After the Tennessee softball team hired a new director of operations this season, she was given clear instructions for road trips.
Any time she went to the grocery store when the Lady Vols arrived in a new city, she needed to purchase a six pack of Diet Coke for the entire coaching staff and a six pack just for Brian Rice.
The team’s radio announcer downs cans as quickly as Ashley Rogers compiles strikeouts.
Rice’s love for Diet Coke has become so well known that he is keeping a tracker this season of how many he drinks during each home game.
Not only does the popular soft drink quench his thirst, Rice says it enhances his performance behind the microphone.
“It helps make my voice more conditioned in my mind than water does,” Rice says. “I use cough drops during allergy season. But I have found the Diet Cokes to be my consistent friend and pick me up. I almost always have one in my hand or in my bag.”
Rice, a 39-year-old Knoxville native, has become the preeminent voice for Tennessee women’s sports. He’s called softball for 11 seasons for the WMNL Radio broadcasts, and is coming off his first season as the voice of Lady Vols basketball. Rice took over for Mickey Dearstone following Dearstone’s retirement after 23 seasons behind the mic.
Rice’s run with basketball ended in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament when the Lady Vols lost to Virginia Tech in Seattle.
“It honestly still felt like I was filling in for the whole season,” Rice says. “Not that anybody made me feel that way and I don’t want anybody to think that. Everybody was great. But having had that relationship with Mickey that I had, I always felt like he was coming back at some point.”
The closure arrived for Rice when he was still with the basketball team and Dearstone filled in for him on the radio when Tennessee softball hosted Alabama.
“I was listening to the first game while we were at practice that day in Seattle and that is when it really hit me that this is my deal now,” Rice says. “It was just really cool when that moment came up.”
Rice called one of his most memorable moments last weekend when the Lady Vols clinched only the second SEC regular-season title in program history. Zaida Puni atoned for an earlier error at third base by stepping to the plate with two outs in the fifth inning and hitting the go-ahead three-run home run on a full count to lead Tennessee to a 4-2 win over South Carolina.
Rice’s voice rose as the ball sailed out of Sherri Parker Lee Stadium and bounced off the scoreboard to send the home crowd into near delirium. He watched from above as head coach Karen Weekly got doused in an orange Gatorade bucket ice water shower by her players during the celebration on the field.
“I can’t even describe it. I am just so happy for them,” Weekly says in the aftermath. “They work so hard. They battle through ups and downs. I mean this game was a game of ups and downs, and in the middle it looked like we might not get back up off the mat. But man they did and just came out punching.”
Not just for the taste of it
Rice started drinking Diet Coke when he was in high school. He estimates he drinks about two 20-ounce bottles and some cans every day.
During softball games, he’ll drink one before the game, one during the game and one after. He would likely drink more but there is no time to take bathroom breaks between innings.
Although some doctors may advise against consuming so much artificial sweetener, Rice has some genetic history on his side.
“If they ever discover it causes serious health problems, I am in real trouble,” he says. “My grandmother is in her 90s and has been pounding them since they came out, even when they had NutraSweet.”
The caffeine fuels him for the long days during the sports seasons. Along with his softball and basketball duties, he’s been the public address announcer for women’s volleyball for the last 20 years and co-hosts the Erik Ainge Show every morning on WMNL Radio.
When he is traveling with softball or basketball, Rice does the morning show remotely from hotel rooms. He spends most of his nights doing prep work for each role.
“Softball is more difficult than basketball,” Rice says. “Because with basketball there is just so much information out there, whereas in softball you have more players to prepare for and there is less information on most of them and I have a lot more time to fill on air.”
In the SEC, most schools serve Coca-Cola products. But Rice knows how to smuggle in a few Diet Cokes at the Pepsi schools (Texas A&M, Florida, Vanderbilt).
Tennessee’s success this season means he won’t have to worry about that during the postseason. After competing in the SEC Tournament this week as the No. 1 seed, the Lady Vols (41-8, 19-5) will find out Sunday night who they host in the NCAA Tournament.
Sherri Parker Lee Stadium has a refrigerator full of Diet Coke outside Rice’s press box location. He’s hoping his home Diet Coke tracker runs all the way through the Super Regional.
Has Rice considered giving away a prize to any listener who guesses the correct amount?
“I don’t know what prize I could give away. But I could find something for whoever gets the closest,” he says. “I am going to post a picture at the end of the season regardless to see where it lands.”