The F.A.N. Show: How Richard Tieman Brings Monday Night Football Energy to Montana Sports

Richard Tieman has never met a microphone he didn't like. It's one of the first things he tells you about himself, delivered with the easy confidence of someone who's spent years performing.

But the story of how a touring drummer from Spokane became the face of The F.A.N. Show—Great Falls' most recognizable sports coverage and the reason he was voted Best Entertainment for 2025—isn't the straightforward sports journalism tale you'd expect.

The Musician Who Loved Sports

Growing up in Greeacres, a small suburb of Spokane, Richard wasn't following in anyone's broadcasting footsteps. His dad worked construction until a stroke ended that chapter. His mom bounced between being a teacher's assistant and a receptionist at Rockwood Clinic. There were no entertainment careers, no cameras, no family legacy in the media industry.

What there was: sports. Baseball, specifically, from T-ball through YMCA summer leagues. But when junior high hit and summer ball became too expensive for Richard's family while other kids' parents could afford elite squads, he learned his first hard lesson about access and opportunity in athletics.

"Every time roster announcements came out, varsity was always the guys whose parents could afford summer ball," Richard recalls. "The rest of us were JV. My best friend and I never felt it was right."

He walked away from baseball and music became the outlet instead. "I wanted to be a drummer, but I didn't know what percussion meant," he laughs. So he did trombone, then baritone, and finally found his way to drums. By high school, he was playing talent shows. By his twenties, he was touring with a band, opening for acts like Hawthorne Heights, Unwritten Law, and 12 Stones—bands that had done WWE theme songs, which mattered to a wrestling fan like Richard.

The Pivot That Changed Everything

The road from touring musician to sportscaster started, improbably, on a honeymoon. Richard and his wife visited Universal Orlando, where they experienced Rising Star—live band karaoke with a full production setup. They were hooked.

"We were like, if we had that back home in Spokane, it would be crazy," Richard remembers. His wife hatched a plan: get a business degree, open a sports bar, do live band karaoke on weekends. Richard enrolled in community college.

Then, at his 10-year high school reunion, a former athlete friend said something that stuck: "Dude, you know your stuff. Have you ever thought about being a sports analyst?"

Richard's first instinct was to dismiss it—"That's gossip, that's TMZ for sports." But his wife saw something else: a husband who needed a hobby beyond bartending graveyard shifts at a corner bar on the bad side of town.

The podcast that started as "The Butt Fumble Show"—intentionally unserious—evolved into The F.A.N. Show when Richard's logo designer (who would later work with the Seattle Kraken) gave him blunt advice: "I don't know how many people are going to line up to be a guest on the Butt Fumble Show."

The F.A.N. acronym stuck: Football And Nonsense. The 'N' gave Richard permission to interview anyone—musicians, comedians, wrestlers, not just athletes. It became his gateway to creative freedom.

While building the podcast and working toward that sports bar dream, Richard kept hitting the same wall: every radio station wanted a communications degree he didn't have. So he enrolled in the Dan Patrick School of Sportscasting at Full Sail University.

As an online student in the inaugural class, he didn't have access to the campus studio in Florida, so he had to get creative. For a pre-game report assignment, instead of filming in a spare bedroom like his classmates, Richard drove around Spokane until he found Gonzaga's baseball field with its lights still on. He shot three takes before the lights went dark. His instructor called the next morning: "We're going to use that for future classes. That's the kind of on-your-feet thinking we want." In 2020, Richard graduated virtually as salutatorian with highest honors—a far cry from the kid who barely made it through high school and dropped out of Eastern Washington before flunking out.

Arena Football and Heartbreak in the Midwest

Richard's niche became indoor arena football. He covered the Spokane Empire with an intensity and access that fans of other teams noticed. "We wish we had a you," they'd message him. "Without somebody like you, it's two minutes on the local news before a home game, and that's it."

In 2019, a team in South Dakota made him an offer he couldn't refuse: Director of Communications. Richard got a company car, new business cards, and a red-carpet announcement. The league called it "the perfect hire."

Six months later, COVID-19 canceled the season. The team let him go.

What followed was a blur of survival jobs—call centers he'd sworn off, delivering auto parts around Sioux Falls, anything to stay afloat. When another team in Omaha hired him as a media specialist, they moved again. Richard won a championship ring with that franchise—their first ever—before a contract dispute ended that chapter too.

Meanwhile, beneath all the career turbulence, Richard and his wife were fighting a quieter, more devastating battle.

The Reason Behind Everything

Their infertility journey started in Spokane, then restarted in Sioux Falls, then Omaha, then Montana. Different doctors, different tests, same heartbreaking result. There were options—expensive, invasive options that would require protocols and specialists and hope.

They tried IVF twice through his wife's benefits at Ulta, where she'd become the top stylist in the district. The first retrieval failed. The second round yielded one viable embryo. One shot.

Richard, who normally doesn't let himself get excited about anything until it happens, broke his own rule. "I convinced myself this was going to work. This was the miracle baby. This was the stuff movies are made of."

They did the transfer in early December 2023. The pregnancy test came back positive. They planned how to tell their families.

The day after Christmas, the clinic called. The pregnancy had failed.

"I got really mad at God," Richard admits, his voice catching. "I wanted it to make sense. You couldn't talk to me for probably three months after that."

Adopting a Town

By early 2024, Richard and his wife were in Great Falls—a move he'd made in 2022 to work as a sports reporter for SWX Montana after the Omaha job dissolved. He'd planned to finish his contract and leave for Spokane when the baby came. Instead, he found himself staying in a place he'd never intended to call home.

Kids from Great Falls High started recognizing him at grocery stores. "We thought you left," they'd say. Invitations to volleyball games, basketball games, football games came in. Slowly, Richard started showing up again.

He launched The F.A.N. Show in its current iteration during fall 2024—player of the game interviews, The Coaches Show, spotlighting student sections and cheerleaders. Sponsorships followed. Community support followed. By 2025, voters named him Best Entertainment.

"Really, at the end of the day, what I do with The F.A.N. Show is cool and all," Richard says carefully. "But the reason it's as good as it is? We can't have a child of our own."

His voice steadies. "My wife said it the other day," Richard says. "We can't have kids of our own, so these kids have become ours. Graduation invites. Birthday party invites. Requests to be at their games."

Why It Matters

What Richard does isn't revolutionary in concept. But how he does it, and why, makes all the difference.

He insists his Player of the Game belt—sponsored by Montana Edit for the 2025-2026 season—only goes to someone on the winning team. "I don't believe it should ever feel like a consolation prize," he explains. "If you get it after losing, does that taint it? I don't want to find out."

He shows up for basketball, football, soccer, cross country, volleyball, and more. He turns down nothing if he can physically be there. "I never want somebody to feel excluded," Richard says. "I know what that feels like—that's not fair."

Where local news might grab two highlights and call it done, Richard creates content that looks like Monday Night Football crossed with College GameDay. Kids who've never been in a news studio get the full treatment. Former NFL players Richard interviewed might get 100 views; a high school kid chasing his dream through arena football gets 20,000 because an entire community rallies behind their own.

"That," Richard says, "shows the power of community."

The Dream and The Reality

Richard's goal is to make The F.A.N. Show sustainable enough to be full-time so he can give every kid the attention they deserve without juggling survival jobs. "I just don't have it in me anymore for the schedule juggle," he admits.

He's close. Monthly trips to Connecticut to call robot combat fights for the National HAVOC Robot League help. Sponsorships from local businesses who see what he's building help more. The organic growth of his social media—views that big brands would pay for—helps most of all.

Some days, Richard imagines the future: a truck with The F.A.N. Show logo, rolling up to Memorial Stadium for live pregame coverage with former Bison or Rustlers, T-shirt tosses to the crowd, the whole College GameDay energy translated to Friday night lights in Montana.

Other days, he and his wife sit with the reality that they're living a version of life they didn't plan—traveling to concerts, fostering cats, being the fun aunt and uncle to an entire town's worth of kids instead of raising their own.

"We have a lot of love to give," Richard says simply. "We're just trying to find ways to channel that."

His story resonates because it's not really about sports media at all. It's about what happens when someone who understands exclusion—from baseball rosters to career opportunities—decides that no kid on their watch will feel invisible. It's about marriages that survive cross-country moves, job losses during pandemics, and medical heartbreak that has no easy answers. It's about discovering that home isn't always where you planned to be.

"What started in Spokane belongs to Montana now," Richard says. "The circumstances around how it got here aren't my favorite. But we're okay being that fun aunt and uncle to kids. What I do—just giving them a little extra time during the day or during the game—means a lot to them. I try to treat everybody the same and hope they know it's genuine."

In Montana, where high school sports have long been covered in two-minute news packages and static newspaper recaps, Richard isn't just filling a gap in coverage. He's building something that matters more than content: community, connection, and the radical idea that every kid—not just the ones whose parents can afford summer leagues—deserves to feel celebrated.

That's not entertainment. That's family. And for a man who channels his heartbreak into highlighting others, it's exactly what he was meant to do all along.

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Catch The F.A.N. Show

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Montana Edit is proud to sponsor The F.A.N. Show's 2025-2026 Player of the Game. View the list here.