Q&A with Brandon Gaudin: His Brad Stevens pizza story, Madden vs. real life, and more

Evansville native and Butler graduate Brandon Gaudin will be back home in Indiana on Sunday as FOX's play-by-play voice when the Colts host Washington. IndyStar caught up with him to talk about what led him to broadcasting, his time as the voice of the Butler Bulldogs, and more. (Answers have been edited for clarity.)

You grew up in Evansville. What was your favorite memory as a kid of growing up in that area?

I grew up in a sports family. I had two older brothers who were always involved in sports. We had a typical Indiana family. We had a basketball hoop in our front yard, and I put a basketball hoop in my parents' bedroom as a kid. We were always playing sports.

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I realized that I was limited and wasn't going to be able to go on and be some college or pro star. I became enamored with watching live sporting events, listening to the broadcasters and hearing how they told stories and would weave nuggets in and out and get excited during big plays. I began broadcasting games in my house — make-believe games as I would play the basketball, baseball or football game in the foyer in my home in southern Indiana.

My first broadcasting experience began as a high school student at Harrison High School in Evansville, broadcasting baseball and basketball on a local radio station. As soon as I got a taste of it there, I loved it.

Did you have a favorite broadcaster when you were growing up?

Skip Caray, who is Harry Caray’s son, did Atlanta Braves broadcasting on TBS. In the early 90s, you couldn't get all the games like you can nowadays. When I would get home from school, the Braves would come on TBS in the evening. That's really who I started to try to model as I was broadcasting these games throughout my house as a 7, 8 and 9 year-old.

As I got older, I can remember listening to Don Fisher on Indiana games, Bob Lamey on Colts games. All of these voices, whether it was radio or TV, I really started to get in tune with and really pay attention to the details and what they were doing and and how they told the story of the game and how they got the viewer or the listener engaged and excited.

Why did you choose to go to Butler?

I had a house divided. I had a lot of family that went to Indiana and I had a lot that went to Purdue.

I liked Butler because it was a smaller school and I love the city of Indianapolis. I thought, ‘I can be in a city that I love in Indianapolis. I can be at a school that has a great reputation, but has a smaller size.’ I wanted to get more hands-on experience as a broadcaster early, and I thought a school of 4,000 students might provide that opportunity quicker than a school of 40,000-50,000 students.

I'm thankful that I made that decision. Those were an incredible four years and really helped me on my journey.

Do you have a favorite memory from your time as a student there?

There's no question that it was my freshman year, when Butler went to the Sweet 16 in 2003. That was before Butler really became a national name on their back-to-back to Final Four runs.

When I was a freshman, you could go to the basketball games at halftime and get a seat in the third row of the student section. Things have changed a lot since I was there. But I remember when they made the tournament, and when they beat Mississippi State in the first round and Louisville in the second round to go to the Sweet 16.

After both of those victories, all 4,000 students flooded from the dorms or their houses to congregate at the center of Butler's campus. It was just an unforgettable party after both of those victories, and I look back at that as not only an incredible moment as a college student, but also kind of the beginning of what we now know as Butler basketball being a national brand.

When you got chosen to be the voice of the Butler Bulldogs in 2011, the year after they made the national championship game, describe the atmosphere and the energy around the program.

When I got that job, what was interesting and kind of funny is that everybody said, ‘Oh my gosh, congratulations. That's so cool that you got this job. It's just too bad that you missed that run to the national championship game.’ Nobody expected them to do it again.

You would go on road trips and there would be fans waiting for autographs from Brad Stevens and Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard. I could tell that the profile of the school and the program had changed so significantly, but no one ever expected them to go back to the national championship game.

Through that season, there was a point in that season where Butler was 14-9 and had lost at Youngstown State and kind of hit rock bottom. Then they turned it around. They won the next game at Cleveland State and they would never lose again until the national championship against Connecticut.

With each passing you kind of found yourself saying, ‘Just give us one more win.’ They beat Old Dominion and then you said, ‘Just one more. Beat Pittsburgh and I'll be happy.’ Then Wisconsin and Florida and VCU.

That ride of being behind the scenes with the team, in the hotels on the bus trips, flying back home after the Elite Eight win with a trophy on the team plane, those memories are irreplaceable. No matter what I go on to do in this profession, or have done since then, being a part of that Butler team in 2011 will always hold such a special place in my heart. I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it because I just remember how special that was and how special that continues to be.

Do you have a favorite Brad Stevens story?

When we would go on road trips, if you had a special connection to the hometown where we were going, you got to pick the team meal after the game that we would have on the ride home. Butler went down to play Evansville, so they had me pick the postgame meal. I picked Turoni’s, which is my favorite pizza spot from Evansville.

Butler would actually get upset in that game. When we got back on the bus after the game to drive back to Indianapolis, I'm sitting across from Coach Stevens. I don't remember what the pizza order was, but Turoni’s messed it up.

Brad was mad that we lost. He gets on the bus and he's angry. He opens his pizza and he slams the box down. He goes, ‘Gaudin, your city sucks and your pizza place sucks.’

I want to clarify that he was saying that in jest, Brad could never truly say that to somebody and be mean to them. But it just showed how Brad Stevens is. Even in a moment where he was very angry and it was a heartbreaking loss, he turned that anger into some type of humor.

You've been the voice of Madden since 2016. What's one thing about being the voice of Madden that would surprise people?

I would say just how it's recorded. We record the game in five- to eight-second soundbites that then play in succession. It's supposed to sound like it's one constant sentence and one stream of thought, but it's not. In a three-sentence dialogue between Charles (Davis) and I, they will probably hear 5, 6, 7 different lines that were recorded not only on different days, not only on different months, but probably different years. You have to make your voice sound pretty consistent every time that you do the recording so that it doesn't sound really choppy and robotic. If you have a line that backs up against another line where there's a slightly different intonation in your voice, they're like, ‘What happened?’ I'm like, 'Well, one was recorded in 2022 and the other one was recorded in 2017.’ The programmers that work on the game and have to code all of those hundreds of thousands of lines that we recorded to fire back-to-back-to-back at the right time, it's a process that fascinates me. People will often tell me, ‘Wow, you sound a lot different in real life than you do on the video game.’ I don't say this to the people because I don't want it to sound petty, but of course I do. I mean, no matter how often you record for the video game, it is done in those little sound bites. And it's gonna sound so much different than a real-life NFL broadcast. I almost think it's more like being a voice actor. It is a totally different skill set than sitting in a booth like I will this Sunday.

When something big happens leading up to a game, like Sam Ehlinger taking over for Matt Ryan, how does that play into your preparation? How does a storyline like that impact what you do during a broadcast?

It just changes the dynamic of the storytelling, right? Now, so much more of our focus will be on the quarterback situation for both teams. Instead of Matt Ryan and Carson Wentz now you have Sam Ehlinger and Taylor Heinicke. First and foremost, you want to cover the game. Don't lose touch with what is most important. What's happening on the field is what the fan cares about the most. Within that need, you need to be good at storytelling with your analyst and the production crew. For this game, there's no question that the lead story is the quarterback position for both teams. We're going to come on air talking about that in our open, and we're gonna weave that throughout the broadcast. How my preparation changes is, instead of having a short list of notes on Sam Ehlinger, now I have a really long list of notes on Sam Ehlinger — where he came from, where he grew up. I have stories on his time at Texas. I have stories from him this year during the preseason and the coaches saying how he really blossomed through the preseason, how he's starting to change his throwing motion over the last year and how that's impacted his improvement. You put your focus where you think the viewer will be most intrigued. No. 1 this week is the quarterback spot, and so that's where we're going to spend the majority of our time talking, at least at the beginning of the game. Then you see how everything plays out from there.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Q&A with Fox play-by-play voice Brandon Gaudin