Tom Hart boarded a flight to Memphis this past Thanksgiving.

“Hello laddie!”  

It was Brent Musburger.

The legendary broadcaster’s welcome filled the cabin as he introduced Hart to folks around him, energetic and complimentary as ever. Something’s wrong here, Hart thought. “Brent Musburger should not be introducing me to anyone. I should be pointing out to everybody else that there’s a legend sitting here.”

Two months later, in January, Musburger announced his retirement, and SEC Network would have to fill a void in its prime-time football coverage. Hart was the answer. Alongside analysts Jordan Rodgers and Cole Cubelic, Hart took Musburger’s role in September as the lead play-by-play voice for SEC Saturday Night.

“I’ve never been the type of broadcaster that tries to pattern my delivery or presentation after someone else — you have to be you and you have to be real,” Hart says. “That being said, if I can replicate the energy and the passion that he brought when telling and sharing the stories of participants, then I will be doing that chair and microphone an honor.”

Hart is a 1998 Missouri graduate and Columbia native who has since built a catalog play-calling sporting events for ESPN, Big Ten Network, Fox Sports Radio and CBS College Sports, among others. He’s called more than 1,200 professional baseball games, was a longtime staple over the airways for Atlanta Braves listeners and has been with SEC Network since its launch. When he got the call to take over SEC Saturday Night, he was crossing ‘College World Series Broadcast Team’ off his bucket list.

Now a regular voice for SEC fans and seven weeks into his prime-time slot, Hart is calling his first Mizzou game of the year on Saturday, a 6:30 p.m. matchup against Georgia in Athens.

“Missouri will be the best passing team Georgia has faced this year, and Lock will be the best passing quarterback they’ve seen thus far,” Hart says. “Mizzou’s capacity for the long ball against Kentucky last week — and the offensive line’s ability to give Lock the time to get it off — is the Tigers’ best chance to put points on the board.” Georgia is a legitimate national championship contender, as Hart sees it, and it’ll be a harsh test for Missouri.

No matter the stadium or the team, though, whether he’s calling his alma mater or not, as a broadcaster, the narration — every interaction, formation, adjustment, play call and emotion — is only part of the job. What’s unmistakable for Hart and his on-air partner, former Vanderbilt quarterback (and Bachelorette winner) Jordan Rodgers, is the chemistry. Call it a natural ability to communicate; Hart calls it preparation. Leading up to the season, one of the biggest changes he made to prepare was watching film — not necessarily of SEC teams or games, but of Rodgers, with whom he had never worked.

“Chemistry is so important in the booth, and we have incredible chemistry off the field. We already know that we get along great and share a very similar sense of humor — I certainly don’t have his hair — but you hope that the chemistry in the booth and on air happens immediately,” Hart says.

Now almost two months into the job, the camera-facing chemistry is certainly there. Prime time means a new team for Hart, but if you’ve followed his college football coverage in the past, you won’t notice a change in his mechanics when calling the game or following action on the field. Where you might see a slight difference is in the presentation of the night’s broadcast. “I think what prime time gives you versus other slots is that you have the opportunity to tell the story of an entire day of college football because it’s a shifting landscape,” Hart says. “What you thought was going to be important at 11 a.m. is now drastically different.”

The result has to be added value for the viewer. Hart (and Rodgers and Cubelic) have the ability throughout the night to add a calculated and researched perspective to their narrative. All three were former college football players, although Hart points out his freshman year playing football at Quincy University in Illinois was slightly different than Cubelic’s years at Auburn and Rodgers’ as a Commodore. But the three spend “an inordinate amount of time” studying and watching film as a group, Hart says, and rightfully so.

“SEC fans are incredibly knowledgeable,” he says. “They’re the most knowledgeable fans out there, I would say, of any sport. They can tell you about the fourth string left tackle, and they can tell you about the fifth string linebacker. But what we can bring to the table is the access.”

The narrative of that access —  what an offensive coordinator sees during the game, what a head coach is thinking prior to kickoff, what a quarterback is like off the field —  is powerful. It forms the stories that Hart has found fans want to hear. Audience participation in storytelling is key, and the feeling of integration in the game and its characters is at the heart of it.

“Fans in general want to know perspective,” he says. “And they often look to us for it. ‘Yes we think our quarterback is great, but tell me how he compares to the guy at Georgia or Auburn,’ or ‘What are we doing defensively that’s different than what Alabama does or different than what Florida does?”

Like Musburger who came before him, Hart’s effort behind the microphone starts with a passion for growing along with his career. “There was always a mixture of confidence and question marks,” he says of his journey through broadcasting. “I thought early on that I had the ability to do this, but I didn’t know that I was going to be provided the opportunities to follow through with it. It was very important for me every step of the my career to first critique myself, see where my growth can come and take a second to be real — to handicap, if I could, what step was next and where this could lead me.”

It led to his first gig calling minor league baseball games in South Carolina. And to a roster assignment with a young catcher named Yadier Molina. To the College World Series in Omaha. And to the Memphis Tigers’ locker room celebration after Coach Calipari led them to that Final Four win in ‘08. “I think my favorite part is seeing the growth of some of the people that I’ve covered. To watch the growth of determined individuals and to know where they’ve been makes me very appreciative of the work that they’ve put in.”

After he retired, Musburger said he’d miss the people most, the ones he met along the trail. He and Hart seem to have that in common — an appreciation of the job, but most importantly the relationships formed through a career in storytelling.