Christopher Carrino Jr. grew up in a golden era of basketball, watching legends like LeBron James and Steph Curry clash in four consecutive NBA Finals.
While most kids followed the action on the court, Carrino Jr. also locked into the voices describing the action—especially Fordham grads Mike Breen ’83 and his own father, newly minted Hall of Fame broadcaster Chris Carrino ’92. The turning point came when he was about 10, listening to his dad call a thrilling Nets playoff victory in Toronto.
“I started living in the storylines, living in the story of the game as opposed to the dunks and the highlights,” he said. “I think that’s when my brain really shifted into broadcasting being a real possibility.”
Finding Their Career Paths at WFUV
Fordham and its esteemed WFUV Sports program helped both Carrino and Breen launch their Hall of Fame careers. And Fordham’s public media station has been a hands-on training ground for the younger Carrino, who graduated in May and plans to work as a broadcaster.
But father and son had a different sense of the profession when they were kids.
“My dad gave me a tape recorder when I was 10 years old, and he said, ‘Have fun,’” the elder Carrino recalled. “I used to turn the sound down on games and call the games, but I didn’t really know you could do that for a living. Even when I got to Fordham [in 1988], I went to the radio station the first week thinking I might go into news.”
Instead, Carrino signed up for a sports workshop that just happened to be led by legendary New York broadcaster Marty Glickman.
“That’s where it really clicked for me—‘Wait a minute, this is really something that you can do for a living? And if I sit here and listen to this man every week and work on my craft here, I can maybe do this one day as a career.’”
For Carrino Jr., however, sports broadcasting has always been the dream.
“Even when I was six and said, ‘I want to play shooting guard for the Nets’ or whatever, I think I would have been like, ‘And also maybe a broadcaster!’” he said with a laugh.
He began honing his skills at Christian Brothers Academy, a Catholic high school in New Jersey with a broadcasting program. He decided to enroll at Fordham and pursue a broadcasting career like his father, “not because I think that it’ll be handed to me,” he said, “but because he created such a strong sense of it’s possible.”
The WFUV Sports Experience: Then and Now
The Carrinos joke that the seats in Keating Hall may not have changed in the 30-plus years that separate their times in WFUV workshops, but the professional opportunities for students certainly have evolved.
In the early 1990s, Carrino Sr. called a variety of Fordham sports games for the radio station and hosted One on One, New York’s longest running call-in show, established by Fordham students in 1974. Carrino Jr. did both of those things in the past four years, but he also covered New York’s pro teams as a fully credentialed reporter.
Among his favorite moments? Stepping into the Yankee Stadium press box for the first time, covering the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden, and reporting from Radio Row at Super Bowl LX in California.
“It’d be hard for me to even conceive of a college experience that had more opportunities,” Carrino Jr. said.
Which isn’t to say that Carrino Sr. doesn’t have his own iconic memories. As a student, he won an MSG-sponsored competition to find the best college broadcaster in the city, and got to call a quarter of a game at the Garden with Breen, who was at the start of his 35-year career as the voice of the Knicks in the early 1990s. “He’s like a big brother to me,” Carrino said.
The elder Carrino was also on the mic when the Fordham men’s basketball team won the 1992 Patriot League title, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“We drove back to Fordham, and there was a crowd of people to meet the bus. The players rang the Victory Bell and then we all went down to Clarke’s. Our game highlights came on SportsCenter and it was like, ‘Here we go, Patriot League championship for March Madness!’ And the bar just erupted,” he recalled. “There’s people just throwing drinks. It was wild.”
A Father-Son Broadcast for the Brooklyn Nets
With sports as their “common language,” the Carrinos have always been close.
“My wife will joke, because he’ll call and I’ll be on the phone with him for an hour and she’ll be like, ‘Did he say if he had a test or what he’s doing on Saturday?’ And I go, ‘Ah, we were talking about the Yankees,’” Carrino said laughing.
They also share tastes in music and even TV. “Whether he’ll admit it or not, he’s caught up on Euphoria right now,” Carrino Jr. said with a smile.
“Our algorithms are very similar,” the elder Carrino admitted.
Audiences got an inside look into the duo’s dynamic when the Carrinos called a few Nets games together this past season. Carrino said his wife, Laura, told them they sounded like they were having one of a thousand conversations she’s heard them have in the living room watching a basketball game.
That’s exactly how they wanted to come across.
“We’re not trying to hide the fact that we’re father and son. We spent our whole life with this team, and we’re passionate about it, and I think that’s enjoyable to the listeners.”
For Carrino Jr., working alongside his dad helped him understand why the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame will honor him this summer.
“He’s incredible, and he’s unique in his own multitude of ways—his attention to detail, his humor,” he said.
But it’s his work ethic in particular that continues to stand out. The elder Carrino was diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy in the 1990s that has taken away some of his physical abilities. The family started a foundation in 2011 that aims to raise awareness and support research efforts.
“That was sort of a change in my life, when I decided to be open and tell my story about what I was going through and to start a foundation to try and help people,” he said. “That’s also just part of wanting to set a good example for him.”
Carrino Jr. doesn’t take that for granted.
“I just am really proud of my dad and think he deserves the world. To see him getting some of that now, I speak for me and my mom—we’re his biggest fans. To see our guy going to the Hall of Fame is pretty cool.”
