When Derrick Pearson moved to Lincoln three years ago, he figured he’d retire from a long career in coaching, athletic management and broadcasting and become a Husker fan.
Drawn to Lincoln from Houston by his wife, Rebecca, who’d been visiting the city a dozen times a year to do consulting with Talent Plus in her work in marketing and branding for ExxonMobil, Pearson was willing to retire a bit early from running South and Central Asian language services at Voice of America.
“My wife wanted to be here; she wanted to live here,” he said. “She was coming here once or twice a month to consult with them (Talent Plus). And she said, ‘You know, it's sports; you'd come here and hang out and go to Husker games.’ OK, fine.”
But the retirement thing didn’t quite work out as he envisioned.
Shortly after arriving in Lincoln, he was in talks with a group of radio stations about taking over management. When that fell through, Pearson was encouraged to look into an opening at 93.7 The Ticket (KNTK-FM).