New FSU broadcaster builds career and life around radio
Radio has always played an essential part in Jeff Culhane’s life.
It was always on in his home in Mitchell, S.D., and when he would return from school he’d find his way to it. The familiar voice of his father, Steve, would sometimes greet him.
Not in person but on the air as he provided the play-by-play for the local high school or college sports teams.
Even as a child, Culhane would join his father in the radio booth.
“I remember running around the radio broadcast booth at a place called the Corn Palace where all the basketball games were played,” Culhane told the Orlando Sentinel. “The broadcasting thing has kind of always been in my blood.”
Culhane brings that love of broadcasting with him as he takes over as Florida State’s new play-byplay announcer this fall.
He started his broadcasting career at 14 years old when he worked weekends during the summer months as a part-time disc jockey at KORN-AM 1490, an oldies station in his hometown.
“I don’t think I’ve even been so nervous than my first on-air shift,” Culhane recalled. “I messed up the whole shift and they had to bring people in to help me out. It was nerve-wracking and embarrassing, but I loved it at the same time.”
The job entailed more than just spinning records as Culhane offered listeners the latest news, weather and sports reports. It provided him an early look into the inner workings of a small radio station. Eventually, it led to other broadcasting opportunities, including one in sports when at 18 years old he was asked to be part of the high school boys basketball broadcast.
“From there, it just sparked something further inside of me, and that’s where it began,” added Culhane.
An uncle, also in TV and radio, would give Culhane his first break with a full-time job out of college at a radio station in Yankton, S.D.
“That was my first introduction into a small market, small-town local radio,” Culhane said. “I was working hard, wearing a lot of different hats and cutting my teeth. I did a little bit of everything for him. I was on the air. I sold, I was
in marketing — I was doing everything you can think of at a radio station.”
Those lessons would pay off three years later when Culhane got a job at the radio network for the University of Nebraska. He worked in Lincoln for six years before moving to West Virginia University, where he took over play-byplay duties for the women’s basketball and baseball programs from 2013-16.
While in Morgantown, he helped develop the school’s radio network and hosted several football shows and a weekly podcast featured on the athletic department’s website.
“You weren’t going to succeed in those places if you weren’t willing to work hard and weren’t willing to do the extra things,” he said. “The little things to separate yourself and your team from everybody else.”
Another challenge awaited him when he arrived at North Dakota State in 2016 as Culhane took over play-by-play duties for football, men’s basketball and baseball teams. It was the perfect time because the Bison were in the middle of winning nine national
championships in football.
“It was just a dream to be associated with,” Culhane said. “You hear the term culture a lot and sometimes it’s cliché or overdone or overused. It’s not here. The culture instilled within the football program is unlike anything I’ve been a part of anywhere else.”
Then longtime FSU announcer Gene Deckerhoff, after an illustrious 43-year career with the school, retired this spring. That created an opening — becoming the new voice of Seminoles athletics — that Culhane couldn’t pass up.
“It’s really a dream come true,” he said. “To have this opportunity, and I’m honored to follow a legend like Gene Deckerhoff. What a special person, a special broadcaster and a guy that so many of us look up to. Not only for what he’s done but how he treats people and the type of man he is.
“My wife and I certainly understand the rabid passion of Seminole athletics and that’s what we want to be a part of, a place where everybody cares and every play, every moment matters. To be a part of those moments and make them more special in the broadcast booth is why I got into this thing.”
It also doesn’t hurt that Florida winters are nothing like those the Culhanes have faced in the Dakotas.
“We’ve lived through six winters in Fargo, so we’ll take every percentage of humidity the Gulf of Mexico wants to throw at us right now,” he said.
While there are nerves about the move, it’s nothing compared to what Culhane and his wife Sarah are experiencing as they await the birth of their second child in the coming weeks. The new addition will join them and their 3-year-old son, Alexander, as they relocate before the football season starts.
Culhane has already started preparing for the opener against Duquesne on Aug. 27. He can’t help himself. He gets it from his father.
“He was always very supportive, wanting the best for me and just essentially instilling the work ethic in me that I have today,” Culhane said. “To get ready for every broadcast the right way, to prepare the right way and just to be yourself, be who you are. People realize pretty quick if you’re not being real. They’ll understand that in a hurry.”