‘A friendly listen’ Dave Barnett Story

Harry · August 28, 2015

Dave Barnett was recently asked why he was coming back to North Texas to do play-by-play for Mean Green football and men’s basketball. After all, he’s a two-time Emmy winner who has worked in the NBA, Major League Baseball, and for ESPN.

He didn’t have to consider the question long.

“Working for friends and with friends, for my school,” Barnett said. “I‘m doing what I love for an institution I love and to which I owe my entire career. What’s not to like about that?”

It’s been more than 30 years since Barnett, a Denton native and 1979 graduate of North Texas, landed his first full-time play-by-play job with the Dallas Mavericks. Now in his mid 50s, Barnett’s formerly brown hair is graying and cut short. His voice is a little deeper but still instantly recognizable, one of those golden throats men dream of having. He is not only a father (his son Zach is a writer for Football Scoop and College Football Talk and his daughter Ally is a site coordinator for Communities in Schools in North Texas) but also a grandfather of two with a third on the way in September.

His journey through professional and major-college sports broadcasting has occasionally crossed paths with the Mean Green, but his distance from North Texas was a bit of an illusion.

“I feel like I never actually left,” Barnett explained. “We lived for nine years in San Antonio, but other than that we lived in Denton or the area. It’s not like I was away for a long time and now I’m back. It’s more a greater level of involvement.”

That greater involvement begins in earnest on Sept. 12 when Barnett calls the North Texas-SMU season-opening football game in Dallas.

His return to North Texas is by desire but not entirely by choice. This is not where Dave Barnett was supposed to be, and certainly not where his brilliant career path was headed. His was a rising star that had accomplished a rare feat: the ambitions of his youth had been achieved in his adulthood, and it would have been unthinkable three years ago to expect Barnett to be available to be the voice of the Mean Green.

Twenty seconds in San Diego changed all that.

read more: http://www.meangreensports.com/davebarnett/