For years, high school football coaches in the State of Georgia have made it a goal to “Make it to the Dome!” As early as 1995, Georgia Public Broadcasting has been airing state semifinals and some championship games to some of the highest public broadcast ratings in the country. Tom Vardase, who has been with GPB and Prep Sports Plus since 1991, says that Georgia high school football and GPB “just makes sense.”
In October 1992, the GHSA talked to the GPB and decided to air the games. A few games had been aired prior to GPB’s joining the party, but they had always been shown on commercial television stations and that was conflicting with Christmas programming.
“You have a statewide sports organization and a statewide network with available time slots. It was a matter of time,” Vardase said. Vardase added that Tommy Guillibo pursued the football broadcasts for GPB, and originally the schedule included the eight semifinals and the AAA and AAAA championship games before the classifications expanded over the last few years.
A CHANGE FOR THE POSITIVE
Prior to this season, the state semifinals had always been inside of the Georgia Dome while the championships were held on school campuses. Georgia Public Broadcasting would also show the two highest classification title games, but this season, the broadcasts will be cut in half. The GHSA decided to hold the semifinals on school grounds and hold only the state title games at the Georgia Dome.
Bob Houghton, the general manger of broadcast for GPB, is very excited about the chance to get to do the state finals, saying, “For all these years we have been able to conclude the basketball season and now we get to do so with football.’’
Vardase, who has appeared on over 375 episodes of Prep Sports Plus, will be working with some old standbys in Dave Garner and Charles Ward. The two have combined to call nearly 50 games for GPB since 1997.
“TV is a team effort, just like any job,” Vardase says.
GPB is also working to improve the look of the broadcasts and the station has promised that it will broadcast one semifinal game from a school campus each year. The live, on-location atmosphere may be Vardase’s favorite part of every season’s broadcast schedule.
STILL IN THE SEMIS
“Driving out to a stadium that you’ve maybe never seen and turning it into your studio is a lot of fun,” he said.
Vardase said that he remembered one broadcast at Parkview for the 2001 state championship where Murphy’s Law went into effect. What Vardase called “an unusual December storm” quickly turned a normal broadcast into an adventure. A satellite uplink knocked out the picture so the announcers were more or less giving a radio broadcast, and then the heavy winds knocked four cameras out of commission. By the end of the game, the GPB audience was watching the game from a rotation of handheld and high endzone shots. Regardless, Jeff Francoeur still gave the home crowd at Parkview quite a performance in what Vardase called a “Super Bowl-like atmosphere.”
Francoeur was just one of the amazing athletes, though, that has graced the coverage of GPB. Quincy Carter’s performance in that 1995 “greatest game ever played” is one that Vardase recalls fondly, but that performance may have been outdone by Dacus Thurman of Washington-Wilkes, when Thurman set the single-game record for carries in one game. Vardase also lists Darius Walker and Buford’s two trips to the Dome as quite memorable, as well as Lowndes’ comeback against Northside-Warner Robins and the 2007 Eagle comeback against the Tucker Tigers.
AND THE BIG STORY IS?
Could we see another comeback this year like the one Carver-Columbus pulled on Chamblee last year? Every season, fans are treated to some of the best football in the country on Georgia Public Broadcasting, but viewers shouldn’t take the coverage for granted.
“The games delivered by GPB are not a right,” Vardase says. “[The coverage] needs support from so many areas. We should pat the viewers on the back for watching, but I hope these people would respond to help with the future broadcasts.”
At one point during last year’s semifinals, GPB was the No. 1 public-viewed TV station in the country and every year the games pull in some of the best ratings, for the time period, in the country. And with all five state championships being played at the Dome for the first time in history, expect another great weekend for GPB.
This article appears in the official GHSA state football championship program, which will be available at the Georgia Dome during this weekend’s title games. Proctor can be reached at fproctor@scoreatl.com.
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