Brad Sham

Brad Michael Sham was born on August 16, 1949. Early in life, his family moved frequently due to his father’s profession as an optometrist, leading him to live in diverse locations including Wichita, Kansas; Mobile, Alabama; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He attended New Trier Township High School in Chicago. Sham pursued higher education at the University of Missouri, where he graduated from the School of Journalism in 1970. During his college years, he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. After completing his service in the Army National Guard, Sham relocated to Dallas, where his father had taken a new job.

Sham’s career in broadcasting began in 1976 when he joined KRLD radio in Dallas. Initially, his role involved broadcasting college football games and serving as a color analyst for the Dallas Cowboys alongside play-by-play announcer Verne Lundquist. He also held the position of Sports Director at KRLD from 1976 to 1981. After Lundquist’s departure for CBS in 1984, Sham assumed the role of lead play-by-play announcer for the Dallas Cowboys, a position he has maintained for several decades, with a brief three-season absence in the mid-1990s. During this period (1995-1997), he called Texas Rangers baseball games with Eric Nadel. Sham has diversified his career beyond sports, making his acting debut in the 2008 film “W.” and appearing in “Searching for Sonny” (2011) and “Bomb City” (2017).

Throughout his extensive career, Sham has covered a wide array of sports and events. He has announced NFL games for various networks, including Westwood One, Fox, TNT Sunday Night Football, and CBS. His collegiate sports experience includes play-by-play for NCAA athletics, most notably the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, and college football, including over a decade as the radio voice for the Texas Longhorns’ football and basketball teams. Sham has broadcast 26 Cotton Bowl Classics and contributed to the Big 12 Network and ESPN. He has also covered Major League Soccer for the Dallas Burn (now FC Dallas) and North American Soccer League games for the Dallas Tornado, and was part of the broadcasting team for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. In 2003, he authored “Dallas Cowboys: Colorful Tales of America’s Greatest Teams” and continues to contribute weekly columns to dallascowboys.com. Sham has been honored with 11 NSSA Texas Sportscaster of the Year awards and is a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.