DENVER - This is sportscaster Garrett Macdonald getting ready for work: He puts on a white dress shirt, a clip-on tie and a sport coat, then his mother drives him to work.

She has to. Garrett is only 13 years old.

It's unlikely there is another sportscaster as young as Garrett Macdonald working on a major network. Every Thursday after school, Garrett steps onto the "Rocky Mountain Sports Report/Early Edition" set at FSN Rocky Mountain to share the desk and his many opinions with anchorman Tim Ring.

Garrett's mother, Joyce, picks him up from school at 3 p.m., takes him home, feeds him dinner, then drives in from Lakewood to get him to the Fox studios near downtown Denver by 4:30 p.m. for the taping. The show airs at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays.

Some would call the seventh-grader precocious. Ring says, "He is just a real good kid." A real good kid with an astonishing grasp of sports and statistics.

"I have a good memory," says Garrett. "I think about a thing, and it sticks in my head."

Does he know college football? He can walk the walk and talk the talk. And talk and talk and talk.

Ring, who has been around the sports scene long enough to know his stuff, has been showing Garrett the TV ropes since the two met in February 2003 at an ESPNZone birthday party for the trainer who works with Ring and Macdonald's father, Tom, a lawyer.

Young Macdonald went on about sports, spouting stats to the amazement of all. Ring says he thought, "'This kid knows a lot about college football.' I was impressed with his ability to convey that knowledge in an informative manner."

Garrett has a slightly different recollection of the seminal moment. "I went into a five-minute rant. I just hopped up on a bar stool and started talking."

That sold Ring, who admits he violated the age-old show-business taboo of never sharing the spotlight with a scene-stealing animal or a kid when he signed on with Macdonald just over a year ago. It's worked out, for both of them. "I get more comments over Garrett than anything else I do."

Talking is Garrett's strong point. He doesn't freeze when the red light comes on and keeps up with Ring's commentary, trading him blow for blow. He never lets up, even after taping ends.

"It works because I treat him as a regular football analyst," says Ring. "That's part of a real conversation. He gives you information - who's hurt, what a team's tendencies are. He loves sports."