"Goooooooool": We Spoke to the Voice Behind the Packers FG Call That Went Viral

Are you kidding me Telemundo… #NFLPreseason pic.twitter.com/o9Ab9GfbWo
— njl (@n_j_l_) August 14, 2015

Local Wisconsin Telemundo sportscaster Epigmenio ("Epi") Guerrero grew up in Coayula, Mexico, watching Club América and the Mexican national soccer team, admiring calls from commentators like Jorge Ramos. But after moving to Wisconsin in 1993, he soon picked up another love in American football—specifically for the Green Bay Packers—learning as much as he could about the sport from his high school classmates.

Nearly two decades later, when WYTU Telemundo, Wisconsin started broadcasting Green Bay Packers' preseason games in 2012 (they don't have the rights to the regular season), they invited Guerrero to do color commentary in Spanish. And no one has accused him of a lack of flair since.

This past Thursday, when Guerrero's was covering the Packers' preseason 22-11 victory over the Patriots, he was inspired to let out a "gooooooool" to celebrate Packer Mason Crosby's 25-yard field goal—building a perfect, uncanny bridge between the American sport and its Spanish-speaking audience.

What you can't tell from the video is that Guerrero's call went on for so long that—despite his producers telling him to stop—he was still going by the time they came back from a full commercial break. "I heard that the record is 50 seconds," Guerrero said. "I'm very positive I can break it." (He attributes his built-up lung capacity to kickboxing.)

Guerrero's play-by-play partner Kevin Holden (who sets up the "y Mason Crosby" at the beginning of the video) said that they had been talking for a while about setting up this particular "gol" call. But Holden was taken aback by how long it went on, and he started busting up laughing in the booth.

"I haven't even talked to Kevin [Holden] about this," Guerrero said. "But I'm going to try and yell 'gol' for as far as they can kick it. If they're gonna do a 40-yard field goal, I'm going to do a 40-second call. If the kicker wants to do 60 yards, we'll do 60 seconds. So I'm going to challenge the kicker to go as far as he can."

But underneath a somewhat anecdotal, viral incident lies a growing trend: the rise in Latino viewership for the NFL. According to a report by Nielsen, as many as 10 million Latino viewers watched the 2013 Super Bowl. But Nielsen also notes that there is a huge disparity between viewers who speak Spanish, those who are bilingual, and those who are more English-dominant, saying that 97 percent of bilingual and Spanish-speaking Latinos favor soccer over football.

Nielsen also notes that with 52 million potential Latino consumers, the NFL isn't doing enough to break down the demands of their specific audiences. For example, viewers of Mexican and Caribbean descent are more likely to watch American football than those of South or Central American decent. These specifics factor in heavily, especially when 73 percent of Mexican Americans are predominantly Spanish-speaking or bilingual, falling into that 97 percent range of those who prefer soccer to American football.

But Guerrero sees a potential to appeal to viewers by identifying game time as time for families to get together and talk. This might also explain why he believes the purpose of the "gooool" call in soccer is to pull viewers' attention back to the screen. Guerrero sees his particular hybrid brand of color commentary as serving the same function in American football.

"With both a field goal and a goal, the ball has to go between the two posts," Guerrero says. "The difference is that in soccer, it has to go under, and a field goal has to go over."

For touchdowns, Guerrero has cooked up something else, as he's taken to yelling, "ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta touchdown!" for a similarly long amount of time.

"We don't want to be boring in the booth."

If anyone ever breaks Matt Prater's 64-yard record, they won't be.