Did you know there are Emmy awards for sports broadcasting?

Several dozen of them were handed out in New York on May 7 at the annual Sports Emmy Awards event.

One of them went to Casey Richards (TAT ’02). Richards, a resident of Atlanta, received an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in the category of outstanding playoff coverage.

He was part of a team at TNT that won for its work on the National Basketball Association post-season telecasts in 2012.

“I was a writer/producer on the team. We all worked on this – the award was for the comprehensive playoff package. That means promotional spots, lead-ins, game elements . . . creative services that required a quick turnaround,” he said.

For this year’s basketball playoffs, currently under way, he’s doing the games’ opening pieces – “a kind of music video to hype people up for the game,” he said.

He’s also working on promos for the Sunday baseball broadcasts on TBS and creating pieces for the upcoming NASCAR season.

While he’s won other awards, and was nominated for an Emmy last year for his work on a baseball video featuring Bruce Springsteen, this is his first Emmy win.

Richards’ career has taken him across the country several times. After graduating in 2002, he worked for an advertising agency in Los Angeles, part of the in-house video editorial team. That was followed by a move to Atlanta, where he worked as an associate writer/producer for on-air promotions at Turner Broadcasting.

A couple of years later, he moved to Fox Sports, but stayed in Atlanta. In 2008, an opportunity presented itself at E! Entertainment in Los Angeles, where he worked as a writer/producer of on-air promotions. Then another cross-country move – back to Turner where he works in the Creative Services Sports Unit, the network’s in-house advertising operation for all the company’s sports properties, including professional basketball, baseball, NASCAR, golf and college basketball.

“I didn’t target sports out of school,” he said. “I fell into it out of necessity when the network I was working for was taken over by Fox Sports. It’s the same way I got into reality television when accepting a job at E! Regardless of the content, I’ve always adapted and all my jobs have been on the creative side of the industry.”

But sports is not unfamiliar territory for him.

“I’m a fan. You have to be to do this kind of work. I get free tickets to games – a nice perk. But I don’t watch ESPN 24 hours a day, and I can’t rattle off statistics.”