Bob McElligott is a play-by-play announcer, color analyst, and commentator for professional sports. For most of his adult life, he has been in the broadcast booth for hockey games in the winter and baseball games in the summer. His play-by-play experience also extends to football, basketball, and other sports.

 

Bob’s career includes 17 years as the radio voice of the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League and 10 years in the same role for the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League. In baseball, he has roughly 30 years of experience calling games in the minor leagues and is currently a member of the broadcast team for the Cleveland Guardians’ Triple-A affiliate, the Columbus Clippers.

 

Raised in Somerset, Pennsylvania, Bob grew up listening to Pittsburgh teams on the radio. He got his start in sports as the Iron Dog mascot for the Johnstown Chiefs of the East Coast Hockey League. After four years, he turned in the costume and began calling the action for the organization named after the team in the 1977 movie “Slap Shot.”

 

Bob has done just about everything there is to do in radio. When he started out, he had to arrive at the station a half-hour before his on-air shift just to power up the transmitter. In those days, you could tune in to hear Bob reading school lunch menus, telling you about a dining room set for sale during “Bargain Fair” (a radio version of today’s Facebook Marketplace), and sending birthday greetings to people across the region. Around that same time, he and his friends bought airtime on a local station to produce their own programming—Bob’s play-by-play of high school football games, basketball games, and wrestling matches, which they sold to sponsors.

 

Once in Syracuse, in addition to calling hockey and baseball, Bob hosted a weekly talk show on a sports station and anchored morning and afternoon sportscasts on a local news-talk station. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was back in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with family when the house shook. Flight 93 had crashed a short distance away. Bob was doing live reports for the Syracuse station when the FBI and the state police arrived at the scene.

 

As radio has changed, Bob has changed along with it. You can still hear him playing songs from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s on 93.3 The Bus in Columbus, but Bob has also transformed himself into a multimedia content creator and communications executive. During his time with the Blue Jackets, he didn’t just narrate what was happening on the ice. He adapted his core skills to new platforms. He hosted podcasts, recorded video and audio interviews with players and coaches on the road, produced content for the team’s digital platforms, and shared news and sound bites on social media.

 

Bob also emceed events, from celebrations for season ticket holders to the heartbreaking vigil honoring Johnny Gaudreau. He represented the team in television interviews, spoke to business groups, took sponsors to dinner, read to elementary school children, and marched in local parades.

 

When the Columbus Blue Jackets announced in July 2026 that the organization would not renew Bob’s contract as part of its plan to simulcast the team’s television feed on radio, he heard from thousands of people who told him how much his broadcasts had meant to them.

 

Bob had spent years talking with people—through his podcast, on social media, and at events. But the response reminded him how sports can connect people. It also made him think about what could come next: 

 

A Clear Breakaway.

A clear breakaway is that moment in a game when what’s ahead is wide open and you just go for it. That's what this moment is for Bob. It also represents for him a breakaway from the traditional broadcast model: He is no longer simply talking to an audience. He is creating a place where more people can be part of the conversation.

 

As he looks to the future, Bob is also committed to helping the next generation find its way into sports media. He has taught broadcasting and media classes at the postsecondary level and worked with high school students interested in the field, sharing lessons from decades of experience across broadcasting, digital media, content creation, and communications. Bob continues to stay close to the games themselves, including by calling Bishop Hartley football in Columbus.