You’ve likely heard: “It’s SECOND DOWN and THREE from the Stanford 32-yard line.”
But you’ll never hear, in the same booming tones: “Will you please pass the poTato chips?”
“I’m forbidden to use my announcer voice at home,” says Steve Frost, ’96, MA ’96, the mellifluous Voice of Stanford Stadium for the past six years. It’s not that his wife, Andrea Paz Frost, ’98, MA ’98, doesn’t like football. She DOES. She even spots YARDage gains for him in the big conTROL booth. But enough is enough, at the dinner table.
Frost, who trained to be a television broadcast anchor as an undergraduate communication major, went after the job of public address announcer in his senior year, when tryouts were held to replace retiring Ed MacCauley. Although Frost came in second in the auditions, he caught the attention of women’s basketball head coach Tara VanDerveer, who asked him to call her varsity games for the next two years. In the 1998-99 season, he took over announcing men’s basketball, and in the fall of ’99 he was signed to the football gig. He’s been showing up for home games of both men’s teams ever since.
“Most guys who have a hobby spend thousands of dollars on golf or fixing up cars, but I have a hobby that pays me for going to games I’d be going to anyway, and I get the best seats in the house,” says Frost, who earns $100 per football game (his day job is in tech sales at Google). “The only thing different is that I have to show up an hour ahead for the game, when normally I’d get there 10 minutes early.”
In fact, Frost’s game-day routine typically starts on Thursday or Friday, when he telephones the opposing team’s sports information director to get the correct pronunciations of players’ names. He adds them to the phonetic roster he’s already compiled of Stanford student-athletes, and starts rehearsing out loud.
Take a vowel-intensive Samoan name, like that of offensive linebacker Taualai Fonoti, ’06. Frost breaks it down into something more pronounceable for him: “TOWL-eye Fo-NO-tee.” Fellow linemen Udeme Udofia and Emmanuel Awofadeju, both ’07? “YOO-Demmay Yoo-DOH-fia” and “Emmanuel A-waffa-DAY-zhoo.”
A defensive lineman who lettered for two years, Frost spent most of his playing time on special teams, as long snapper for punts and field goals. These days, he doesn’t have to learn a new playbook for every new head coach (three in the past five years): “No matter what offense or defense we run, my job is to communicate who was the ball carrier, who made the tackle, how far the gain or loss was and the position of the ball.”
Two headset-wearing helpers on the field—Sarah Rosenbaum Gaeta, ’87, and Carridine Say, ’97, in recent years—keep track of the ball carrier and the tackle on every play. “Once we know 53 made the tackle, my spotter finds 53 on the roster and points to it with a pen, so I don’t have to scan the list,” Frost says. “I handle the offense because it’s easier for me to watch the ball, and the spotter takes care of defensive players.” For the past few years, the spotter, who works beside Frost in the booth, has been his wife. Paz Frost also keeps track of yardage.
Frost has his favorite memories, including the 94-yard scoring run by Casey Moore, ’02, in the 1999 Big Game, but he’s supposed to check his emotions at the desktop. “For better or worse, you’re part of the game atmosphere and it’s your responsibility to convey critical information,” he says. “They’ve asked me to be enthusiastic and upbeat without being a blatant homer, but a few times I’ve crossed that line.” Take the 2000 game against Texas, when DeRonnie Pitts, ’00, was flipped into the air and landed in the end zone to score the winning touchdown in the final minute. “I probably yelled ‘Stanford touchdown!’ way too loud.”
As he sits far above the playing field, Frost positions his headset so he can take in the action that swirls around him in the control booth, where producers, scoreboard operators and game officials keep up a frenetic pace: “Everything in my right ear has to do with football, everything in my left ear is about production, and I have to keep talking the whole time.” Between plays, Frost shifts gears and becomes a pitchman, selling everything from soft drinks to season tickets.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have fun on the job, sometimes thanks to his audience. “I mean, Stanford fans, God bless them, maybe aren’t as INTO the game as fans at other schools, and when the other team has third down and we need a stop, I will tend to emphasize to the crowd, ‘It’s THIRD down and 15,’ ” he says. “Translation: it’s time to YELL, people. NOW might be a good opporTUNity to make some noise.”
