STARKVILLE — “Cowboys, Western movies, karaoke singers — no holds barred in an 11-run game.”
Those were the words of Mississippi State baseball play-by-play radio announcer Neil Price following a brief side conversation in the top of the fourth inning Tuesday night, as the Bulldogs had raced out to a huge lead over Southern. But while Price and his broadcast partner, former longtime MSU head coach Ron Polk, like to have fun on the air, they know when to keep things serious and professional as well.
Price is a familiar voice to Bulldogs fans, as he has called football and men’s basketball games on the radio since 2017. But those fans were used to an even more familiar voice on their radio feeds every baseball season. Jim Ellis retired in December after 46 years calling MSU baseball games, and Price was announced as his replacement in late January.
“If I could be half the person (Ellis) is by the time that my life is over with, I will have been a success. He is one of the genuinely good people that I have ever met in my life,” Price said. “I’ve known him going back to 2005 when I got into the SEC doing Kentucky baseball games. He was one of the first people at another school who introduced himself.”
Price has an extensive broadcasting background of his own, having grown up in Morristown, Tennessee, listening to John Ward and Bill Anderson call Volunteers football games. He earned an associate’s degree from Walters State Community College in his hometown, then a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Middle Tennessee State University, where he remained for two years after graduation to call women’s basketball and baseball games.
In 2005, he began calling the same sports at Kentucky and remained there for 12 years, arriving in Lexington when John Cohen was the Wildcats’ head baseball coach. Cohen left to become MSU’s head coach in 2008, then was elevated to athletic director in 2016, putting him in position to hire Price a year later when Ellis stepped away from football and basketball to focus just on baseball.
“I shook hands with John Cohen, knowing I was going to be working with him as the baseball coach at Kentucky, never having any idea that if you fast-forward to 2017, John is going to be the athletic director at Mississippi State,” Price said. “There was a connection, certainly, that laid the groundwork. It got me in the door, at least, to have a chance to get the job.”
During his time at Kentucky, Price gained another prominent mentor in the baseball broadcast world, connecting with Cincinnati Reds radio announcer Marty Brennaman. Price said Brennaman told him to visit the batting cages before games to talk with coaches and players, rather than just remaining in the press box to mull over notes and stats.
On Tuesday’s broadcast, he made an important point about the Bulldogs bringing in lefty reliever Dane Burns in the middle of an inning, saying it was a spot where MSU also would have turned to Burns if the game was closer to face a tough left-handed batter. He and Polk also each named a “random high school sports fact about Iowa” after talking about Bulldogs outfielders Aaron Downs and Reed Stallman both being from there.
“The thing I like about Neil is he does what I feel like is what should be done by guys who do radio. He actually tells you what’s going on in the game,” Ellis said. “It’s not important to him to have a special call or anything. He makes the game exciting when it’s exciting, and he makes the game realistic. He’s realistic in the way he calls the game. He doesn’t try to hype himself.”
In addition to his football and basketball play-by-play duties, Price worked for MSU’s public access television station from 2019-22, then became general manager of the student-run radio station in 2023. But when the opportunity came about to replace Ellis and call all three major men’s sports, he stepped away from those other roles to focus strictly on broadcasting.
Polk is in the booth with Price for most games, but when he is not available, Price’s partner is former Bulldogs pitcher Jay Powell, who played 11 seasons in Major League Baseball and won a World Series with the Marlins in 1997.
“I tend to defer to Coach Polk and I defer to Jay a lot more, because they’ve lived it. They’ve been around it,” Price said. “I wasn’t around (the baseball program) a ton until this year. I’d come watch the games, but I was a fan. (Ellis) had a knowledge base of information that I just don’t have.”
Ellis said he was intentionally not involved in the process to select his successor, but he figured it would be Price all along. For Price, this was his first basketball-baseball crossover season since his Kentucky days, and he had to miss several baseball games early in the year when there was overlap with basketball, but he feels like the transition has gone smoothly overall.
“I did all three sports for a long time, and I know how dizzy that makes you,” Ellis said. “When you’re doing all three sports like he’s doing, you have your plate full. You’re basically wall to wall doing sports year-round. It is a challenging job. But the ones who do it, they embrace it and they love it, and I think that’s him. That’s what he wants to be doing.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
