Common Collective’s Play Call Group Begins Spanish Broadcasts

The Common Collective Play Call group aired a Spanish language broadcast of an Emerson athletics game last semester, the first of what the group hopes is many non-English broadcasts.

Sergie Nogueira, MA ’25 and Andres Hernandez, MA ’25 provided the play-by-play of the women’s basketball team’s loss to Endicott College on November 21 on Emerson Channel Sports. Since then, Play Call has continued to call games in Spanish.

Airing games in different languages makes perfect sense to Bryson Akins ’25, who founded Common Collective’s Play Call group.

“In cultures and societies all over the world there is one common ground: Sports,” said Akins. “It is a global phenomenon that all societies have across the globe. We recognize that and want to be able to have the world know and understand our broadcasts in their native language.”

Common Collective’s Play Call group is focused on developing skills and experience in all aspects of professional sports broadcasting, said Communication Studies Executive-in-Residence Mark Brodie, MA ’99.

Brodie and Akins said numerous Emerson alumni and affiliated faculty continue to provide mentorship to the group, including Los Angeles Dodgers announcer and Communications Studies affiliated faculty member Tim Neverett ’88, Boston sports talk veteran Gary Tanguay, and Communication Studies affiliated faculty member and New England Patriots announcer Bob Socci.

They said Play Call hopes to broadcast games in Mandarin this semester, and other languages in the future.

“As the college has the faculty talent for instruction and our College has the existing equipment it just makes sense to expand into other languages,” said Brodie.