In his youth, Chris DiSano was as big a Rhody fan as they come.
The son of two University of Rhode Island graduates, DiSano was quickly drawn to URI basketball, in large part thanks to the local radio call of the Rams. Behind each moment in his childhood was the legendary voice of the late Jim Norman, who DiSano said brought excitement and emotion to the airwaves and helped shape the stories of past Rams teams.
Years later, DiSano now has the chance to be the voice for the next generation of Rhody fans, as he announced on Sept. 13 that he would take over as the color analyst on Learfield’s audio broadcasts of URI men’s basketball following the retirement of longtime broadcaster Don Kaull, who served in the role for nearly 40 years.
“It is really cool now to think about the fact that this is the team I lived and breathed and died with growing up,” DiSano said. “And now I get to tell that story and convey that to fans, just as I was years ago.”
DiSano knows filling the shoes of Kaull is no easy task, both as a broadcaster and in the community.
“Don’s irreplaceable,” he said. “He’s that type of legend and presence around the institution.”
After growing up in the Ocean State, DiSano wanted to experience life away from home and continued his education at James Madison University, where he worked towards his bachelor’s degree in sociology while working as a team manager under then-head coach Lefty Driesell. After his graduation in 1998, DiSano spent the next four years studying law at Syracuse University.
Having gained a vast array of basketball knowledge during his many stops, DiSano re-entered the sports world in 2007 with his new-basketball blog known as College Chalktalk. The site was strictly focused on the X’s and O’s — paying no attention to the gossip and chatter that often follows the sport.
“I thought that assistant coaches had so much knowledge about their programs, but they were rarely tapped to communicate that externally,” DiSano said.
Within the next few years, the site caught the attention of the Atlantic 10 conference. With the help of Dwayne Bailey, the A-10’s associate commissioner and chief financial officer at the time, College Chalktalk continued to take off – but most importantly, DiSano gained valuable connections within the conference that still stand today. Over the past several years, he served as the host to several A-10 men’s basketball media days.
DiSano’s success didn’t stop there. His work also gained notice from Daryl Jasper — the former general manager of Rhody Sports Properties and current vice president of Multimedia Rights at Learfield — and DiSano soon found himself back at the place it all began.
After moving back north in 2010, DiSano played a number of roles in covering Rhody basketball. One of his first gigs saw him creating pregame packages for Cox Sports — now YurView New England — marking his first role in television.
Corey O’Leary, a jack-of-all-trades and current producer at YurView, worked very closely with DiSano at the time. The two spent long hours creating content every week, flexing their creativity and building a friendship along the way.
Seeing first-hand just how knowledgeable and connected DiSano was in the sport, it was no surprise to O’Leary that he earned the role.
“I’ve worked with a million people that you don’t know if you’ll ever see them again,” O’Leary said. “Twelve years later, he was always destined for this radio job, I believe.”
At the same time, DiSano also contributed to Learfield’s radio broadcasts, providing postgame analysis following the call from Kaull and play-by-play announcer Steve McDonald.
During the 2021-22 season, DiSano’s role expanded further when Kaull had to step aside from broadcasting due to health concerns. Suddenly, he found himself side-by-side with McDonald as the color commentator for home games, even traveling to the A-10 tournament in Washington, D.C. at the end of the season.
According to McDonald, it was a “natural progression” to make the leap to color after all the years of serving the broadcasts in the postgame show, both in terms of talent and his relationship with Kaull.
“Chris is one of those guys who’s earned his stripes for sure,” McDonald said. “But [he’s] also somebody that’s excited about doing it, so I think it’s going to be a terrific, terrific approach.”
While the two had worked together before, DiSano says having a string of broadcasts together allowed him and McDonald to build a strong rapport.
“I love working with Steve,” he said. “He’s taught me a lot in a fairly limited time. Last year was truly the first year I ripped off a run of games side-by-side with Steve. So we’ve had those ad-hoc moments together, but we’ve never really had a continuity of calls. Steve was incredibly welcoming.”
DiSano will call 25 of the Rams’ 31 games this season and will be paired with both McDonald and Stone Freeman. With a new era beginning under head coach Archie Miller, DiSano looks forward to learning and growing alongside the team this year as he begins a new chapter in his career.
“I take this responsibility seriously, to try to tell this story and help engage with and educate anyone that’s listening, and to get educated myself in order to do that, ” DiSano said. “I’ve got to attack it, but at the same time, always be humble because that’s what it’s about for me.”