Dave Neal
Dave Neal, son of Bob Neal and Melody Gadziala, is a sportscaster who calls SEC Football, Basketball and Baseball for SEC TV and ESPNU. He also calls regional and super regional games during the NCAA Baseball Tournament.
Broadcast Career
Dave Neal graduated from Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in communications in 1989. Upon graduation, Neal was hired by WTXL-TV to serve as one of their sports anchors. Neal would remain with WTXL until 1993.[1]
In 1993 Neal had his first big breakthrough in broadcasting sports. Fox Sports Net would hire Neal to act as the pre and post-game hosts for their coverage of the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Braves. Neal would also serve as the back-up play-by-play voice for select games and for other broadcast events on Fox Sports South and SportSouth.[1]
In 1999 Neal would become the play-by-play for FSN's college football and men's basketball coverage, powered by Jefferson-Pilot (Lincoln Financial) and Raycom Sports. In 2007 Raycom would move Neal over from their FSN coverage to be the play-by-play voice for their regional syndication package of SEC Football and select men's basketball games. In 2009 ESPN Plus would win syndication rights from Raycom Sports, and they would launch SEC TV. Once again Neal would be brought on to act as the play-by-play voice. ESPN Plus would also bring Neal additional broadcast opportunities. Once basketball season would finish, Neal would become the voice for SEC Baseball coverage Thursday nights on ESPNU. ESPN would also use Neal as a broadcaster for their regional and super regional college baseball tournament broadcasts. Ironically, Neal would return to FSN as he would broadcast many select games for SEC TV on FSN.[2]
As of 1999, Neal finds himself as the SEC IMG Sports Network play-by-play voice for the SEC Football Championship, which is broadcast across the nation on many radio stations and at secdigitalnetwork.com.[1] He has also served as a play-by-play announcer for Versus college football coverage.[2]
From 2009-2013 season Neal was typically teamed with Andre Ware and Cara Capuano calling football games. Basketball assignments would vary each week.[3][2] Since that time Neal has called many college football bowl games and has called four FCS Championship series.