Hall of Fame to Honor DIRT-TV Host Doug Logan
By Buffy Swanson
The “face” of DIRT-TV programming for decades, sportscaster Doug Logan will be honored with the 2024 Andrew S. Fusco Award for Media Excellence, in memory of Hall of Fame board member and legal counsel Andy Fusco, during annual induction ceremonies on Wednesday, July 10. The free event will take place at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame on the Weedsport Speedway campus and is open to the public.
As an Indiana native, Logan had a home-state affinity for auto racing—his older brother, Dave, drove stock cars on the local dirt tracks; as a child, his dad took him to Indy and he hasn’t missed a 500 since. But it was ball sports that brought him to upstate New York in 1980.
In the next 19 years, Doug rose to national fame as “The Voice of the Orange,” broadcasting Syracuse University football and basketball to collegiate fans across the country.
“We had a New York State radio network and at least one Clear Channel radio station out of Rochester, so we reached at least half of the country. And then, I would be on any number of other shows, talking about specific games,” Logan explained.
“During my tenure broadcasting S.U. football and basketball, they combined to win 70 percent of their games—which is an extraordinary record! With Syracuse basketball, I was part of the formation and the maturation of the ‘Big East,’ where a Syracuse-Georgetown basketball game was one of the biggest games of the year and 33,000 fans would jam their way into the Carrier Dome,” he said. “While I was broadcasting Syracuse University football, they were experiencing a climb back to national prominence under Coach Mac.”
When DIRT Motorsports promoter Glenn Donnelly brought Syracuse football coach Dick MacPherson and his assistant staff to Weedsport Speedway and put them in Street Stocks in the early ’80s, Logan was on site to cover the cross-over promotion.
“I met Glenn then and mentioned how much I appreciated racing,” Doug recalled.
That got the wheels in Donnelly’s savvy marketing mind whirling. DIRT’s fledgling television venture was in the works—it would be a huge boost to bring Logan onboard and take his loyal S.U. audience to the local tracks.
“If you were a fan of Syracuse football or basketball—you knew Doug Logan. That was a big deal,” said DIRT-TV producer Tery Rumsey, who also worked with Logan at Channel 9, the ABC affiliate in Syracuse. “He brought his stature as a sportscaster to the show—everybody knew him! He introduced people to racing in the area just because of who he was.”
“This Week on DIRT” premiered in a slot on Time Warner cable—but Donnelly quickly leveraged Logan’s popularity to expand into network television.
“Glenn made a deal with Channel 9 to buy advertisements for his local tracks—and by that, he was able to secure air time,” Rumsey informed. “So it was through Doug’s influence at the station, I’m sure, and Glenn’s money that the show came to be aired on Channel 9, which afforded the program a much bigger audience.”
An enthusiastic newbie, Logan still had to learn the lingo when he was installed as host of DIRT’s weekly racing recap program.
“In the beginning, I knew how to say, ‘Hello everybody, and welcome to ‘This Week on DIRT’… And I knew how to say, ‘From all of us at DIRT Motorsports—thank you for joining us and so long for now.’ The rest of the show was unscripted!” he revealed.
Logan took his lead from DIRT VP and on-air sidekick Andy Fusco.
“I knew everything about Syracuse University football and basketball. Andy Fusco knew everything about DIRT Motorsports. I had to be broken in!” he said. “As we went along, certainly I gleaned a lot and could transition to Andy’s next slant. The early years of ‘This Week on DIRT’ it took Andy and me at least three hours to put our standups together to produce a half-hour show. At the end, when I was hosting the show myself from the Hall of Fame Museum, it took approximately 15 minutes to record all the bridges to the features.”
With producer Tery Rumsey, camera wizard and director Patrick Donnelly, and Logan and Fusco at the forefront, “This Week on DIRT” and other DIRT-TV projects broke the barriers to mainstream sports programming, ultimately bringing local grassroots racing to 90 million households from coast to coast.
“Opens, promotions for upcoming events—there was nobody better than Patrick. Tery was like a mad professor—total knowledge of the industry and always had an uncanny ability to identify a storyline before it became a story,” Logan praised.
“And of course the success of ‘This Week on DIRT,’ ‘Rush Hour on DIRT’ and the Empire DIRT Series television shows never would have happened without the extraordinary vision and Midas touch of Glenn Donnelly.”
On his part, Donnelly has equal respect for Logan’s contributions, and considers him a best friend.
“When I met Doug, it was instant,” said Donnelly, who wasn’t at all fazed that Logan came from a ball-sports background. “Don’t forget: I went to college on a football scholarship. And after I got out, I officiated for seven years. That’s why I didn’t have any problem in 1970 when I bought Weedsport and started DIRT—it was all sports! You have to understand athletes—and I don’t care if you’re a football player or a race car driver, you’re an athlete. That was the key.
“I could see that Doug understood that—and he instantly picked up on all of it,” Glenn admired. “He really knew what to do and how to play it.”
Although a rookie to dirt Modified racing when he started, Logan became an ardent supporter of the sport and remained with DIRT-TV for two decades. In 2007, he was inducted into the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame.
|
