Davenport at home on sideline, on air, in Nashville

Friday, October 27, 2017, Vol. 41, No. 43

We know her as one of Nashville’s broadcast treasures, but she is something altogether different for the 5-year-old boy and his 2-year-old sister watching college football games, their eyes more focused on sidelines reports than gridiron action, in the family living room in Peachtree City, Georgia.

“They get a little excited when they see Auntie Dawn on TV,” says the subject of that rampant joy. “They’re precious.”

Dawn Davenport, 37, who keeps a relatively even keel as a broadcast personality – letting her work and knowledge speak for itself – lets her prejudice show when talking about those children.

“I am a great Auntie,” she says, her comfortably familiar voice lighting just a bit.

It’s the only bragging she does in long, happily rambling conversations about her life and her recent, radical lifestyle change … and the fact she’s learning the joy of sleep now that she no longer answers a 2 a.m. wakeup call to hang around a Murfreesboro Road studio with TV nice guy Neil Orne.

Auntie Dawn – the kids are Dylan, 5, and Demi, 2, children of Dawn’s brother, Dane Davenport, and his wife Brandi – softly says: “I really don’t like to talk about myself.”

I kinda didn’t really give her much of an option when I caught her at her Brentwood home at 10 in the morning.

Up until a few weeks ago, this 10 a.m. call would be coming at the tail end of her workday. But, instead of rising at 2 a.m. – as she did for a half-decade for ‘Good Morning Nashville’ (and whatever it was called before corporate branding caught up to the 4-7 a.m. newscast from the WKRN-TV complex) – she can leave home now at 2 p.m. and still have plenty of time to find her headset and microphone before joining the jock jabbering and jousting at 3 p.m.

That’s the starting time of her new regular gig, on 104.5 “The Zone” sports talk show “3HL,” which runs 3-6 p.m. daily and to which she has brought an intelligent, kind, often quite-funny female voice to the previously testosterone-dripping, you show me yours, I’ll show you mine world of Nashville sports-talk radio.

Oh, I’m a long-time sports-talk radio listener, and pretty much like all the guys on the air here. But it is such a pleasure to hear a knowledgeable female’s voice.

That’s not all she does. On the Tuesday morning of our first real conversation – we already had been “conversing” on Facebook Messenger for a while – Dawn already has been on the phone with her “team,” getting things organized for her other job, her sidelines reporting work on the SEC Network.

That network job has David Neal and Matt Stinchcomb swapping play-by-play and repartee in the broadcast booth while Dawn stalks the sidelines for news, injury reports, the lamentable coaches’ clichés and to add informed perspective to an SEC football game each weekend.

Dawn’s informed, “boots on the turf” reporting is even more important if you are trying to make something like Mizzou’s 68-21 win over Idaho last weekend exciting. As always, she lets her work speak for itself.

In years past, Dawn has been an ESPN freelance sidelines reporter, a floater who could end up adding more than a tiny dash of beauty and brains to ballgames around the country. This year, she and the booth crew are a season-long team for ESPN’s SEC Network.

“My crew already called to talk about the football game this weekend,” she tells me in our morning conversation. “We usually find out about a week in advance where we’ll end up every weekend.”

As is the norm during that early-week crew call, “we talk about early story ideas” after receiving the game assignment.

More preparation is needed, of course, and she hops on the phone with sports information directors at the universities she’s covering that upcoming weekend. “I always talk to the SIDs every week to get a feel for what’s shaking for the upcoming game.”

She’s basically scouring for background info so she can deliver intelligent and informed reporting and analysis in a world where she is much more than another pretty face.

And this season she also has added ESPN’s SEC Network volleyball play-by-play to her parcel of duties. It is fortunate type-casting, since her sport while at Auburn University a decade and a half ago was volleyball, twice being named SEC Academic All-American.

“The research is about the same, whether you are on the sidelines or doing play-by-play,” she says, adding that in the latter duties, she also must show her abilities at “navigating the offense” for viewers.

“I know the sport (volleyball) well,” says the freshman walk-on and a three-year scholarship player for the Auburn Tigers.

“The media guide says I am 5-foot-7, but I’m closer to 5-6,” she acknowledges, admitting her height did affect her impact on a game in which taller women generally are the stars.

“I was a defensive specialist,” she recalls. “The girl I played in the back row for was 6-4.” During rotations Dawn stayed to the rear and helped set up towering colleagues battling near the top of the net.

“You can pass and dig a little bit better when you are so much closer to the ground,” she says with a buoyant laugh.

While she admits relative shortcomings, “I could hold my own. I wasn’t going to show up in the record books, but I was an extremely hard worker.”

Just as in volleyball, Dawn showed she not only had the will but the brains and background to enter the male-focused world of sports-talk radio. Her “I think I can” attitude already has dosed her “3HL” talk-show co-hosts, Brent Dougherty and Mickey Ryan, with estrogen.

She moved to that radio spot this autumn after 10 years in various capacities – but always as one of the nicest and brightest people on air and off – over at WKRN News 2.

Dawn brings brightness to a radio show on which she and her mates skewer or praise local and national athletes, jaw about sports events and talk with Jill or Joe Fan, the phone callers who provide the texture of a sports-talk show.

For those who have arrived in the It City in the last five years – particularly those who don’t watch football games – Dawn was simply part of the early morning news crew at News 2.

But she actually came to Nashville as a sports journalist with a record of success, the typical young broadcaster climbing to the top, with Nashville being one more rung on the ladder to the stars.

After leaving Auburn with a mass communications degree, Dawn began her ascent with a job as a sportscaster in Wilmington, North Carolina. “My first job out of college was great, but they paid in sunshine,” she says.

That’s a pretty common term in the journalism business – whether part of the print or television or even radio media. Corporate types at small markets near the sun-drenched beach figure hiring someone to work in a place 9-to-5ers go for vacations compensates for low pay.

After about a year and a-half, she got out of the sun, at least a bit, and moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she was a part of a TV sports team for about three years.

If she followed the steps of other excellent young and ambitious broadcasters, Nashville was going to be just the third stop on her journey toward the top of her profession, with the ultimate goal being New York City, Los Angeles, or, God willing, Bristol, Connecticut, the headquarters of ESPN.

“When I first moved here, I thought ‘I’m just going to be here a little bit. I’m going to keep climbing the broadcast ladder.’

“But I fell in love with the people here. It was a big town with a small-town feel,” a combination she quickly realized was a perfect fit for an extremely talented and quite lovely young woman from Peachtree City, Georgia. (Though she was born in Plano, Texas, her family moved to Georgia when she was young, and Peachtree City became the hometown she visits on the holidays and the like).

She began to realize size really doesn’t matter. For her, being a TV personality and journalist in the biggest market isn’t necessarily the goal. She figured she could carve out a career by doing it her way, by becoming the best at her job, while allowing Music City to own her heart.

Dawn proudly went about her job as the No. 3 person on the WKRN sports desk headed by Cory Curtis. She loved the work, but – eager to advance her career – she decided the change she needed to make wasn’t to another market but to another part of the newsroom.

That’s about the time Julie Kroenig was ready to go on her maternity leave, which preceded her focus-on-the-family departure.

“Cory has been there forever and I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. I began looking at the big picture, my professional course. Look at my job as a journalist,” Dawn explains.

With her looks and talent, she could have joined the procession of pretty men and women who followed wandering corporate stars to the big time.

Dawn saw an opportunity to further hone her career without leaving Nashville.

“I went to the news director at the time and said ‘Hey, I would love to fill in for Julie and possibly step into that role if she doesn’t come back” from maternity leave.

“From a growth standpoint, I wanted a new challenge. I wanted to try something different. I’ve always been a sports person and sports junkie. But I’m kind of a news junkie, too.”

The news director answered her query about moving to the early a.m. news show with uncommon enthusiasm. “He said ‘we’ll give it a shot,’” she deadpans.

She laughs at that recollection before adding, “It ended up working.”

“I’ve tried to make myself versatile and I’ve tried to get experience doing everything. I don’t say ‘No!’ to a lot. I feel the more skills I can work on and refine, I’m going to be better as a journalist.”

For the next five years, she was the sidekick of Nashville’s “morning news dude” Orne, who has worked that early shift since I was a kid. Also on that morning team was weatherman Justin Bruce (really Brousse), who early this year left the station for an early-morning meteorologist job in Vegas. He was moving to a job that took him, his wife and toddler son to live near her parents, hoping they’d find a happy long-term home there. By all accounts he has succeeded.

There have been other changes and additions at News 2, and Dawn loved her work and the oddball camaraderie that comes when you’re on the overnight shift.

She had just the one complaint: “The hard part was the 2 a.m. wakeup call.”

“In the beginning, I thought ‘Oh, I’ll get used to it, but it’s going to take time.’ Then I realized ‘I’m never going to get used to it.’

“It’s tough. When you are a sports fan, it’s tough to watch sporting events at night and get up at 2, but I loved it. Neil is an amazing person. Justin, during our time together, was fun. If you are going to wake up at 2 in the morning, you’d better love your work and who you work with.”

Dawn was happy – at least for a while – and she fed her sports soul by working weekends as a sidelines reporter for various college football games around the country and the Tennessee state championship football games.

“I love high school football,” she says, explaining that the passion of the fans and players is almost tangible. At least it’s contagious. She plans to make herself available for that duty this year as well.

Her news chops established, the versatility she sought proven, she knew it was time to get back into sports coverage full-time. And the “3HL” was ready to make a transition at about the same time her SEC Network role expanded.

It was, simply, her time for change.

“It was hard to leave Neil and that morning crew. When you work those hours, you get so close to the people. They are like family. You spend more time at work with that crew than at home.

“It was a tough decision, but I knew I wanted to get back into sports.”

In just a few weeks, she has made her mark. And it pleases her.

“I love it. Brent (Dougherty) and Mickey (Ryan) are amazing people. You always worry about chemistry and loving the people you work with when you step into a new show,” she adds, praising her co-hosts.

Any trepidation was short-lived. But there was one minor barrier … her roots as a journalist.

The so-called neutrality of the news media (fake and otherwise) has to be pushed aside for a few hours daily, because on sports-talk radio, opinions matter.

“That is very difficult. Stepping into a three-hour talk show where I’m allowed to show my opinions is a change,” she says.

Already she’s pretty much mastered that part of her persona as well, bringing a new flavor as well as a beloved female voice to a local sports-talk radio team.

“I think we have a great balance between the three of us, where we bring different perspectives, certain knowledge. “

Oh, it’s early, of course. And it’s a work in progress. “I think we’ll continue to grow as a show. I’ll continue to grow and become more comfortable with my opinions.”

And her opinions aren’t always shared by the listening audience or even her studio mates.

It is that give-and-take in the studio and over the telephone that is the very foundation of sports-talk radio.

Dawn knew some wouldn’t take to her on sports-talk radio, that there are cavemen with the “What’s this chick doing on sports-talk radio?” attitude. That same ignorant attitude recently grabbed national headlines, with NFL quarterback Cam Newton issuing a blanket apology for saying he was surprised to hear a female reporter ask about pass routes and the like.

“I will say personally I have never been made to feel different than a male reporter, ever,” Dawn says. “It’s important to make sure you are prepared, know your stuff, come in having prepared yourself for what you are talking about.”

As for visiting men’s locker rooms, well, it’s really no big deal.

“You are always on a deadline, time crunch. You get what you need, interview-wise and get out. You are there to do a job. Players understand that and it’s not an issue.

“I have never been in a situation where I have felt disrespected. But, I’m not offended easily,” she admits.

“I’m pretty laid-back. Not much bothers me. I’ve never been offended a ton. That’s why I’ve been able to sustain a career.”

She stops and draws a long breath. Pretty soon, she’ll leave her home, where her beloved Catahoula-lab mix Patton will anxiously wait for her to return. She got him when she was doing a Channel 2 “Positively Tennessee” story on a new puppy-rescue program at Metro Animal Control.

While collecting news, she opened her heart to this rescue dog and took him home as a playmate for Percy, her miniature Australian shepherd, since deceased.

It wasn’t difficult for Patton to grab a piece of Dawn’s heart… “He sucked me in. That was about two years ago…. It’s worth it when you love your fur babies.”

Sooner rather than later, she knows she’ll rescue another dog to keep Patton company.

“He’s a pack kind of dog. He definitely wants a buddy,” she says.

And, if everything works out, the dogs will have a stable home in the Nashville area for a long time.

“I’m hoping this is a long-term thing and I’ll be in Nashville forever,” Dawn adds.