What had started out for Rob King as a stopover in a city because of a job that was neither well-defined nor permanent has turned into a professional and personal dream come true.
The Steelers announced on Thursday that King was hired to be the play-by-play announcer for games broadcast across the Steelers Audio Network, and he will be doing it in a city he has come to love. He follows Bill Hillgrove, who announced his retirement on Feb. 29 after 30 seasons in that role, and King's first game behind the microphone will be on Friday, Aug. 9, when the Steelers open their preseason against the Houston Texans at Acrisure Stadium.
"We are very excited to announce Rob King will be the new play-by-play broadcaster for the Steelers beginning this season after the retirement of long-time broadcaster, Bill Hillgrove, earlier this year," said Steelers President Art Rooney II. "Rob has done a great job in his 25-year career in the Pittsburgh market and is very respected among his peers in the business. We are excited for Steelers Nation to hear his unique perspective and excitement of making our fans feel they are in the stadium witnessing the action on the field. He has big shoes to fill with the legendary broadcasters who have come before him, but we are thrilled to have Rob step into his new role to bring Steelers football to our fans across the world."
King's professional journey began with him graduating from Cooperstown High School, and at the time he walked across that stage in the same town that's home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum he had no inkling of the path his life would take. An English Literature major at Washington University in St. Louis, King's interest in football at the time involved more playing it than talking about it.
He was a wide receiver on his college football team for one year, and then he was moved to quarterback the next year. King graduated with a degree in English Literature, pondered business school, but ultimately settled on a track that landed him behind the microphone instead of performing in front of it.
"I worked in upstate New York, and I worked in St. Louis, kind of going back and forth," said King, "and my job in 2000 brought me to Pittsburgh during a stopover on my way to St. Louis. But I was here for three months and I immediately thought, 'If I ever have a chance to stay in Pittsburgh … And I was somebody who liked St. Louis, too, but I just loved Pittsburgh from the first minute I was here."
Back then King worked for Fox Sports Net, at the time a regional sports network with a complicated business plan that somehow included King "here to do St. Louis sports out of Pittsburgh. It's hard to explain. But I found I loved the people of Pittsburgh, I loved the passion for sports here, and that's what made me want to stay here."
In Pittsburgh, King worked on-the-air for both the Pirates of Major League Baseball and the Penguins of the National Hockey League, and then he got to experience an NFL version of "next man up."
It was 2019, and when Hillgrove was sidelined for a portion of the regular season by back surgery, a door had been opened.
"The Steelers asked me, and I said, 'yes.' It was that simple," said King. "I did 4 games (in 2019), and I ended up doing 2 more the following year. The Steelers got permission from my network, and when they asked me if I wanted to fill in for Bill Hillgrove, I said, 'Absolutely. Of course I want to do it.'
"It was a great experience. The chance to work with Tunch Ilkin, who was a longtime friend, and Craig Wolfley, and to call Steelers games – it's a pretty exciting experience."
King explained why he immediately was interested in being considered for the job on a permanent basis when Hillgrove retired.
"There are a number of reasons," said King. "First of all, it's exciting being a larger part of the Steelers experience. Over the last decade or so, I've been a part of Steelers programming on game days. This will be a continuation of that, and for me it's at the highest level of game day programming, which is calling the games themselves. In Pittsburgh, it's exciting to be part of the Steelers, and now to be able to do the games is a dream come true."
It's worth mentioning that King cut his football play-by-play teeth on weekly telecasts of WPIAL games where he shared the booth with Wolfley, who happens to be the color commentator for the Steelers' broadcasts. And for the uninitiated, high school football in Western Pennsylvania is a very big deal.
"I did weekly high school games and the WPIAL Championship Games on television for about a decade with Craig Wolfley as the primary color commentator," said King. "It was a lot of fun doing those games, because it means so much to the communities. Being able to go around and drop into a community to see and feel the excitement, to talk to the coaches and players and then call the game, and knowing those games are the most important thing happening on a Friday night in so many communities around Western Pennsylvania – it was a fabulous experience."
King learned the importance of preparation by doing those games, because each week's matchup had him having to learn two rosters from scratch and being able to recall instantly whose name belonged to which jersey number. There were no detailed press releases from the competing teams, no compilation of statistics, none of the perks/shortcuts generated by the behemoth that is NFL PR. Still, it became a labor of love.
"The amount of information that you have at the NFL level is just so dramatically different than what you have at the high school level," said King. "One of the things you have to do with high school football is completely learn every single player on two new rosters every week. And as soon as that game is over, you have to learn two completely new rosters for the next week's game. I'm a big believer in memorizing the rosters because if a punt is blocked by a special teams guy who might only get 8 snaps a game, I need to know who he is."
In his new job King may have the benefit of the weekly information packets generated by the NFL, but he won't have television cameras to help tell the story.
"The difference between radio and TV is that in radio you have to try to paint the picture in somebody's mind because they can't see what's going on," said King. "In TV, you don't have to paint the picture; it's there for everybody, so you can be more minimalist. For example, the great Pat Summerall would call a play this way: Aikman … Irvin … touchdown! He didn't have to say, 'Crossing the 40, the 35, the 30, weaving through traffic …' He didn't have to say that stuff.
"My belief is that you have to be as genuine as you can, because people will notice if you're not. I want the people who listen to me to understand that I'm prepared, hopefully I'll come across as knowing what I'm talking about, and that I'm being genuine. That's what I'd like to come to be known as my style."
King also is aware of the bonafides of the men who had this job before him. Jack Fleming was at the mic for the Immaculate Reception and 4 Super Bowl wins during the 1970s. Bill Hillgrove called Super Bowl XXX in his second season on the job and went on to call three more during the 2000s, including wins in 2005 and 2008. There were a lot of great, iconic moments in NFL history that Steelers fans have come to associate with the sound of those guys' voices.
"You have to understand you're not replacing anybody. You're following," said King, "and if you stop and think about it in that context, it's obviously humbling because you're talking about two phenomenal announcers. I don't feel any pressure, but it's not lost on me that this is a job that has been done extremely well by extremely talented people prior to the first time I'll be calling a Steelers game this August. That's not lost on me."
