Culture State: Reflecting on Roy Williams, and a look behind the scenes

It came out of nowhere.

Just before 10:30 on April 1st the email came through that Roy Williams was retiring as the head men’s basketball coach at North Carolina.

When you’re live on the radio, everything you have planned for the rest of the show gets scrapped, and that’s exactly what happened. Since it was April Fool’s Day, we first wanted to verify that the announcement was in fact true.

Hayes Permar and Josh Goodson on SportsChannel8: The Radio Show handled the situation perfectly. We communicated off-air that it was indeed real, and when we came out of a commercial break, we went right to the news of Roy’s retirement. We scrambled to add a guest to discuss it later in the show, adjusted segments, and provided updates as fast as we could get them. Stellar job by those guys, and by the folks in the building at 99.9 The Fan for staying on top of things and dropping everything to help.

Chris had a bit of a different day, and a much longer one than mine. He was relaxing at home when a group chat we’re on started blowing up, and he realized quickly that everything he planned that day before going into the studio – which included a nap – wasn’t going to happen.

Multiple interviews, multiple TV hits throughout the day, website updates and more meant little to eat or relax for Chris, who along with everyone over at WRAL and WRALSportsFan, put in outstanding work to provide updates, and bring the press conference live.

Shoutout to all of those folks who you didn’t see on TV or didn’t hear on the radio for putting in the extra work to make everything run smoothly.

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