Savageon an april evening in 2008, jill savage is in an

office at her parent’s house in grimes, iowa,

burning dvd’s of her demo reel. she signs each

disk she sending to 120 sports stations across the

country. as she signs one disk and picks it up to

put in an envelope, she looks at her signature

and notices it’s not as good as the others she’s

sent. she’s not about to waste a perfectly good

dvd and seals the envelope and looks at the

address where it’s going. “oh that one’s going to

portland,” she says. it was a small mental note

she made remembering that disk. obviously, the

messy signature wasn’t what caught the eye of

the people at comcast sports net in portland,

probably it was the video on the disk, with espn

graphics during a segment of savage covering

sports events like the rose bowl and segments of

her from public access sports talk show that was

a big education in broadcasting for savage.

Story by Peter Barna Photos by Daniel Evans

Oregon Gets

september 2010 | | haberdashers 31

september 2010 | | haberdashers 43

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Comcast must have seen the determination and skill in Savage and invited the small town Iowa girl out to Portland to work a show which would end up becoming The Fan with Isaac and Suke. Sports fans in Oregon

quickly came to like the low key, easy going Savage and made a push for her to take over as the new Trail Blazers sideline reporter, but fans of Savage are also quite content seeing her on Saturday’s hosting the Ducks football pregame show, and a job that’s broadening its role with her.

Born in the small suburb of Grimes, just outside Des Moines, Iowa, and the youngest of two daughters, her sister, Leah, being only 16 months older than her. Des Moines was in the midst of a huge late season blizzard on April 13th, 1984 the day she was born to a mother, a nurse and father, an electrical engineer.

At an early age, Savage developed a love of Iowa football and sports in general while watching TV with her father. “I grew up sitting next to my Dad, whatever he liked, I liked,” Savage says. “As long as I could remember, I’d be watching Hawkeye football and basketball.”

Savage’s sister is completely different from her. Leah Savage never latched onto sports the way Jill did. And being out in Portland now, Jill says her sister, a Twilight fan, wants to come out and have the two tour of all the filming locations for the movies, despite Oregon being better known as the home of some of Jill’s favorite childhood movies like The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, and the first Short Circuit movie. Although her favorite movie is Gladiator, and her favorite sports movie, Field of Dreams because it was filmed in Iowa.

Savage remembers the first NFL game she saw on television. Her parents were attending a Kansas City Chiefs game, and the fourth grader, of course, assume she’d see them on TV. She sat down to watch the game, and now she laughs at the fact that she did actually see her parents. Also, that was the game where began to understand the game of football. Following that game, Savage would watch the Chiefs on TV with her father and by junior high, she was watching any football game that was available.

Around about the same time Savage saw her parents on TV at a Chiefs game, she had a fourth grade teacher who asked the class where they wanted to go to college, without hesitation, Savage said without dispute, “I’m going to be a Hawkeye.”

She graduated from, Dallas Center-Grimes Community High School in 2003 with 114 fellow students. She ran the 800 meters in track, for the small school 11 miles away from Grimes, and refused to run hurdles but says being from a small town you pretty much had to do everything. Still she refused the hurdles. “They wanted me to, but I never would.”

After high school, just as Savage had declared in the fourth grade, she began attending classes at the University of Iowa. By this time Savage knew that she wanted a career in sports broadcasting and was set to do whatever it took to excel in that field. She majored in communications and shortly after people told her how little employment there was in broadcasting Savage added a business major as a backup. However, while she was studying she said to herself,

I grew up sitting next to my Dad, whatever he liked, I liked,” Savage says. “As long as I could remember, I’d be watching Hawkeye football and basketball.

“

”

“No, this is what I want to do.” So it was down to work taking all the communication classes she needed that would land her that dream job in broadcasting.

The best thing she did in college was working on a local public access show called SportsStop. Savage and group of her fellow students would preview that weeks Hawkeye’s game, discuss Big-10 matchups, and then they’d take a look at the NFL and/or NBA. The 30 minute, uninterrupted sports panel show Savage describes as being similar to Portland’s Talkin’ Ball on Comcast Sports Net, was a real education. The show was taped live, and if a show began falling apart, or if someone messed up a segment, they couldn’t just simply throw to commercial and recover during the break, they had to recover on air.

While working summer sports camps each year for the University of Iowa, Savage got to know everyone in the Athletic Department and because of this she had a chance to meet ESPN’s sideline reporter Erin Andrews. During her senior year in 2006, Savage knew Andrews would be at Iowa covering the Big-10 basketball matchup between Iowa and Indiana, and Michigan State two weeks after that. She told people she was going to meet Andrews and try and set up a job shadow with her. She was successful, setting the entire thing up completely on her own and from there, the Sports Information Department saw how serious and dedicated Savage was so when ESPN’s College Game Day show came to town to cover the Iowa versus Ohio State football game, Savage said to people at the Sports Information Department that she wanted the Game Day producers and ABC producers email and said, “If they don’t want to talk to me, they don’t have to, but you’re just going to tell me who they are so I can contact them.”

Savage was set up for a meeting the ABC producer Friday afternoon, but due to Coaches meetings, she ended up talking to an operations assistant who realized that they still needed a person to work the game Saturday as a booth assistant and was about head to the journalism school to find someone to work the job when he asked if she was available. The diehard Hawkeyes fan looked at the person and said, “Listen buddy, this is the Iowa/Ohio State game. This is the biggest deal since I’ve been in college. I’m going to need to see the game. This is a priority.” The person responded, “Well you’re going to be up in the booth with the broadcasters, Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit, and Bob Davie.”

“Oh, well if you’re gonna pay me to do that,” Savage said. “O.K., yeah, I’ll do that instead.”

So Savage went to work as a booth assistant for the ESPN broadcasters, making sure they had everything they needed from drinks to roster cars, anything they need. “I remember for that game I helped Brent with the pronunciation of [Iowa defensive end] Kenny Iwebema (Ee-web-em-ah however most people wanted to say Ee-WAH-beem-ah).”

After getting in with them for that game, three weeks later, she worked the Texas/Nebraska game in Lincoln. The next year she worked two more games with ESPN, and following that Savage covered the Rose Bowl with ESPN in 2008 and 2009. With all the connections she was making, Savage was allowed to lead her demo reel with her work at ESPN and use their graphics. Then she began sending her reel out to 120 stations across the country making sure to sign each of the disks.

“Any sports station that I could find,” Savage says. “I found their address, I found a phone number, and I tried to find a name to send it to, and just hoped that someone would look at my tape.”

While some stations across the country contacted her, Comcast Sports Net in Portland was the one that asked her to come out and do a week of shows for what would become The Fan with Isaac and Suke. The radio show on 1080 AM was preempted by Mariners games so Comcast wanted to do TV only segments. “And then at the end of

that week they said, ‘all right, come back in a month,’ and that’s how I got the job.”

Savage loaded up her small white Toyota Camry Solara with as much as she could pack into it, put on some country music, and drove out to Portland. “Anything that could fit in my car came with me.”

She didn’t think she’d stay in Portland for very long, she thought she’d get here and quickly move on to

another station in another city. Comcast Sports Net was so young when she arrived that Savage has grown with network and become one of its faces and has enjoyed the opportunities that have come her way, including now hosting the pregame and postgame shows for the Oregon Ducks on Oregon Sports Net. This past January, Savage again worked the Rose Bowl again for a third time, this time hosting for OSN as the Ducks lost to Ohio State.

When she’s not on air previewing the upcoming Duck game, or providing sports updates on The Fan, Savage is on the internet constantly reading articles and emailing story links to herself, and checking Twitter for news updates like breaking news 8 minutes before air time that Coach Chip Kelly had named Darren Thomas the starting quarterback for the Ducks.

There’s generally no free time for this sports fan. If she’s not working a game, she’s watching one, there’s the occasional late night happy hour, or barbeque. But if there isn’t game on, she’ll usually sit back watch Netflix on her computer, or grab a blanket and head to a park to read a book. Next on her book list is The Federalist Papers. Being from Iowa and every four years having the Iowa Caucus, she grew up understanding politics and being interested in the subject.

Now that she’s in Portland, the 26 year old Savage has become a fan of the Trail Blazers and she says that even if she were move out of Portland, she’d still remain a Blazers fan because they are such a likeable group of players. She also jokes with fellow Iowa natives Michael Born and Chad Buchanan, the Blazers two top scouts that Iowan’s are taking over the organization.

Listen buddy, this is the Iowa/Ohio State game.

This is the biggest deal since I’ve been in college. I’m going

to need to see the game. This is a priority.

“

”

september 2010 | | haberdashers 34

Shortly after the Trail Blazers 2009-10 season came to end, the organization’s sideline reporter Rebecca Haarlow announced she was moving to Los Angeles to work the sideline for the Lakers. Right away, Savage’s name was mentioned by many fans on Twitter as a possible replacement. Ben Golliver of the blog Blazersedge tweeted,

“2 easiest hires 1) Armon Johnson for 3rd string point guard 2) Jill Savage for sideline reporter. Get it done and take a vaycay Blazers.”

“I saw that and I liked it,” Savage says. “I was like, ‘Wow, Ben didn’t have to do that,’ but I was really happy that he did, that was nice to see.”

To date, no decision has been made to have Savage be a part of the Blazers broadcast team, although does say she would love to do so. “I think it would be great to work for the Trail Blazers. I really like working with them right now the way it is, they’re all great people.”

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Just before 3 p.m. on Friday, October 8th, of this year, Savage announced she was leaving The Fan and going to work exclusively with Oregon Sports Net and begin a broader role with them. As of now, she’s not sure what that broader role will be, but she’s very excited about the possibilities and the people she’s working with there. “Everyone is so positive and fun to be around,” Savage says.

“It’s a great work environment. I mean really, when you have 2 top ten teams playing each other and you get to host the pregame show, how could it not be fun?”

For now she’s just taking things as they come. Savage is enjoys what she’s doing, making it fun, and she loves hosting the Duck games.

“Now that I’m actually hosting the Duck’s,” Savage says. “I really like the hosting aspect of it all, and I would like to stick with that.”