Jacob Irons was a “bored seventh grader,” as he remembers it, sitting in the bleachers watching his younger sister’s softball games. Someone decided to put him to work.
“I would sit on the sidelines, bored, and one day one of the rec coaches in my sister’s softball league said, ‘Hey, Jake likes to talk, let’s give him a microphone and have him do public address,” Irons said. “I was like, ‘Sure, this is awesome.’ My parents were apprehensive, a seventh grader with a microphone.”
His sister, Hannah, became an all-stater at Plainfield High and now plays at the College of New England. Jacob ran cross country and played golf, but today one would have to pry the microphone out of his cool, collegiate hands.
Irons, 22, is calling Notre Dame football games for the student radio station, WVFI. His final semester in South Bend is under way, but his professors are cutting him enough slack to call the national championship game, ND vs. Ohio State, in Atlanta on Monday.
“It’s pretty crazy to have all this happen,” Irons said. “Pretty surreal, senior year, to have this happen. It’s been a wild ride. I thought the biggest level of football was Plainfield vs. Griswold on Thanksgiving. I was pumped to call that. Now, I’m calling the national championship game.”
To say Irons is resourceful is an understatement. Same with relentless. He hasn’t just stuck his foot in doors, he’s kicked them in, even tore new openings into the walls when necessary.
The most important room he entered, as he looks back, was to the office of Christopher Bitgood, who was then the principal at Plainfield High, now the superintendent in Canterbury.
“I went in there with our athletic director, Jan Voland, and said, ‘I have this vision to create sports journalism and sports community at Plainfield,” Irons said. “He was like, ‘Let’s do it, what do you need?’ I needed a camera room and an audio board. He said, ‘Done. There’s a closet down in the tech wing, I don’t even know what’s in it, it’s all yours.’ This entire journey is a big thanks to Dr. Chris Bitgood and Jan Voland who said yes. Because everyone could have said no. They had every right to say no. I was a 14-year-old kid who wanted to talk into a microphone. That’s what they said yes to.”
Irons started doing a weekly podcast, “Panther Pride,” adding video and story packages. When the pandemic hit, and parents couldn’t go to games, Irons started bringing the Plainfield Panthers to them. The CIAC selected him to co-host its sportsmanship conference, held virtually in 2021.
By his senior year, Irons, the class valedictorian, was about set to go to Ithaca College, but Bitgood urged him to take a visit to Notre Dame, even if it meant spoiling his perfect attendance record. Once he saw the campus in South Bend, saw Touchdown Jesus at ND Stadium and all of that, Irons knew: This must be the place.
He rapped on the door to the TV station on his first day of school and was told there was nothing available, he’d have to take a behind-the-scenes role in his first semester. But the next day, Irons got an e-mail. The student who was supposed to do volleyball for ESPN-plus canceled out. Could Irons be ready to do it in 48 hours?
“I was like, ‘Yes, love volleyball, it’s so fast, such a great sport, all for it,'” Irons said. Actually, he had his fingers crossed. What was he going to say? No? He called home to talk to Jim Langlois, one of the coaches at Plainfield, for a crash course.
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“And I was the voice of Notre Dame volleyball for four years,” Irons said. “I’m confident that I know volleyball now. That was the first thing I did, and everything else rolled off of it.”
Let me interject here, in my role as adjunct professor at Central and Southern Connecticut: If you want to break into sports writing or broadcasting, kids, this is how it’s done. You make your own breaks, you get hands-on experience — even if you have to pull all-nighters or arm-wrestle the biggest kids on campus to get it.
Irons has four classes this semester to complete to get his degree in film, television and theater, with a minor in sports communication. He’s interned in the Cape Cod League, and when he wasn’t announcing ND football games, he worked as a spotter for NBC. He’s sports director at the school’s TV station in addition to his radio duties.
His favorite broadcasters include Mike Monaco, an ND grad who works for ESPN and NESN, Adam Amin (FOX) and, though Irons is a Yankees fan, the recently retired radio voice of the Red Sox, Joe Castiglione.
He has called 15 Notre Dame football games, working with partners Tyler Reidy or Ryan Murphy. Irons and Murphy, from New Hampshire, drove home to New England for Christmas and somewhere in Ohio work-shopped potential calls for “The Moment,” should the Fighting Irish win their first football championship since 1988.
Irons went full bore when Jayden Harrison returned the second half kickoff for a TD against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, “A house call!” But when Mitch Jeter kicked the winning field goal to beat Penn State in the semifinals last week, Irons kept it under control. “Snap back, hold down, it is goood. Notre Dame 27, Penn State 23, seven seconds left on the clock.” That was the correct call.
“With seven seconds left, you can’t put the full stamp on it,” he said.
As he has been running storylines through his mind, Irons has concluded that Notre Dame’s team first approach is its superpower, and gives the Irish their fighting chance to beat favored Ohio State.
“Next man up, that’s what we’ve seen,” Irons said. “There’s no ‘guy’ on Notre Dame. There are good, talented players. You look at Ohio State, you’ve got guys who are going to make millions of dollars, but there is no guy on this Notre Dame team. They have each other, they’re playing for each other, and I think it’s a really scary thing to play a team that’s playing with each other and for each other.”
The players and coaches, Irons said, have always treated him and his fellow students as professionals. “There’s many places that see student journalists, laugh and keep moving,” he said. “But Notre Dame is awesome. The coaches are always willing to take our questions and value us just like regular media. They understand we’re there for a learning experience, to get better just as much as the players are.”
Irons says he will be drinking a lot of water, staying fully hydrated for his hours on the air on Monday. At halftime, he takes a cough drop. When the wild ride is over, he’ll go back to networking, sending resumes.
If there isn’t an opportunity, he’ll make one. This won’t be his last big assignment.
“I’m applying to anything and everything right now,” Irons said. “I would like to be a radio or television play-by-play broadcaster. That’s the ultimate dream that I would love to have happen, but gotta work for it. We’ll see if anyone is willing to say ‘yes’ to the 22-year-old the way Dr. Bitgood did.”
