Dr. John McGuire
School of Media and Strategic Communication
Dr. John McGuire’s path to working as a sportscaster and becoming a professor at Oklahoma State began in Iowa in the early 1970s. Watching a radio announcer calling his brother’s basketball game, McGuire decided doing sports play-by-play would be a fun way to make a living. By the early 1980s, McGuire was already calling games for the public radio station at Northwest Missouri State University, where he worked as a student. After a 16-year career of covering news and sports and calling more than 300 sporting events, McGuire turned his attention to a career in the classroom and the study of sports media.
Dr. McGuire joined OSU’s School of Media and Strategic Communications in 2002, completing his PhD in communication at the University of Missouri. Dr. McGuire was one of the faculty members who established SMSC’s sports media degree, the largest stand-alone program of its kind in the world. Dr. McGuire was also a driving force behind the creation of OSU’s Sports Media Camp for high schoolers each June on the Stillwater campus. Nearly 30 camp graduates have gone on to enroll and later graduate from OSU.
Dr. McGuire’s research agenda has focused on the sports media business and professional practices employed in sports journalism. Dr. McGuire’s publishing record includes serving as co-editor on two academic books about ESPN: The ESPN Effect (2015) and ESPN and the Changing Sports Media Landscape (2019). Both texts have examined ESPN’s global impact on the sports media industry as well as the network’s impact on American culture in its 40-plus years of existence. Dr. McGuire’s research plans in coming years include a national study on training future sports journalists as well as a textbook about the sportscasting industry. Dr. McGuire is also excited about future research opportunities regarding new technology being used in the delivery of sports content and the global esports industry.