How a coffee farm in El Salvador shaped an Aggie broadcasting legend
Fernando Palomo ’95 grew up dreaming of Aggieland; an agricultural economics degree gave him more than he bargained for
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When Fernando Palomo ’95 takes the microphone this June to call Argentina vs. Honduras, he will be doing something he has done at Wembley Stadium, at World Cup venues in Qatar and at six Olympic Games. But this time, the broadcast booth is in Aggieland.
For Palomo, it will be a full circle moment that started, as most things in his life do, somewhere unexpected.
It started in the far corner of the auditorium in the Kleberg Animal and Food Sciences Center, in his first college class, introduction to agriculture. A dictionary sat open on the desk beside his textbook to help him look up English words he was unfamiliar with. He had grown up on a coffee farm in El Salvador, watched his father manage cattle operations, and followed two older brothers to College Station.
On paper, Palomo was the perfect candidate for a good grade. But papers don’t always translate to exams.
“It was a hard-earned C,” Palomo said, laughing. “But I wouldn’t trade it.”
That first semester set the tone for his time in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Agricultural Economics.
Today, he is one of the most recognized voices in Spanish-language sports broadcasting. What an agricultural economics degree has to do with calling World Cup matches may not be immediately clear. But to Palomo, the past 26 years all started in that auditorium, and now they are bringing him right back to Aggieland.
Roots in the field
Palomo watched his father closely from an early age. His father had studied agronomy at Michigan State University and returned to El Salvador to manage coffee and cattle operations. Palomo spent his childhood observing him weigh cattle and sat with him on long drives to farms to care for coffee plants. All the while he soaked up everything related to agriculture and learned why it made his father so happy. Agriculture was not just an occupation in the Palomo family. It was his heritage.
Kyle Field’s second international match
The Argentina vs. Honduras match will be the second international soccer match played at Kyle Field. The first, Brazil vs. Mexico in 2024, drew 85,249 fans.
Two older brothers had already made Aggieland home before Palomo ever set foot on campus. One had joined the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets and came back with stories, photographs and copies of The Battalion that Palomo wore out reading. Texas A&M was the only school he applied to.
Once he arrived on campus, building on his father’s legacy pointed him toward agricultural economics. He wanted to return to El Salvador and develop the business side of the family operation: the marketing, the branding, the commercial infrastructure that did not yet exist. His degree path matched that ambition.
“When I found out there was an agricultural economics degree, I knew it was a great match for me and would make my father very proud,” Palomo said.
His father passed away in 1994, two years before Palomo graduated. He finished the degree anyway.
He found professors he believed would challenge but also mentor him, and he showed up to their offices often with questions. In one agricultural marketing course, Palomo and his team built a full pitch around selling ostrich meat, a product the market was nowhere near ready for. They got an A.
That same search for challenges led him to the track and field office his first week on campus, where he knocked on his coach’s door with no scholarship offer and no guarantee he would compete. He redshirted his first year, worked diligently on the track and in the weight room to improve his power, speed and endurance, and he kept showing up. By his final semester, Palomo had earned a scholarship and competed at the NCAA Championships.
In the classroom and on the track, the formula was the same: show up, prepare and trust the process.
“If you are passionate, you will go beyond your means to gain whatever it is you are after,” he said. “The tools are there. It is up to the student to be curious enough to take advantage of them.”
“I don’t think I ever really left Texas A&M. It’s stayed in me. You can’t move away from the things that made you who you are.”
Fernando Palomo ’95
Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences former student
The long way ’round
Just as agriculture had been woven into Palomo’s upbringing, so had broadcasting. As a teenager in El Salvador, he spent years assembling scrapbooks of Olympic coverage. He parlayed that obsession into a spot at a local television station, where he called Monday Night Football as a high school senior. He later covered the 1992 and 1996 Olympics for Salvadoran television.
Palomo had never thought of broadcasting as a career. It was just a thing he loved.
He credits his education in agricultural economics with showing him how to be a compelling broadcaster. The degree trained him to research, prepare and find the angle that hooks an audience, skills that translated directly into the kind of storytelling a broadcast booth demands. Marketing courses taught him how to build a case, frame a product and understand an audience. The product, it turned out, would be a soccer match. The audience would be millions of Spanish-speaking viewers around the world.
After graduation, Palomo took a job at an advertising agency, applying his degree to branding and creative campaigns. The family farm remained in his plans, but it was in the capable hands of his brothers following his father’s passing while Palomo was still in college. He kept the microphone in his back pocket. When he built a resume and sent it out, he included all of it.
He was thinking marketing. ESPN had other ideas.
“They asked for a demo tape,” he said. “Twenty-six years later, here I am.”
Texas A&M stayed in him
Twenty-six years later, he will be back in Aggieland. Calling the Argentina vs. Honduras match at Kyle Field will be a homecoming that runs a lot deeper than the broadcast booth.
Palomo’s two sons are now Aggies. Juan Marcos ’27 studies sports management. Matias ’28 studies political science. Palomo dressed them in Aggie gear before they could walk and has been back in the stands for every milestone since. When his oldest son earned his Aggie Ring, Palomo was there to see another Palomo earn his ring. While he returns to the family farm when he can, it’s the roots he planted in Aggieland that never left him.
Palomo is a lifetime member of the Texas A&M Lettermen’s Association, a Century Club member and a regular guest speaker across campus. Every visit feels like returning to something essential, he said.
“I don’t think I ever really left Texas A&M,” Palomo said. “It’s stayed in me. You can’t move away from the things that made you who you are.”
