Behind the Mic With Purdue Announcers Rob Blackman, Bobby Riddell

Every play-by-play announcer dreams of a signature call. Think Al Michaels and the 1980 Olympic hockey semifinal between the U.S. and Soviet Union. “Do You Believe in Miracles? Yes!”

To this point in Rob Blackman’s career with the Purdue Global Radio Network, his came on Easter Sunday in 2024 in Detroit during the final seconds of the Boilermakers’ Elite Eight victory against Tennessee.

“And wouldn’t you know it. On Resurrection Sunday, the Purdue Boilermakers have turned the doubters into believers. Believe this! For the first time since 1980, Purdue is headed back to the Final Four.”

In the aftermath of that moment, listeners asked Blackman if he prepared those remarks in advance.

“I’ve been asked that a lot and it’s a 50-50,” Blackman said. “I did not prepare that word for word. I did, however, jot down a few notes in my hotel room the night before just in case Purdue did win I wanted to tie it into the fact that it was Easter Sunday. In my mind I had rehearsed a few different scenarios that I could somehow tie it into Easter Sunday and luckily for me it came out damn near perfect.”

In a radio career that dates to his days as a football player at the University of Evansville, the Purdue-Tennessee game remains Blackman’s favorite broadcasting moment.

“I know that’s the easy answer, but it’s the answer,” Blackman said. “I know we talk about breaking glass ceilings but to finally get back to the Final Four. The other part of it is the team had just fallen flat on its face the year before in the NCAA Tournament. You had all these expectations and all these doubters out there ready to say ‘ha ha, we told you so. You can’t win in the tournament.’ So many people were ready to say that.

“Hopefully, that will move into second place one of these days.”

This interview with Blackman and radio partner Bobby Riddell took place before Purdue basketball skidded into the postseason with an unheard of five losses in Mackey Arena.

Blackman was thrust into the Purdue basketball play-by-play role when longtime voice Larry Clisby’s ultimately fatal cancer battle took a turn for the worse in 2020. It’s never easy replacing a legend, but fortunately for Blackman he had learned a lot from Clisby as his color analyst.

“To me, he was an icon in broadcasting,” Blackman said. “I grew up in Monticello. I was born in 1970, back then as you know it was antenna television. You had very few options, but Channel 18 was an option. I can remember ‘Cliz’ doing the sports anchoring on Channel 18. Then you add on top of that he’s the voice of the Boilermakers, so anything related to Purdue or Lafayette sports had some kind of connection to Larry Clisby.

“He’s a childhood hero of mine and the next thing you know I’m working alongside the guy thinking to myself ‘how did this happen?’

“His passion was so contagious. Some would argue over the top at times and that’s a fair criticism. But look, there was never any doubt about where the Cliz stood on his thoughts about Purdue basketball. I think that’s what endeared him so much to the fans. Purdue was his team and those were his guys. By God, he was going to make sure everyone listening knew that.”

Clisby’s greatest lesson to Blackman had nothing to do with play-by-play techniques.

“One of the things, and he passed this along very early in our working relationship, was that you can’t fool the fans,” Blackman said. “This is a lesson Cliz said coach Keady shared with him. Look, if we’re playing poorly or badly, we being Purdue, then you need to let the fans know. Just as when we’re playing well, playing at a high level, you need to let the fans know.”

It was a long path for Blackman from North White High School in Monon, Ind., to a prized seat in Mackey Arena. It was during his days at the University of Evansville that Blackman’s passion for radio blossomed.

“At the time I wanted to be a disc jockey,” he said. “Evansville had a campus radio station at the time, they no longer do, so it was a great opportunity. Once I was there they allowed the students to also broadcast some of the college’s different sporting events. The announcing bug bit me. So I started to pigeon myself into that genre of broadcasting.”

After graduation, Blackman started out in Mount Carmel, Ill., calling high school and junior college games. A chance to call Division I football and basketball at Tennessee State and Lipscomb took Blackman to Nashville, Tenn. Moving back to Indiana with his wife in 2001, Blackman called Arena League football games and high school sports.

As sometimes is the case in life, who you know is as important as what you know. That’s how Blackman ended up at Purdue.

“When I called Purdue I caught a major break,” Blackman said. “The guy who picked up the phone had been a college classmate of mine. He was running the network at the time.”

While his former college acquaintance didn’t have a full-time position, Blackman was offered a role as a fill-in announcer.

“Luckily a full-time position opened up and somehow, some way a guy who grew up watching Larry Clisby on TV, figuring he was the coolest guy ever, was now working alongside him,” Blackman said.

In addition to Purdue basketball, Blackman has been a pit reporter for the past seven years on the Indianapolis 500 Radio Network.

When Blackman took over the play-by-play job, that opened a spot for Riddell, a former walk-on guard who had starred locally for Harrison High School.

Riddell’s timing could not have been worse for someone learning the craft of broadcasting. Just weeks into his new role, the COVID-19 pandemic changed how Purdue games away from Mackey Arena would be broadcast.

But with Blackman’s guidance, Riddell soon found himself comfortable in a role he never expected to fill.

“It couldn’t have worked out any better for me starting out in this industry to have a guy like Rob who literally had my job alongside Larry Clisby all those years,” Riddell said. “He knows what it entails, and I was comfortable around him. There was definitely a lot of nerves from my end at the beginning. I love Purdue and stupidly was building it up as the biggest thing in the world and it’s just calling a basketball game.”

Riddell had been working full-time at a tax and accounting firm in West Lafayette, Heman Lawson Hawks. It was the same firm Purdue coach Matt Painter and some members of his staff were using for their annual tax preparations. Riddell’s boss at the time allowed him to take the lead role on those accounts.

“That probably helped keep me fresh on their minds compared to any other former player,” Riddell said when the color analyst role opened. “Thankfully, I was someone coach Painter thought of as a good option. It also worked out well that Rob Blackman and Wes Scott, who is our radio engineer, were both also on the radio team when I was a player so I had a relationship with those guys.”

Riddell is now employed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which allows him to support a wife and four children.

“It’s a dream side gig for someone like myself,” Riddell said of being a part of the Purdue Global Radio Network. “When you get done playing and you’re not coaching, you miss that camaraderie when you are no longer part of a team.  This has been the perfect amount to scratch that itch and it still allows me to have that good work/life balance. I can be a good husband and father, focus on my day job – the one that pays the bills – with the Purdue Research Foundation. I’m a father of four now, I have three older boys and a daughter who is one-and-a-half. The job doesn’t pull me too much away except for these little hiatuses to Piscataway, N.J.”

Like Blackman, Riddell says his best basketball moment as an announcer came in Detroit.

“That was incredible,” he said. “As someone who bleeds gold and black, it was such a surreal moment to witness Purdue go to the Final Four and be on the broadcast for it.

“Rob Blackman just totally knocked it out of the park with his closing of Purdue going to the Final Four. I was so nervous and wanted Purdue to win I could never get myself to say ‘if Purdue wins is there something cool I should say on the broadcast?’ Rob had that awesome close and he came to me. I was like, oh I should talk now and say something great. Off the top of my head I rattled off something excited. It was a dream-come-true moment.”

Kenny Thompson is the former sports editor for the Lafayette Journal & Courier and an award-winning journalist. He has covered Purdue athletics for many years.