Brett Sprinkel – COMM 361

Sports media and content creation is an interest that many young adults have, but not all of them have the passion and the drive to forge a career in the field. I was first introduced to Brandon Shanahan via my younger brother. They graduated high school in the same class, and, at the time, Brandon was working at a local radio station for a small town in Iowa. My brother Tyler knew that we shared similar interests, one of which was that we both had a desire to work in sports media.

Brandon graduated from Iowa Western Community College with an associate’s degree in sports media. As you will soon learn, the intimacy of that program afforded Brandon plenty of opportunities to gain valuable work experience in a low-stress environment. That work experience, along with the countless hours he has put in as a live on-air radio host, emboldened him to start a podcast network with the help of some of his friends.     

In August 2022, Brandon witnessed his favorite college football team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, lose to an inferior opponent, and he decided he was fed up with being a Nebraska fan. He started a podcast with one of his friends as a way to blow off steam, but it was also a way for him to live out his true passion, which was to create sports content. Fast-forward to the present day and Brandon is currently the Executive Producer of three podcasts, and he is motivated to do more.

I sat down with Brandon recently, and he gave me some insight into his history and his vision for the future.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: Iowa Western out in Council Bluffs.

Q: Ah, Council-tucky, my hometown. Did you transfer out after you got your associates?

A: Yeah. So, the initial goal was to move down to Dallas. School is so much cheaper in Texas than even in-state at UNL (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) or UNO (University of Nebraska-Omaha). The plan was to go to Community college here (Texas) and establish residency. Then, after about a year, it didn’t work out. So, then I moved back up north. And then, right to Iowa Western, and from there 2 years there, and then sort of bouncing around from there.

Q: What did you go to school for?

A: Sports Media

Q: Were you able to gain valuable experience in your field at Iowa Western?

A: Yes! In sports media, we would do a little bit of sports TV, and like packaging highlights and stuff, and then also some sports radio. But what I was mostly interested in was play-by-play. It was really cool because, as you know, Iowa Western is a JUCO juggernaut. So just getting to be around some great athletes. I think one of the Iowa Western baseball teams that I covered, had, like 3 guys get drafted one year which is insane. Football teams were always good when I was there. But yeah, that was kind of where I started to grind my teeth as far as broadcasting goes.There were only 8 of us in this in this specific “major”, if you want to call it. And so, we got a lot of time, a lot of reps, even a lot of times in class it was either we were we would set up and do play-by-play of a Madden simulation or we would just kind of go over audio from the previous broadcast and kind of point out little technical glitches. You know. Crutch phrases. Kind of how those rotate talk about that. So that was kind of the bulk of the school in there as far as a day-to-day point from the broadcasting point.

Q: What was your inspiration for starting your own podcast?

A: Technically we started last year after the Nebraska-Northwestern football game, and I’m tired of this. I don’t want to be a Husker fan anymore. I’m jumping off the ship. I’m entering the college football fan transfer portal, and you know I hit up Tyler (Sprinkel, co-host). He was the only person I thought about doing this with, and so I also just wanted to see, what does it look like? Can we do this every single week? Is that sustainable? Can we do one episode a week, no editing, no promotion, and no social media? Just hit, start, record, and publish. That was kind of the start of it. So, I think we got like 20 episodes last season. And then once I kind of figured out, Okay, well, that’s sustainable. It didn’t burn me out by any means. Then we started to plan for what we wanted to do this year. Then we also added another Co-Host, Brooke (Byrne) as well, now we are reaching out to more guests like yourself and some of the other Husker fans that we know to get new voices on, and that was kind of the start of it.

Q: What motivates you to get your friends like Tyler and Brooke involved with your passion project?

A: I think it’s always just fun to get different voices on it, to try and do things and, with where our podcast is right now, nobody’s really watching it. Ten views are a win here. So now it feels like the right time to experiment and see what happens. And there’s this kind of rut that you can get into. Whereas, if you’re just doing the same thing with the same people every week, it kinda just feels like a copy and paste of every episode. With this being so early in the process, this is the time to really experiment. Try to get new people on and kind of get different ideas from there, even if you know it’s just, you know, my Buddy Luke, from down the street growing up, or Tyler’s brother, for example. It’s just so much more fun, and it makes it more engaging from our end, too. Because that was an important priority to me, can we do this every week? Can we? Do you know X number of episodes a week and still enjoy it? It’s just me getting to catch up with my friends Brooke and Tyler twice a week.

Q: That sounds like more fun than work to me! What are your short-term goals for your podcast?

A: So, it’s kind of come in stages as far as what I wanted to accomplish. Like I said last year I just wanted to see what that process looks like just recording one episode per week. And it’s kind of evolved to the point where now I have 3 different podcasts coming up through the same channel. And now, the whole goal is just to put out as much stuff as possible. Like I said, nobody’s really watching (the podcast), so we can just put out all the bad stuff now and get better at it continuously. And I think I’ve made a lot of progress here in the last couple of months, just watching from our first couple of episodes to where we’re at now, especially from just a production standpoint. The goal is to just put out a bunch of content and then from there try to farm eyeballs. Right now, we’re putting out 5 podcast episodes, a week trying to put out another additional YouTube video on top of that every day, and then slice those up for TikTok and Instagram reels. You know, eyeballs are going to lead us to any type of opportunity to generate revenue or generate partnerships and sponsorships. That’s going to be the key there. But I think right now, we’re really excited to build a foundation, because what I don’t want to happen is one of my videos to show up on your for you, page you like that video, you go see what else we do, and it’s like 12 other videos that are spaced apart week by week.

Q: So, you believe that putting the content out there, even though it may not be consumed at a high rate currently, will help you build a fanbase in the future?

A: When you come to my page, there’s a swarm of stuff for you to enjoy. And that’s how I think you go from being somebody who sees one of my videos to being a fan of what WE do. Putting out stuff every single day gives you that opportunity to count on us every single day. When you wake up, there’s going to be a new episode of Cornhusker Connection, or there’s going to be a new, 10 min video to watch on your lunch break, or your For You page is flooded with me and one of my co-hosts yelling at each other about how bad Nebraska’s quarterback is. So, you’re always going to be able to get that, and I want to reward anybody who sticks along this journey with us.

Q: I want to talk about the bigger picture now. What are your long-term career goals and does that vision include this podcast?

A: So long, long, long-term vision is to be able to do this full time. What I’m also working on doing now is just adding other people who I think would make good content even if it’s not college football related. Then to generate even a little bit of revenue, to kind of put back into the business and have it (grow) from there. Long-term, if I can just do this full-time, I think I can do some cool stuff, and really make a career out of it. Before the podcast and putting together content, I was traditional radio. And that’s kinda how I cut my teeth the first couple of years of my career. What I’ve noticed is that I have a great resume, I think, for a 26-year-old. I won an award from the Iowa Broadcasting Association. I put on more than a hundred live broadcasts on a paid radio station. But what I think employers are looking at now is well, do you have the resume and the experience to do what we need you to do? But also, a big bonus, if you have a social media following. I think, even if this podcast doesn’t grow at the rate that I want it to and if I can’t do this full time, I think, just putting together this kind of content and trying to develop a following and kind of farming engagement, not even Cornhusker Connection, but just Brandon Shanahan, I think that’s going to open up doors long term as far as other play-by-play gigs, or any type of radio gigs that growing up, it is what I really wanted to do.

Q: Was this always your passion?

A: Yeah, sports was always, you know, number one in every regard, you know, playing sports middle school high school, you know. Once I realized I wasn’t going to grow past 5 foot 8 I thought, “All right, I have to make a pivot if I want to keep sports”. I’ve always enjoyed talking about sports, even if it’s just family members at reunions talking about, “Was firing Bo Pelini the right call?”. That’s what my friends and I would talk about at the lunch table every single day. So then, once I started kind of exploring, you know post-secondary education at Iowa Western, seeing the kind of intimate program that they have there where you can just hop on an old baseball broadcast and kinda sharpen your teeth that that way. Once that light bulb went off. I’m like, this is the avenue.