By Ron Womble
PITTSBURG, Kan. -- The stage couldn’t be bigger for Pittsburg State graduate student Dominic Santiago.
When the FIFA World Cup Games begin on June 11, Santiago will be in a windowless room on the “Fox Lot” in Los Angeles surrounded by the various professionals required to broadcast the biggest global sporting event. There he will work as the graphics operator for Fox Sports Digital for World Cup coverage.
“(That) basically means that I will be in charge of creating and firing all the graphics for the pre-game, halftime and post-game shows and a lot of that will be going on social media,” Santiago said in an interview before leaving for LA. “I’m on YouTube, Twitter, both live and then recorded and posted afterwards. My job is to create the graphics that are shown at the bottom of any kind of broadcast that happens or for social media, if you film something, a lower third or a full-screen graphic as well.”
Santiago said he expects the work to be demanding.
“It’s going to be a very large crew,” Santiago said. “Even with what I’m doing, just with the number of matches, there will probably be times that I will be rotated out, because for some of the dates, it will be four, five and six games in one day. It goes from 9 a.m. start times to 6 p.m. start times. So, I’ll likely have to have somebody to switch out with just to take a break or even prepare for the next game.”
Although he’s still in college, Santiago won’t be exactly a newbie at Fox Sports. He served an internship with Fox Sports during the summer of 2023, where he worked with PSU alumnus Ryan Bartlett, a PSU Outstanding Alumnus Award recipient who is a senior producer for digital talent production and storytelling for Fox Sports.
“Working with (Bartlett) as an intern, working with some of the other Fox Sports staff, I was able to make connections there,” Santiago said. “When this position came up, I applied for it. Then I was interviewed for it and eventually accepted an offer.”
Santiago said he has been interested in sports broadcasting from a young age and he helped build out the first version of the broadcast program at his high school. When he was a high school junior, Santiago said, he and his mom toured Pitt State where a chance encounter with some faculty members sealed the deal.
“I was kinda looking around for colleges and I found the Rumble in the Jungle event for high school juniors at Pitt State and so I ended up coming here. In the course of that, I kind of got separated from my tour group. I was at the Weede (PE Building) at the time and I ended up talking to some of the faculty. They were like, ‘you know where you need to be? Up there in the control room.’”
In the control room, Santiago and his mother met Professor Troy Comeau, Ph.D., who leads Media Production at PSU. Comeau, known for his hands-on approach to teaching broadcasting, put the high school kid right to work.
“I even ran graphics for that game because they were missing somebody,” Santiago said. “I got involved pretty much immediately as a high school student. From there I went to one of the MIAA tournaments and helped with a broadcast there, as well, that same year.”
When Santiago entered PSU as a freshman, he didn’t miss a beat.
“I was able to get started as a freshman,” Santiago said. “I even attended the sports broadcasting class, even though I hadn’t taken some of the classes before that, I just kind of sat in and got to learn. And then I got to start joining the actual crews, running camera, running the re-play machine and things like that. So, I was able to get hands-on very quickly with the equipment and there’s so many opportunities at Pitt State to just start learning.”
After a summer helping with the Fox FIFA coverage, Santiago plans to return to Pittsburg and finish his master’s degree with graduation in December. He’s not exactly sure what will follow, but each new experience has him wondering what possibilities may lay in store.
“I think for a long time I had just been kind of building up opportunities just in Kansas as far as freelance work and some of the work I do here (at the Morning Sun),” Santiago said. “For a while it was just like I will just graduate with my degree and my master’s and then find a job, freelance forever and stay in this area. But now, I’m kind of thinking more towards what I could be doing at the national level, especially how this opportunity goes for me as well.”
Santiago knows that in the days ahead, huge numbers of people around the world will see his work.
“Fox is the broadcast provider for all of the World Cup, so whatever feed that they create with their cameras on the field is sent to people all across the world for the individual providers like Tele Mundo or international broadcasters,” Santiago said.
Before leaving for California, Santiago said he was experiencing a range of emotions.
“I’m very excited,” he said. “It’s going to be fun to be back there and working with a lot of the same people I worked with as an intern. Now as a professional, there is a lot of pressure that I feel, as well, but it’s something that I have to work through and do my best.”
And while he’s there, Santiago expects to show a little hometown pride.
“I have a split-face Pitt State mug,” he said.
