Catching up with Raul Allegre

Raul Allegre lettered two seasons as a place kicker at Texas, making 27-of-45 field goals and 66-of-68 extra points. He went on to kick nine seasons in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants and New York Jets, and has since built a career in Spanish language broadcasting.

How has your career developed since football? I went off on a tangent, as they say, because I went to school here as an engineer. After that, I got signed as a free agent to play in the NFL, so I played nine years. After that, I was a little removed from engineering, and of course it being a technical profession, you have to stay on top of new developments. So, I went and got an MBA right after I finished the NFL. During the course of getting my MBA, I received the opportunity to do a football show in Spanish for NFL Films. That got me started in what I'm doing now, and I'm working in sports marketing and broadcasting in Spanish. I do football broadcasting with ESPN now.

How important is it to be able to reach the Hispanic audience? It's the fastest growing segment of the population. There are more and more people interested, and a lot of people think they just care about soccer and boxing, but they're big fans of football, both college and the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and it's an up and coming market.

How did you get involved with ESPN? ESPN called me. I know some people there and they called me in 1996 to do an audition. FOX called me at the same time, and I ended up working at FOX, but I stayed in touch with the people at ESPN. Eventually I left FOX and started working with the Dallas Cowboys producing their Spanish language preseason games. ESPN saw that and called me and asked me to send a tape. They decided to launch a Spanish language channel in the United States, which is called ESPN Deportes, and they wanted me to be their NFL commentator in Spanish. That was in 2002, and I've been working with them ever since.

Are you still working with the Cowboys? I still work with the Cowboys, because that was a program I had prior to ESPN, and I still have a relationship with the Cowboys. Since it's not in competition with ESPN, they let me do it, but I primarily work almost exclusively with them full time now.

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