He smiled at the self-deprecating joke, knowing he had not blathered about sports into a microphone long enough to establish a legacy of any sort.

Less than an hour later, after a swig of water that would stay in his system for a while, Gaudin delivered his first unrecorded words to the Georgia Tech audience: “Live from Bobby Dodd Stadium. Welcome, everybody. I’m Brandon Gaudin.”

There was no telling how many listeners heard that and said, “Who?”

Football is a young man’s game, but the art of describing it on the radio has largely been the purview of those middle-aged and older. Georgia Tech athletics is affiliated with IMG College, which holds the multimedia rights to the football programs of 80 universities, making it the largest such network. On average, two jobs within that group become available each year, and 15 of the current IMG announcers have been calling games from the same campus for at least 30 years, longer than Gaudin, 29, has been alive.

More than 150 people applied to succeed Wes Durham, who began announcing Atlantic Coast Conference games on Fox Sports South this season after 18 years at Georgia Tech.

“You are looking for more than a guy who can just do the games on radio and host a chicken-and-green-bean event,” Durham said. “You are looking for versatility, on multiple platforms. It’s a much more flexible job than when I showed up at Georgia Tech.”