How to Listen to the Kentucky Radio Announcers During Basketball Games

If you're like me, watching UK basketball games is often a nerve-wracking experience -- and the last thing you want is to be distracted by television announcers who get excited when the other team starts to do well, or who spend the game rambling on about irrelevant matters (I'm looking at you, Dickie V).

For years, Kentucky fans have dealt with this issue by turning down the TV sound and listening to the UK radio broadcast. This move was particularly popular during the career of Cawood Ledford, the best radio announcer I have ever heard. Tom Leach and Mike Pratt, who do the games for UK now, are also an outstanding team -- and the TV announcers are more annoying than ever. But how do you get the TV picture to sync up with the radio broadcast? And what if you live far from Kentucky and can't get the broadcasts on your radio?

The solutions to these problems may vary depending on what kind of technology you have and where you live. But here is a simple solution for anyone who has two pieces of technology that are pretty popular these days: a smart phone and a TV that's connected to a digital video recorder:

1. Download the iHeart Radio app for your smart phone.

2. On the iHeart Radio app, you can get WLAP-AM out of Lexington. This is the flagship station for the Wildcats, and it carries every game -- as well as all pre-game and post-game shows. Because the signal takes a while to process through the smart phone app, it will run about 30-40 seconds behind the TV picture.

3. The radio broadcast will play through your phone. (You may want to put the phone in its docking station so that the battery won't run down. If you have a docking station that allows you to play music, the broadcast will come through loud and clear.)

4. Use your digital video recorder to pause the picture on your TV until it is precisely synced to the radio broadcast.

5. Enjoy the game!

6. If the Cats win, you'll probably want to listen for Coach Cal's comments in the post-game show. He is always entertaining after a victory.

Note: If you do not have a smart phone, you can also to go WLAP's web page and listen to the broadcast over your computer. There is less of a delay in listening over the web, so it might be a little trickier to sync the broadcast precisely with the TV. But if you're like me, that would still be better than listening to Dickie V go on and on about Duke and UNC when you're trying to watch the Cats.