Mom put the kibosh on that idea, but Dave was able to grab his degree, make his first and only collegiate play-by-play broadcast and launch a career that has made him the television voice of the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

David Benz ’92 most recently hosted, anchored and reported for Comcast Sportsnet in San Francisco. Last fall he became the TV play-by-play voice of the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

“I’ve always wanted to do full-time play-by-play,” says Dave, who has spent his two-decade career as a sports broadcast journalist in Miami, Dallas, Denver and D.C., among other cities.

Most recently, he was able to enjoy the Giants’ 2010 baseball championship run and last year’s successful 49ers football season as a host, anchor and reporter for Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area in San Francisco.

“I’ve had the chance to go to great places and meet a lot of people … I’ve had an unbelievable career,” Dave says. In addition to his full-time studio work, Dave found his way into some TV and radio play-by-play gigs covering college sports and arena league football while also working the sidelines for the NFL, MLB and NBA broadcasts. The work paid off as he now enters a very small fraternity of NBA commentators.

“I feel like this is the job I’ve been grooming myself for basically my whole professional life,” Dave says.

“There’s just something about doing the game live,” he says. “It’s so much more electric.”

Dave cut his teeth “cutting tape” in the WTOP studios, where he directed and hosted “7 O’Clock News.”

“That was invaluable experience,” says Dave, who worked closely with Professor Mike Ameigh, current School of Communication, Media and the Arts Dean Fritz Messere ’71, M ’76 and Bill Canning of the television lab staff.

As operations coordinator for “Good Morning America,” Cameron processes hires, tracks freelancers and runs the internship program among other tasks. The former WSTM-TV (Syracuse) and WNYW-TV (New York) intern hopes to make his way to the front of the cameras eventually, but loves learning all aspects of the broadcasting business.

Jones

A member of the Future Alumni Network as a student, Cameron stays active with the Graduates Of the Last Decade Leadership Council.

Cameron’s advice: “If you use the tools you are given at Oswego and stay connected, you’re going to be successful.”

1. Key to a good morning:

My key to a good morning is started with my Pandora radio, specifically the Anita Baker station. Listening to the classic oldies puts me
in the perfect zone to make a good morning a great morning!

2. Part of a complete breakfast:

I love pancakes and cream cheese bagels — separately of course, everything bagels to be exact. But I would not be myself without having a banana and at least one cup of coffee.

3. Go-to Oswego dining hall dinner item:

Anything off the grill at Pathfinder dining hall from paninis, cheese steaks, chicken phillies, burgers, waffle fries — Oh my!

4. Favorite campus activity/organization:

There are just too many! Big shout out to FANs (Future Alumni Network), Department of Campus Life, Residence Life, Phi Beta Sigma Rho Xi chapter, Student Association and ALANA!

5. Greatest Oswego experience:

My favorite Oswego experience by far was being a building manager working in Hewitt Union and the Campus Center at Campus Life. I learned many valuable skills that I use to this very day, built great relationships, and it offered an enormous professional trajectory.

6. Worst thing about leaving Oswego:

I miss the carefree, casual life where there appeared to be a sense of security — a safe haven.

7. Best thing about coming back:

I love to see the new developments at the college, whether it be new structures, academic progress, reconnecting or meeting students.

8. Coolest internship:

Coolest internship was when I did news reporting at WSTM-TV Channel 3 in Syracuse. I learned the craft of reporting and working at a television station. Most of all, I got a front-row seat journeying throughout Central New York to places I would have otherwise not known.

9. Dream job:

I think I am at my dream job. I’ve dreamed big all my life and I seized a golden opportunity to work at ABC News and to be a part of the Good Morning America family! I intend to keep growing, learning and seeing what can come of this experience.

10. Words of wisdom:

To always strive to set a good example in work ethic and relationship building. You never know who may be watching or looking, but just know that someone always is.

She did end up in television, but not in the way she expected. She is part of “Roadtrip Nation,” a social movement and PBS series intended to inspire late-teens and 20-somethings to get real about their dreams.

“We’re here to ask the hard question of: What are you passionate about in your life?” said Richards while visiting campus in September.

Under the tagline “Define your own road in life,” Richards and her fellow “roadies” visit college campuses across the country in a trademark green RV. The perpetual tour is intended to inspire college students to discover what they love and strive to make it a career.

A Johnson Hall resident mentor, Admissions Office tour guide and member of the Omicron Delta Kappa honor society executive board as a student, Richards — currently active with the Washington, D.C., alumni chapter — was happy to bring the message to her alma mater.

“I think it’s really important to engage students one-on-one and especially to use travel as a way of self exploration and career exploration,” she said. “We want to help them integrate that into their majors and into what they’re doing and keep their interests and their passions on the forefront.”

Student leaders who take internships on the RV each year find and interview potential mentors, from STEM professionals to higher-profile entertainers. It’s tradition for the interviewees to leave behind a signature on the wall or ceiling of the RV.

Richards and her crew also encourage students to take their own road trip to get in touch with their passions and the people who can help make those goals possible.

Luckily Tom Niziol ’77 made it down off that roof safely. Now he draws on his Oswego snow schooling and a 30-year career with the National Weather Service in Buffalo in his role with the country’s premier source for consumer weather information.

Niziol

Niziol joined The Weather Channel in January 2012, and immediately took to the air to explain extreme weather conditions around the country.

He is featured regularly during winter weather coverage on The Weather Channel, which reaches more than 100 million American homes. Niziol also contributes his expertise with content on The Weather Channel’s digital platforms including weather.com and social media outlets.

Niziol enjoyed being a student in Oswego’s meteorology department, he said, not only because of the school’s excellent reputation in the field but because the program was small enough to get individualized attention and the opportunity for hands-on research with faculty members. The late Professors Emeriti Eugene Chermack and Robert Sykes were his mentors and heroes, he recalls.

“Professor Sykes used to take us onto the roof of the meteorology building to begin class each day and he spent time to train us how to connect and ‘feel’ the weather. I particularly remember one day when the winds were very light, they did not even rustle the flag and he asked us to tell him the wind direction,” Niziol recalls. “We all looked for signs to help us but could not find any. Then he asked us to smell the air. It smelled sweet like chocolate and we all immediately knew that was the aroma from the Nestle chocolate factory in Fulton. Now that’s meteorology at its finest.”

Niziol’s interest in weather started young. He remembers watching the sky and following the weather as a kid, but it was his high school earth science teacher who triggered his interest in meteorology as a profession. “However, once I arrived at Oswego, it kicked my interest into high gear and meteorology became a passion,” Niziol says.

MORE: Students at SUNY Oswego Pinpoint Storms for Schools

Oswego was a logical choice for the budding meteorologist. “I picked Oswego mainly because it was one of only a couple of state schools that offered a reasonably priced college education and had a meteorology department. I also picked it because of its idyllic location on the shores of Lake Ontario — what other college campus can offer the type of sunsets and connection with storms that Oswego can?” he says.

That connection spawned a host of memories for the weather expert, like pulling a couple of co-eds off the fence at the tennis court next to Seneca Hall when they could not navigate the icy sidewalks in 60-mph winds.

“The friends, the dorms, the meteorology lab, the wrestling team workouts, the sunsets, the winter storms, the lightning over the lake — it was all wonderful and it is so nice to revisit those memories from time to time,” Niziol says. “If I had to go back and relive those days, there is very little I would change.”

After Oswego, he went to work for the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories in Buffalo, now CALSPAN Corp., and from there joined the National Weather Service. He worked his way up the career ladder, eventually becoming the officer in charge of the Buffalo office.

After three decades at the government’s weather service, Niziol expected to finish out his career there, until a call came “out of the blue” from The Weather Channel, asking him to audition to ex­plain winter’s extreme weather to a national audience. He made the trip to Atlanta, auditioned and was invited to become part of a Weather Channel team that includes Oswego grads Thomas Moore ’74, who serves as coordinator of the weather forecasting program and now works hand in hand with Niziol, and Al Roker ’76, who hosts the channel’s popular “Wake Up with Al” morning program.

And how cool is it to be The Weather Channel’s winter storm expert? “I’m the luckiest man alive,” says Niziol, who cherishes his “very understanding family” and loved his dream job with the NWS in Buffalo. Now he has another dream job telling the whole nation about the weather phenomena he came to love and understand at SUNY Oswego.

Katie Meegan ’09

10×10+10

1 Graduate Of the Last Decade, 100 words about her + 10 random questions

Most people wouldn’t think of cleaning up poop as a career pinnacle. But for Katie Meegan ’09, taking care of animals — and their business — is her business.

Katie Meegan '09 holds a Siberian lynx. Meegan is an education specialist at the Buffalo Zoo and assistant to naturalist and TV personality Jarod Miller '00.

She’s a Buffalo Zoo animal care specialist who moonlights with professional zoologist and TV personality Jarod Miller ’00, whom she met when the Biology Club brought him to campus. Today they work together several days a week, showing animals locally and on television shows like the Late Show with David Letterman.

“I’m doing what I want to do. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve already made it,” says Meegan. “I love teaching people how cool animals really are.” l

1) Coolest animal you’ve handled: That’s tough. It’d probably have to be
a tie between a tapir and a Siberian lynx.

2) Most loved stuffed animal as a kid: A small stuffed lion that I called Lioness.

3) Favorite Rice Creek pastime: My senior year I would escape there to study during the warmer weather and not tell anyone where I was going.
I still won’t reveal my secret spot.

4) Downside of animal handling: Sometimes I smell. Who am I kidding? Most of the time I smell.

5) Upside of Oswego’s weather: It truly makes you appreciate the nicer weather but you also can’t beat the sunsets.

6) Dogs or cats? Dogs. I can’t stand cleaning kitty litter.

7) Rudy’s or Sub Shop? Rudy’s all the way. There is something about sitting next to the lake that eating a sub can’t come close to.

8) Yes, please: Buffalo Sabres hockey.

9) No, thank you: Snow. I’ve had enough snow and cold weather to last a lifetime.

10) Little-known fact: Gorillas and chimpanzees have a cluster of sweat glands under their arms (like humans) and may have smelly armpits after exercise.

Ed. Note: In January, at a session titled “In Search of TV’s Next Big Thing” at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, Peter Bocko ’75 and four other industry executives debated trends in hardware, software and the sociology of future TV. Here, Pete shares some highlights of their discussion.

— Peter Bocko ’75