Members of WBRS, the university’s student-run broadcast radio station, will be participating in the National Football League’s (NFL) Super Bowl media week. William Kevorkian ’23, the Sports Director of WBRS, spoke with The Brandeis Hoot regarding the upcoming experience.
This will be the first time in the radio station’s history that they will be attending the event. “I just applied on a whim,” Kevorkian explained to The Hoot.
The NFL Super Bowl media week begins on Feb. 6 and runs until Feb. 10 in the week before the kickoff of the big game on Feb. 12, according to the NFL’s website. The 2023 Super Bowl will take place in Pheonix, Arizona in a match-up between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Kevorkian explained to The Hoot that he has an account with NFL communications, which is responsible for distributing media credentials for specific NFL events, including entrance to media week. Though, according to Kevorkian, these passes for radio stations are usually set aside for national stations like Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), Fox Sports and CBS. But Kevorkian threw WBRS’s hat in the ring, thinking “Why not?” he told The Hoot.
Kevorkian applied for the passes in early November and didn’t receive confirmation about the media credentials until mid-December. He recounted that the news didn’t arrive until after the Fall 2022 semester and exams had finished.
“I’m basically looking for a great opportunity to provide coverage to WBRS listeners in the form of live content [and] interviews with those who are there,” Kevorkian explained when asked what he was looking forward to with the experience.
Kevorkian went on to explain that the experience is also “an opportunity for Brandeis to be marketed—and WBRS to be marketed—on a national stage in Pheonix, Arizona.”
Kevorkian explained to The Hoot that he expects to see a lot of people there who are involved in sports broadcasting, broadcast journalism, multimedia journalism and lifestyle journalism. He explained by being around many of these individuals it creates a networking opportunity for the members of WBRS because there will be people there from a variety of different professions.
“This is a great opportunity for university students to meet these individuals and learn about their professions,” Kevorkian told The Hoot.
Looking ahead, Kevorkian doesn’t have any specific initiatives in mind for WBRS after the NFL media week. Though he mentioned to The Hoot that “stuff always comes up that I’m applying to left and right and so we’ll see what happens before the school year is over.”
When asked what team he thinks will win the Super Bowl, Kevorkian said he is “more confident than not that the Eagles are going to take this Super Bowl.” The team has “great personnel” both in coaching and in players. Kevorkian says the Eagles have a “fantastic team overall” whereas the Chiefs have two good players.
“I’m just excited to go out to Pheonix, Arizona to provide content to radio row and be in a professional environment,” Kevorkian told The Hoot. Kevorkian is looking to pursue a career in broadcast journalism after college and he thinks this will be a great way to get first-hand experience in a professional journalism environment. While Kevorkian’s course load and internship experience has given him exposure to broadcast journalism, this opportunity is simply on “a much bigger stage.”
Kevorkian has been with WBRS since the start of his fall semester in 2019, and he assumed the role as Sports Director at the start of the fall 2022 semester. Prior to being Sports Director, Kevorkian was News Director for the station during his junior year in the 2021-2022 academic year, he explained to The Hoot.
WBRS has been broadcasting to the greater Waltham area since their formation in the 1950s, according to their website. You can tune in for coverage of the NFL media week with WBRS on the radio at FM 100.1 or you can access it on their website.
