It’s impossible to believe senior Kenny Cember loves anything more than the Kansas City Chiefs and broadcasting his sports-related opinions on the radio.
Football and sports in general are subjects Cember is clearly passionate about, only slightly combated by his brotherly love for Sigma Alpha Mu.
Cember became a brother of Sigma Alpha Mu in his sophomore year. He is a communication major, writes for The Lamron, works as a sports anchor for Geneseo Student Television and has hosted a sports-themed talk show on WGSU for two years.
“Most of my life is the frat and the radio station,” Cember said. He added that while his work in campus media is his professional outlet, participating in Sigma Alpha Mu captures his personal side in the connections he’s made with friends.
When Cember is not hanging out with his fellow Sammies, he spends most of his time with the radio station, an opportunity he pursued immediately upon transferring to Geneseo from the University of Rochester in 2010.
He was the sports director of WGSU in the 2011-12 school year, and currently covers the play-by-play for men’s and women’s basketball teams. Cember is also the co-host and executive producer for the sports talk show “Saturday Sports Revolution” that covers all sports. He created and hosts another radio show that is specifically devoted to football called “Kickoff with Kenny Cember.”
“The thing that’s great about being on the radio is that you get to deliver your opinions and stuff you like to a mass audience,” Cember said. “That’s the whole point of mass communication … you don’t know who you’re going to reach ... You never know when you’ll get that random phone call or email [saying], ‘I really liked your show.’”
Cember said his long-term goal is to become a sports broadcaster for a major network, either “talking sports or play-by-play for basketball or football.” He is currently filling out sports marketing job applications to get his start post-graduation.
Encouraged by his father, Cember played football for four years in high school and said he misses it as a Geneseo student. He played football as a kicker at U of R before transferring to Geneseo.
“I had to find that replacement for football and that was the fraternity,” he said. “My first semester here was so boring … [When] I joined the frat everything just kind of opened up. And there was all this stuff to do, community service, hanging out on weekends, watching sports, playing sports … it’s a good time,” Cember added.
Cember said that he does not look forward to his May graduation.
“When I got to college people said that it was going to be the best four years of my life, and I knew it was going to be fun, but I never thought it would be as great as it was,” he said. “I’m not ready to go yet.”