TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

It’s odd how backlogged this thing has gotten with my random vacations and days off and such. I made a note to write down some thoughts on Mike and the Mad Dog when I first heard about the break-up a few weeks back. While it’s extremely old news now, I really want to start blowing through the 12 columns I have backlogged here.

I listened to Mike and Chris for the first time ever on YES in 2003. They were just about the only thing on in the afternoon when I used to go to the gym on my lunch hour. For whatever stupid reason, I remember the conversation. They were talking about the NFL and how it’s likely they’d move to some sort of subscription service within the next ten years. Mike’s stance was the NFL had no reason to offer their games to people for free if they could make more by offering them for subscription. Chris said that they had the was fan-unfriendly and they should do what’s right. This was a bit before the NFL had become the fan-unfriendly juggernaut it is today.

I didn’t like them much at first but got in to it more the more I listened. When I first moved to New York and had to work at home for the best six months of my life, I started listening every day. After I had to go back to the office, I started listening on wfan.com until copier corporation X bought my company and decided we weren’t mature enough to balance streaming radio with our workday. It was (and I guess still is) still the only sports’ talk radio show I like.

The best reason I can come up with is because, while they are a little overbearing at times, they have something that other talk radio shows they don’t have. All talk radio hosts are pretentious to a certain degree. These guys are certainly no different — but their pretentiousness is different. If I had to guess, it’s a function of the fact that they’ve been around and been number one for so long that their show is essentially the same as it was in the 1990s. Their show existed long before ESPN and Fox decided to get in to radio and long before everyone decided the recipe to success was to be Opie and Anthony with some sports talk thrown in. They don’t have the Boomer Esiason/Mike Golic “you’ve never played so you don’t know as much as me” attitude.

I’ll be the first to say that their schtick can get old after a while. I’ll also be the first to say that if you aren’t a baseball fan the show’s appeal would disappear quickly. But the multitude of haters out there who say they were hacks or who suggest they suck are stupid. You don’t stay on top of the radio business in the New York market if you’re terrible. Without the success of these guys your favorite sports talk radio show wouldn’t exist. These two guys did remotes from the Super Bowl when they were the only guys there.

I will say that I think the right guy got the chance to go national. Dog’s antagonizing schtick has a better chance to catch on nationwide than Mike’s. Dog also has broader interests. Tennis, golf — all things that will give him a better chance to connect with a different audience. Mike, on the other hand, is a fan of New York sports and has been a Yankee fan all his life. I don’t think he much cares what goes on outside the five boroughs. It’s arm-twisting to even get him to talk about the Bills or Nets.

That said, Mad Dog Radio will be the first show simulcast on both XM and Sirius — so I at least look forward to give it a shot.