Ouachita Baptist Football Network Continues Growth

Featured, Football, Tigers | August 20, 2014 by Sporting Life Arkansas | 0 Comments

Ouachita Baptist University again will have one of the largest radio networks in NCAA Division II with seven Ouachita Football Network stations. The combined signals of those stations cover most of Arkansas and parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Louisiana.

Ouachita is the only college program in the state – at any level – that has posted six consecutive winning seasons.

Once more, Ouachita will have radio affiliates in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas.

The Tigers open the 2014 season at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, against Southern Nazarene in Arkadelphia. It will be the first game played at Ouachita’s Cliff Harris Stadium. The broadcast will begin at 5 p.m. with the Baptist Health Tiger Countdown To Kickoff.

A full schedule of the Tigers’ 2014 football season is available here.

Network affiliates for the 2014 season are:

KHTE-FM, 96.5, Little Rock
KHTO-FM, 96.7, Hot Springs
KFMD, AM 1340 and FM 105.3, Springdale/Rogers
KAMD-FM, 97.1, Camden
KNAS-FM, 105.5, Nashville
KQOR-FM, 105.3, Mena

Rex Nelson of Little Rock will return for his 32nd season of play-by-play duties, making him one of the longest-serving college play-by-play announcers in the country. He will again be joined in the broadcast booth by Dr. Jeff Root, who has provided analysis for more than a quarter of a century.

Nelson, a well-known Arkansas writer and broadcaster, serves as the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges & Universities. Root is the dean of Ouachita’s School of Humanities. Root and Nelson grew up within blocks of Ouachita’s stadium and began doing the radio broadcasts of Tiger football when they were Ouachita students.

Richard Atkinson, Casey Motl and Patrick Thomas round out the broadcast team. The executive producer of the Ouachita Football Network is Russ McKinney of Crain Media in Little Rock. Tracy Thibodeaux will serve as the studio producer at network headquarters in Little Rock.

“The quality and reach of our football broadcasts are second to none in Division II,” said Ouachita athletic director David Sharp. “We take great pride here at Ouachita in the product we put on the air.”

The presenting sponsor of the Ouachita Football Network for 2014 is Visit Hot Springs.

Each network broadcast begins one hour prior to kickoff.

“We’re excited to again be on stations in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas,” Nelson said. “And we’re especially excited to have a new home in Southwest Arkansas on Hot 96.7 FM, which will give us great coverage in Hot Springs. Arkadelphia area fans will be able to hear the games on either 96.7 FM out of Hot Springs or 97.1 FM out of Camden.”

In addition to Visit Hot Springs, sponsors for 2014 include: