Live, From Atlanta, an Unusual Hire

Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

Brandon Gaudin, center, is the fourth man in 61 seasons to be Georgia Tech’s play-by-play announcer.

ATLANTA â€" Brandon Gaudin surveyed the four front-row chairs in the Georgia Tech radio booth last Saturday.

Brandon Gaudin was among more than 150 applicants for Georgia Tech’s radio play-by-play job.

“Where’s my spot?” he asked. “Right here?”

He rendered a guess and dropped his gear.

It was opening day for Yellow Jackets football and the biggest day in the professional life of Gaudin, the fourth man in 61 seasons to occupy the team’s radio play-by-play seat, whichever one it was.

Gaudin propped up his iPad and dug out his smartphone â€" modern-day accessories to the trade’s traditional tools, like colored pens, a notepad, a depth chart, a flip card, a statistics sheet and a commercial break schedule.

Someone identified himself as the fetcher of drinks for those in the booth. “The one legacy I’ve left,” Gaudin said, “is having the world’s smallest bladder.”

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.”

Georgia Tech, with input from IMG, sought someone who could serve, as several officials put it, as an ambassador â€" not merely a radio voice for football and basketball, but a face to represent the university.

“This goes so far beyond the game broadcasting,” Athletic Director Mike Bobinski said. “He must have the ability to stand in front of groups and tell the Georgia Tech story.”

Bobinski had been at Georgia Tech for only two and a half months when Durham walked into his office in June to resign. The season opener against Elon, Durham’s alma mater, was less than three months away.

Gaudin had announced games for Butler, his alma mater, for three years before noticing the Georgia Tech vacancy on a trade Web site.

He advanced past the first round of cuts, and IMG sent his name and about 30 others to Bobinski. The list dwindled to 10 names, then four. Gaudin was one of the finalists, in part because of his experience calling two Final Fours while at Butler.

Among the prerequisites was the ability to relate to graduates, many of whom were old enough to be Gaudin’s father, and to understand the mind-set of an alumni base that took its football seriously but not with life-or-death gravity.

Georgia Tech chose Gaudin, a man as boyish-looking as Brad Stevens, the basketball coach who also left Butler this summer, going to the Boston Celtics.

When Gaudin is not working, he favors hoodies and jeans. He gobbles peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He relied on his mother to stock his apartment with supplies. He shoots continually at a Little Tikes basketball rim (for ages 3 and up, according to its box) hanging over his bedroom door.

“My track record is, I’m sort of age-blind,” Bobinski said. Besides, Gaudin’s maturity, Bobinski said, “belies his time on earth.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of seasons that Al Ciraldo Jr.’s father announced games. He did it for 38 seasons, not 35.

A version of this article appears in print on September 5, 2013, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Live, From Atlanta, An Unusual Hire.