The voices of Lafayette sports form a formidable broadcasting team with years of history and experience behind their game coverage.
Play-by-play commentator Gary Laubach calls basketball, football and occasionally even baseball games for Lafayette. With his playing experience in high school for all three sports as a point guard, quarterback and both a pitcher and shortstop, Laubach is able to view the game from a player’s perspective.
“The analogy I use is it’s like a dance, where I’ll call the play until it ends,” Laubach said. “At that point, [the color commentator] takes over, and he’ll do his analysis until the next play.”
Basketball color analyst and football sideline reporter John Leone described Laubach as “meticulous.”
“Gary’s a real pro,” Leone said.
Next to Laubach, Mike Joseph ’88 serves as the color commentator for football and the sideline reporter for basketball. Joseph returned to Lafayette as a football analyst following his collegiate playing career, when he set the still-standing Lafayette record for career interceptions. Additionally, Joseph served as a defensive back coach and a special teams coordinator for Lafayette from 1991 to 2000 and was the position coach for John Troxell, the team’s current head coach.
Together, Laubach and Joseph run an online segment for GoLeopards called “Behind the Mic,” where the two provide post-game analysis for football and discuss the team’s upcoming game.
“Having the perspective of a former player and coach helps me from a standpoint of what to look for, what coverages need to be run, how the defense is playing and then obviously offensive as well from breaking down offenses for ten years of coaching,” Joseph said.
Joseph described the basketball-football trio of himself, Laubach and Leone as a “triumvirate.”
To Laubach, these shifting roles among the group for basketball and football coverage is enabling expert analysis.
“The most important thing is to surround yourself with experts,” Laubach said. “Mike’s an expert in football, John’s an expert in basketball.”
While Joseph does color analysis for football, he moves to sideline reporting for basketball, with Leone taking over as the basketball color analyst. The men’s basketball head coach from 1988 to 1995, Leone’s extensive basketball knowledge prepared him for the role.
As a color analyst, Leone got to call the games of his daughter, Amanda Leone ‘10, during her basketball career. Leone also cited his role in broadcasting as the catalyst for his opportunity to interview former NFL head coach Jon Gruden and former MLB manager and coach Joe Maddon.
Laubach emphasized the team effort that occurs behind the scenes, including camera operators and photographers.
“The behind-the-scenes people maybe are more important than even we are because they’ve got to get the right shots,” Laubach said. “They’ve got to have the right replays, they’ve got to do all the labor.”
In addition to the triumvirate, Phil Ng ‘88 provides analysis during the halftime and post-game shows. A member of the 2007 induction class into the Lafayette Hall of Fame, Ng also analyzes the game from the perspective of a former player.
“Being a player, knowing different coverages, being in the locker room, knowing attitudes, what to expect competition-wise, what to expect coverage-wise and scheme-wise, that all goes back to your time as a player,” Ng said.
Ng relishes the opportunity to return to the college following his playing career. “I always just wanted to stay in touch with the program,” he said.
The broadcasting team involves long-term relationships, as Joseph and Ng were once college roommates. The team also boasts a unique history — years before ESPN+ began carrying collegiate broadcasts, Lafayette was one of the first schools to have a local broadcasting network.
“It’s pretty miraculous what has happened [with] the transition from just being a local channel to Lafayette then creating a basic network of a whole bunch of various television groups. And now with ESPN+, anybody can watch anything,” Laubach said.
“We were kind of like the pioneers of it,” Leone said.
From then until now, the broadcasters of Lafayette have always held a deep passion for their work.
“I mean, I probably would announce anything anybody asked me,” Laubach said.
