me a little bit about it, and we’ll be hearing from you again soon.

Lisa Stiepock: [00:08:50] Thank you.

Julie Bartucca: [00:08:51] Brave Space, as I mentioned, will be a segment  that pops up here about once a month, starting with our September 30th episode and the segments will also be shared on UConn Today, and they’ll be easy to find on our website at uconn.edu/uconn360-podcast. There’s going to be a dropdown menu where you can filter out Brave Space containing episodes. And we just encourage everybody to join us. Cause we’re going to dig deep into some tough questions that everybody’s struggling with right now, as we learn and grow in this space.

Tom Breen: [00:09:20] That’s a great idea. And you can read more about it on UConn Today with the story we’re having, right?

Julie Bartucca: [00:09:26] Yeah. That I have to write. By the time this comes out, yes

Tom Breen: [00:09:32] Yes, by the time this comes out. No, it’s, it’s a, it’s a great idea. I can’t wait to hear it. I think it’s going to be fantastic. And, shed light on a lot of important stuff at the university.

And let’s stay with Julie. In fact, you know, we’re on a roll, you’ve got something else for us today.

Julie Bartucca: [00:09:46] I do. So this isn’t an official, Brave Space interview, but I think it kind of fits in nicely. It touches on this whole diversity, equity, inclusion thing that everybody’s kind of grappling with right now. So I talked to 2011 graduate Adam Giardino, [00:10:00] and when Adam who’s originally from Franklin, Massachusetts chose UConn, he already knew he wanted to be a sports broadcaster.

Well, UConn didn’t offer a program in broadcast journalism specifically. He knew we had a great journalism program and he started working at WHUS radio and took advantage of every opportunity. Within the first week of his freshman year at UConn, Giardino was calling a game for the men’s soccer team who ended up becoming the number one team in the country that year for thousands of fans that were listening.

Now he broadcasts minor league baseball teams, including the Yankees affiliate, Scranton Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders, and a slew of college teams, including UConn football, where he’s a sideline reporter for IMG and UConn, men’s ice hockey, where he does play by play. Earlier this year as the protests that were sparked by George Floyd’s death, raged and people in every corner of the world started reflecting on how to dismantle some of the systemic racism they were seeing.

Giardino thought about how he might affect change in his own sphere. In his decade, as a broadcaster, he [00:11:00] noticed that most other announcers were like him, white men. He started raising money and reaching out to some contacts and he had a goal of $3,000, which he was going to use to give stipends to black, aspiring broadcasters.

And we’ll talk about why; this isn’t exactly a lucrative field to go into. And he quickly raised more than $25,000 and got offers from black broadcasters to also serve as mentors. So he started a nonprofit called the Black Play-by-Play Broadcasters Grant and Scholarship Fund.

You’ve established the Black Play-by-Play Broadcaster Grant and Scholarship Fund to help black hopeful broadcasters kind of break into the business. So how did this come to be? How did you decide to get started with this project?

Adam Giardino: [00:11:47] I think for all of us when the protests and the writing all started across the country, I think it spoke to all of us in a different way.

And for me, it, it spoke truth to something that I already knew to be true. That [00:12:00] in my decade, in minor league baseball, as a broadcaster, that I hadn’t come across a non white male in the industry in terms of being a lead voice of any of these teams and in major league baseball, there are two. And in the minors in my 10 years, there have been three total black broadcasters.

So when you’re looking at an industry where, you know, in the big leagues or a TV and radio jobs and the minors, there are all these radio jobs, that’s over 200 jobs and do have seen a grand total of five of them in a decade. It’s, there’s something else at play and it’s not necessarily racism,  right? And that’s, I think what we’re, what we’re coming to terms with that it’s systemic racism, that it’s things that generationally are affecting black people that are preventing them from having these same opportunities. And for, for me, with, with all of the protesting and wondering what can I do to affect change in this situation? Right.

I, I, I felt pretty helpless to maybe go down to Louisville, right, [00:13:00] and, and figure out what we can do for Breonna Taylor, but in my world, which is broadcasting, I knew that I would be able to help change this and make something tangible happen. And in my particular field,

Julie Bartucca: [00:13:11] And you mentioned in one of your other interviews, you saw that as females’ voices kind of started to come into the field, that was something you were like, this is uh, you know, this can happen. This change can happen.

Adam Giardino: [00:13:21] Right. It’s, it’s something where it opened our eyes. And because in broadcasting, every other broadcaster that I’m with, I’m friends with. And so it’s other teams, other broadcasters, we’re all just friends. And so I think in the same way that we’re hearing often now is. It’s not okay to say I don’t see race where, “Oh, these are all my friends.”

No, you need to see race and realize that in the international league and AAA baseball, where I’m with the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders, that the other 13 number one, broadcasters are all white males and yes, they’re my friends, but yes, they all fit into this particular box and that, without doing [00:14:00] something, intentionally, that’s not going to change. And that was again, just part of the process in putting this grant and scholarship fund together.

Julie Bartucca: [00:14:09] And so what a lot of people might not know about, especially play-by-play broadcasting, is that breaking into it, you really don’t make, even probably now you really don’t make a ton of money.

So this is a conversation that’s been coming up in media in general with, you know, unpaid internships. And we think society thinks that we have this meritocracy, but it’s really your connections, your ability to have money to stay in a place like New York City, for example, when you’re doing an unpaid internship and being able to pay for it, connections, families, financial support.

So that’s kind of what you’re addressing with, with this grant fund. Right?

Adam Giardino: [00:14:46] Right. It’s, it’s an industry where you need a safety net of some sort, because, you know, even for me, and I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with the more I’ve talked about this to talk about my specific situation, where I grew up in an affluent [00:15:00] town and upper middle class family, and I was able to accept a job that paid me right out of college, 600 bucks a month. And that’s, you know, 600 bucks a month without benefits. Uh, by the time I was 25, I was making $1,200 a month. But the other side of that is people look and they think, Oh, he’s 25 and he’s the lead voice for the New York Yankees AA affiliate. And you know, you have this kind of secret where you’re going, “Yeah, but, the slightest bump in the road and my whole financial viability is out the window.”

And even still as I’m starting this, I mean, I’m, you know, I’m doing games for UConn. I called about 200 games last year with all of my baseball and college programs that I work with. And I still have only just barely cracked a living wage and that’s with ten years of experience and still as a contractor to not have benefits.

And that’s not to necessarily bring people to feel bad for me, but that’s to shine a light on- I’m in a good situation. I mean, I’ve had 10 years of [00:16:00] success and I’ve been able to work my way up into a body of work that so many broadcasters would look at and think, boy, if I could do what Adam’s doing right now, all these games on ESPN plus and division one athletics and the Yankees, AAA, and I’m barely able to, again, crack a living wage. So that’s more just to put into context what we’re trying to address here, where it shouldn’t just be somebody with a safety net from an upper middle class upbringing, like myself that are able to get these jobs and, and make a run at a career.

Julie Bartucca: [00:16:31] How much money have you been able to raise so far? You had kind of an outpouring of support pretty quickly.

Adam Giardino: [00:16:36] It was supposed to be $3,000, and that was what our goal was. We were looking to raise $3,000 for a grant, minor league baseball jobs. When you’re first starting out, they are basically mid March to mid September. So six months that’s the season 140 games.

I was hoping $500 a month would be a nice boost to an 800 or $1,000 stipend from the team already. So it’s, you know, bring it up to maybe 1500 bucks [00:17:00] a month could make it palatable for a college grad. And at this point we have secured over $20,000 in donations and pledges, and we’re starting to get interest from some companies and major league baseball and minor league baseball looking to get involved.

And so I think that, in a great way, I have more on my hands than I bargained for. And it’s been incredible to see the outpouring of support that’s, that’s come to the surface for this.

Julie Bartucca: [00:17:24] That’s great. How is the grant process actually gonna work? How are you going to find the recipients of these grants and scholarships?

Adam Giardino: [00:17:31] Just the grassroots of this whole process, I’ve been able to have a lot of black broadcasters, young, aspiring black broadcasters reach out to me, I’ve connected with them, but it’s going to take some work because there’s an organization called STAA, Sportscaster Talent Agency of America, and they have a pretty good pulse on college broadcasting, and they have this end of year award for college broadcasters, where they put out the all America teams and about 250 college kids apply and [00:18:00] only three of them were black. And so they acknowledged that there’s an issue with that number. And you know, they’re going to look into it. We’re going to do our own work. We’re going to collaborate certainly with STAA and make sure that, that people that have a chance to.

Get into one of these minor league jobs and have a chance for one of these scholarships that we’re reaching out and making sure that we’re connecting with as many kids as possible.

Julie Bartucca: [00:18:23] It’s just so interesting, because this is such a niche thing, but it shines such a light on the issues everywhere because black young men and women are not seeing black broadcasters, so they’re not maybe thinking that that’s a path they can go down. So it’s this whole like chicken or the egg where, yeah, you’re, you’re addressing one piece of it, but it’s so much more complicated than that.

Adam Giardino: [00:18:45] Yeah. I’ve spoken to a lot of black broadcasters, younger, black broadcasters, and they talked about ESPN Sports Center’s, Stuart Scott, who passed away.

And he is somebody who, before he came onto the scene, [00:19:00] all the references on Sports Center, the pop culture references were Seinfeld and Friends. And then Stuart Scott came on and he started bringing black culture to the airwaves. And we didn’t know what we were missing until he was there. And I think that’s what we’re in right now, where in play by play, we don’t quite know what we’re missing until black broadcasters get into those chairs and that we see all minorities and women to have 160 minor league baseball teams. And to have one current black broadcaster, you know, that, that doesn’t come close to reflecting the demographics of the country as a whole.

And so that’s what we’re working towards. I remember growing up and going to school and, and having a, a Sport Center reference. I heard Stuart Scott say something the night before I had no idea what it was. The internet didn’t exist then. And I, and all my friends were going, “What was, what was he talking about? What was that?” And we tried to figure it out and it was the cool thing to do. That’s what I think we’re hoping to achieve is just bring a diverse spectrum of voices [00:20:00] into the field.

Julie Bartucca: [00:20:01] How did you get into play by play? As we talked about a passion, a passion career, not just a, something to go into for the money.

Adam Giardino: [00:20:10] Yeah, it’s, it is something where I think about that… In high school, I had a couple of social studies teachers, Chris Schmidt, and John Leighton at Franklin High School in Franklin, Massachusetts that were varsity coaches. And they were part of my social studies curriculum. And they, they knew that I was into sports.

And so they said, Hey, we’re already filming these games anyway for practice purposes to go back and for the players to watch, might as well plug a microphone into the camera and we’ll send it off to the local access TV channel. So that’s what they did. And for two years, I called girls basketball and I called some girls lacrosse.

And so after graduating  Franklin High School, I went from calling Franklin High School girl’s basketball to a couple of months later, I did an exhibition for UConn versus team USA in October. And my girl’s basketball coach, John Leighton, Franklin high school said, “Wow, you’ve really left us behind,haven’t [00:21:00] you.” Something where I, I mean, I can remember so vividly.

The moments at UConn, for me, some of the best moments were so closely attached to the games that I called. And it wouldn’t necessarily have been, you know, Kemba Walker’s national championship run, which I got a chance to do, and the women’s 90 game win streak that I got a chance to call, the Fiesta Bowl for the football team, but it’s just all the, the smaller games as well, a women’s soccer game or a men’s soccer game that most students wouldn’t remember, but being on the call for those.

Those are some of my favorite memories as well. And you know, I, I think that it’s when you have that, that passion, when you go on the air, you know, immediately whether this is for me or this isn’t for me. And within that first game doing UConn men’s soccer against South Carolina, I, I remember walking back to my dorm, calling my parents on my flip phone and thinking, this is exactly what I want to do with my life.

Broadcaster: [00:21:53] The sidelines, Adam Giardino.

Now my legs are still shaking from those pregame introductions. It’s a sellout 40,000. It was [00:22:00] announced on Monday that this place would  be sold out. And this was as loud of 40,000 as you could possibly pack into a stadium.

Ken Best: [00:22:07] Yeah. I listen to Adam all the time when he’s on the IMG network.

Cause they do the UConn games with them. My buddy Wayne Norman. And this last couple of years with Mike Crispino he’s he’s right on point with, with the inequities in the profession, because unless you’re at a big station or you’re in a big network, you make no money doing this kind of radio, anyway. I can attest to that.

I did it for free for that 12 years at a community radio down in Bridgeport and WHUS has sent a lot of people into the profession. And that’s good because you can hear guys on WEEI, you can hear him all over the country. It’s, it’s one of the unique opportunities that you have at a, at a radio station when you’re in college.

And especially at a division one school, like UConn, you just can’t get that opportunity otherwise. And so he did he’s he’s on his way. I think he’s going to do well. And he’s going to continue to do this program.

Julie Bartucca: [00:22:57] Yeah, and he’s lifting other people up with him, which is [00:23:00] great. You can learn more about the fund and donate to it at blackpxpfund.com and Adam Giardino is on Twitter @adamgiardino.

Tom Breen: [00:23:13] Great, very  interesting stuff. I thought for Tom’s history corner. Today we would revisit a, or visit, I guess, a cherished UConn icon. UConn icon. That’s easy for me to say. Uh, Horsebarn Hill, which as I think most people know is named after a English professor, Gretchen Von Horsebarn who taught here in the thirties?

No, it’s not true. It’s it’s it’s they call it that because there are barns where horses live and, uh, the equine program at UConn actually dates back to the earliest days of the university. And in fact, before we were a university horses that were bred on campus at the time were called draft horses, basically-

Like terms like workhorse and horsepower have become sort of metaphors today, but I mean, they have real meaning in agricultural context, particularly in the 19th [00:24:00] century, when horses did a lot of the heavy work on horse, uh, farms. So the students who came to UConn to let it be farmers had to learn how to work with horses. So for decades, uh, draft horses were bred here on campus. By the start of the 1930s, tractors had become much more common in farms.

So the draft horses began to fade in importance in agriculture. And so, different types of horses were bred and brought to campus for different reasons, but this really became inserted after World War II with the arrival of a very special horse to UConn, uh, known as the Morgan horse.

Julie Bartucca: [00:24:34] Oh yeah, those are pretty horses.

Tom Breen: [00:24:36] So the Morgan horses were bred to be used by the US cavalry. These are the horses that were at Gettysburg during the civil war, for example. Uh, as well as other battles, not just, but that’s a famous one.

Um, and people who know this kind of thing argue that the Morgan horse is the first truly American breed of horse, as opposed to breeds of horses brought from other parts of the world.

Just a side note, they’re actually parts of the [00:25:00] country where horses are considered an invasive species. Like, if you go to the outer banks of North Carolina there are-

Julie Bartucca: [00:25:05] I was gonna say, like Chincoteague.

Tom Breen: [00:25:06] Yeah. There’s like wild Mustangs that were descendants of, of Mustangs that were brought over by Spanish explorers.

And, uh, the parts of the outer banks that are, uh, administered by the national park service. Like there’s a lot of tension because they eat the sea grasses that are nesting habitats for native seabirds. And so like the park service considers them an invasive species, but people love the Mustangs. And like, so there’s, there’s like a lot of push and pull over that. That, that wasn’t a problem for us, that the Morgan horse was part of the US cavalry world war II obviously was pretty much the end of horses in cavalry.

Actually the last horse charge in the US military was made on 16th of January in 1942 in the Philippines. But the, the cavalry, the horses were retired. There is still a US cavalry. They just, they don’t use horses anymore. They use elephants like the great Carthaginian Hannibal, but so the entire horse breeding facility for the US Army was a farm, a big farm in Vermont.

[00:26:00] And after the war, the farm was taken over by the University of Vermont and lots of the horses were sent to land grant universities throughout New England, including UConn. And so since then, uh, UConn has bred has been home to hundreds of Morgan horses. It’s a very special breed of horse. We are home to Morgan horses today.

The UConn Morgan drill team, which may or may not be aware of they, uh, for example, they perform at homecoming. They perform in parades off campus and, and, uh, horse show and events like that. They’re all Morgan horses they’ve been around since 1987. The Morgan horse is a big part of UConn’s identity for the, the equestrian program.

And there’s a book that I would recommend. It’s called “My Horse, My Heart” by Helen Scanlon. It’s all about UConn’s horse program and, you know, Morgan’s are still being foaled on campus to this day. That’s a, that’s a fancy horse term. Means born. I don’t have the most recent list, but, uh, in, uh, 2019, there were four Morgan horses born at UConn: JB Junior, April, Abigail Rose, and my favorite name, Sam Calzone.

Julie Bartucca: [00:27:05] That sounds like Maxine’s uh, Maxine’s cat. Jonathan Salami. Yeah.

Tom Breen: [00:27:11] Yeah. So the Morgans are a big part of UConn’s identity and have been since the forties. And you can just walk or even in this, uh, the pandemic time, like the, the drill team is obviously not doing what they normally do. The polo team is not doing any competition, but you can still walk around Horsebarn Hill, and you can often see Morgan’s in the pasture. We have other types of horses at UConn, not just Morgan.

Julie Bartucca: [00:27:32] I was going to ask, does the polo team use different kinds of horses or morgans?

Tom Breen: [00:27:37] They do.

They, I think they use a variety of horses.

Julie Bartucca: [00:27:40] Cool.

Ken Best: [00:27:41] Now my question is, Julie has had her favorite dog in the studio when we get back to Lakeside. Is Mr. Ed going to visit the studio?

Julie Bartucca: [00:27:50] Mr. Ed. Tyler’s way too young to get that reference.

Ken Best: [00:27:55] That was a TV show about a talking horse.

Julie Bartucca: [00:27:56] About a talking horse. I’m too young to get that reference, to be [00:28:00] honest, but I watched a lot of Nick at Nite as a kid.

Tom Breen: [00:28:02] You can also buy a Morgan horse from UConn. Uh, right now there’s a number of horses for sale. My favorite is Mufasa. Uh, you just need a cool $8,000.

Julie Bartucca: [00:28:12] I was going to say for the low, low price of several grand. Are they, is there a website where I can look at them?

Tom Breen: [00:28:17] Yes, absolutely. If you just, if you Google UConn Morgan, the first thing that comes up is uh, UConn horses for sale. It’s a page link to the animal science program. The whole equestrian program is obviously part of the animal science department and the college of agriculture, health, and natural resources more broadly.

Julie Bartucca: [00:28:33] That’s great. My husband gets mad enough when I send him dogs. I’m going to start sending horses.

Find me this one.

Tom Breen: [00:28:41] 8,000 is the high end, I will say there are more affordable horses there, but, uh, you know, when you get a Morgan, you get the best.

Julie Bartucca: [00:28:46] Right. There you go. I’m not going to buy a horse. Don’t worry, guys.

Tom Breen: [00:28:50] So that’s it, this week straight from the horse’s mouth.

Julie Bartucca: [00:28:54] I was gonna say, when you were talking about draft horses, don’t look at draft horse in the mouth.

Hey yo.

[00:29:00] Tom Breen: [00:29:00] Yeah. I  think the Bud- the Budweiser horses would be like a good example of-

Ken Best: [00:29:03] Those are Clydesdales.

Tom Breen: [00:29:07] Like draft horses, like a horse category. It’s like, you know, it’s like a, yeah. It’s like a pickup truck, yeah. Yeah.

Ken Best: [00:29:14] That’s the technical term. They’re both things.

Tom Breen: [00:29:16] Yes, that is a very technical equine science term, but no, it’s neat.

And I like to walk around Horsebarn Hill, and I like to look at the horses of all types, but the Morgans they’re very distinctive. You go online and you look at, I don’t want to describe them. I can’t really paint a picture with my words, but like, if you look at the Morgan horses, they’re pretty distinctive looking.

Often Chestnut colored. I’ll just leave that.

Julie Bartucca: [00:29:34] I’d like to request a cow story. I prefer the cows when I go to Horsebarn Hill.

Tom Breen: [00:29:38] Okay.

Julie Bartucca: [00:29:39] We have some good cows stories in uh, UConn history.

Tom Breen: [00:29:42] We do have some good cow stories. There’s there’s one about a cow being led upstairs in a dorm, and then not being able to walk back down the stairs.

And there was a big, big kerfuffle.

Julie Bartucca: [00:29:53] That’s not good.

Tom Breen: [00:29:54] Cowfuffle.

Ken Best: [00:29:56] It must be cow pi by stories to that as well.

Tom Breen: [00:29:59] I’m sure.

[00:30:00] Julie Bartucca: [00:29:59] Well, we also cloned a cow, which is pretty darn impressive.

Tom Breen: [00:30:02] Yeah. You know, actually I thought about doing Tom’s History Corner on Jerry Yang, but then I came across the Morgan horse stuff and I thought I’ll do the horses.

Yeah. We’ll do Jerry Yang another day.

I hope you enjoyed this week. We certainly enjoyed it. Please make Tyler feel welcome. It’s great to have him here. And, um, you can find us online @UConnpodcast. You can also check out @Main_Old. That’s a Twitter account where I post old pictures. I’ll find some old Morgan horse pictures and put them up and you can follow me @tjbreen.

If for some reason you want to do that. Right now, I’m just tweeting pictures of wildfires in California. But hey, that’s interesting. Julie, anything you want to plug?

Julie Bartucca: [00:30:41] I’m on Twitter at @juliebartucca. I think that’s about it.

Tom Breen: [00:30:45] Tyler is there anything you would like to plug?

Tyler Silverio: [00:30:47] I guess I’ll do my Twitter, uh, @tysilverio. Um, I don’t think I actually have any tweets right now, but hey.

Tom Breen: [00:30:53] Ken is on TikTok of course. Uh, Ken, other than your, your popular TikTok page, [00:31:00] what else should people follow?

Ken Best: [00:31:02] Well, my adventures around 91.7 WHUS in Storrs. UConn sound alternative  streaming online at whus.org, Saturdays three to six, the Good Music Show, and that’s my opinion of good music. And then of course, the rebroadcast of the UConn 360 podcasts Fridays at 11, the same station 91.7.

Tom Breen: [00:31:24] Very nice. Well, thanks everyone. And, uh, let’s meet back here in two weeks.