Inductees

The original plan was to go to nursing school, but when that didn’t take, he enrolled at Missouri State University and looked into sports broadcasting.

“Honestly, I never planned to do that. I did not grow up with any hope or dreams of calling games,” Corey Riggs said.

And so he threw himself into learning all that he could, taking notes on the ways national, regional and local sports broadcasters called games. In 1999, he was sent to the Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball tournament as a student broadcaster. That came after an internship with Springfield-based Mediacom, and then came a full-time job.

And now look. The Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Riggs with the Class of 2025, after he spent 26 years as a sports broadcaster with Mediacom before, in 2024, joining Missouri State Sports Properties as its Director of Broadcasting.

With Mediacom, the 1993 Webb City High School graduate held several roles in its coverage of high school and college sports, as he was involved in announcing, directing and producing upwards of 100 games/shows a season. He also led coverage of Missouri Sports Hall of Fame Enshrinements in Springfield.

In 2004, he took on the role of production manager at Mediacom, where he brokered a successful rights agreement to carry both Missouri State and Southern Illinois basketball on MC22. He was promoted to senior production manager in 2013. Under his leadership, the Mediacom production crew has won more than 20 MidAmerica Cable show awards. Riggs also has announced a number of high school and regional sporting events, including state championship games in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, for over a decade.

In 2018, he also expanded his resume into dirt track racing, working for the national MAVTV network. His work has also been featured on ESPN2, ESPNU and other national platforms.

Riggs joined the Missouri State Radio Network as a studio host on football and basketball games in 2013 and has been a part of the institutions’ announcer rotation on ESPN-Plus since 2015.

In other words, he climbed the ladder the right way, starting as an intern and earning respect after Stan Melton and Tom Mast (MSHOF 2021) took a chance on him by hiring as a cameraman on live sporting events and as a studio worker who played commercials during St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals games.

“I thought I was going to be there for a couple of years, and then move onto Fox Sports Midwest or ESPN. Go big time. I tried. I applied. And even when I had chances to leave I decided to stay,” Riggs said. “I had a great job at Mediacom and knew how lucky I was.”

Riggs helped build Mediacom into even more of a success. The company had been broadcasting games since the 1980s but took off.

Riggs saw to it to broadcast as many high school and college games as possible, and not just within Springfield. Under his leadership, Mediacom expanded from football, basketball and baseball coverage to wrestling, swimming, volleyball and more.

“We won awards every year from the MidAmerica Cable Show for our local coverage, and we did so because I was lucky enough to have an amazing crew. People who were pros doing much bigger shows than ours but wanted to help us take our game to the next level and did.”

As production manager, he set the schedule, right down to whether games were aired live or on delay. He also worked with the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and Springfield Public Schools on partnerships, and quarterbacked who was doing what job on the crew.

Brokering the rights agreements for Missouri State and Southern Illinois was a high-water mark. MSU had previously aired on KY3, the local NBC affiliate, and Mediacom pulled it off seamlessly.

Riggs has broadcasted on national platforms – ESPN2 and ESPNU for the Norm Stewart Classic, Fox Sports Midwest for the football and basketball state championships for the Missouri State High School Activities Association.

For Riggs, the success isn’t his alone. Melton, Mast, Art Hains (MSHOF 2017), Don West (MSHOF 2020), Mike McClure (MSHOF 2023) and Rob Evans were mentors.

He also had the support of family, including his wife, Maggie, and son Carter.

“It has been an incredible journey that I have no intention of ending anytime soon,” Riggs said. “I’m onto the second phase of an improbable career for a kid from Webb City, and I can’t wait to see where the road takes me next.”