VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Burlington

Media-Broadcasting 

Inducted 2024

Mal Boright Inductee

A ten-time winner of the Vermont Sportscaster of the Year award, George Commo has broadcast sports in Vermont for over five decades, on the radio, on television, and now on the internet.

After graduating from UVM, Commo in 1974, took over as a sports reporter for WVNY-TV in Burlington's evening newscasts.  A year later, Commo was brought on to handle UVM hockey play-by-play duties when WVNY aired the team's trip to the ECAC Semifinals at the old Boston Garden.

He was the radio voice for UVM men’s hockey for 18 seasons, then 25 years at Norwich University from 1998 to 2023. He was on the call for UVM’s first trip to the NCAA D-I Frozen Four and at Norwich, he called its first four NCAA D3 titles. He also called Catamounts men’s and women’s basketball, and Norwich football over the airwaves.

Commo also has broadcasted minor league baseball in the area since the 1980s, first with the Vermont Reds and Mariners, and then the Vermont Expos and Lake Monsters from 1994 to 2019. He was the first winner of the New York Penn League’s Warner Fusselle Award in 2015, given to the league’s top broadcaster.

With the Lake Monsters moving in 2021 to the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, he has remained the team’s primary voice on the internet. Each season since 2022, the top Vermonter on the FCBL Lake Monsters is given the George Commo Award.

Commo also has called auto racing in the area, and many high school games in a variety of sports including many VPA state championships.

Winner of the state’s Associated Press Broadcast Play-by-Play awards on multiple occasions, Commo was inducted into the Vermont Principal's Association Hall of Fame in 2010, the Vermont Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2011, and the Rice Memorial High Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017. He was an honorary inductee into the Norwich Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016.

His work also was recognized by the Eastern Athletics Communications Association in 2018 with its Monahan & Wallace Media Award for outstanding coverage of eastern intercollegiate athletics joining fellow VSHOF inductees Tony Adams, Don Filion and Ted Ryan who were previous winners.