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Anatomy of an Analyst: Ray Ferraro
Anatomy Of A Broadcaster: Jason Benetti
Anatomy of a Broadcaster: Joe Davis
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Barrett Sports Media’s Top 20 Original Sports Podcasts of 2021
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Barrett Sports Media’s Top 20 Mid Market Sports Radio Stations of 2021
Barrett Sports Media’s Top 20 Major Market Sports Radio Stations of 2021
Barrett Sports Media’s Top 20 Major Market Sports Radio Program Directors of 2021
Meet The Market Managers: Vinny DiMarco, Good Karma Brands New York
Meet The Market Manager: Mark Glynn, iHeartMedia Seattle
Meet The Market Managers: Jay Davis, Cumulus Media Oklahoma City
Meet the Market Managers: Steve Wexler, Good Karma Brands Milwaukee
Meet The Market Managers: Michael Spacciapolli, Audacy Pittsburgh
Jason Barrett Podcast: Jim Rome, CBS Sports Radio
Jason Barrett Podcast: Michael McCarthy, Front Office Sports
Jason Barrett Podcast: Dave LaGreca, Busted Open
Jason Barrett Podcast: Mark Chernoff, Former PD of WFAN
Jason Barrett Podcast: Don Martin, FOX Sports Radio
Seller To Seller: Dean Lamb, CDW
Seller to Seller: Reza Hariri, MyMelo & Estrella Media
Seller to Seller: Gary Sarner, ROI360 Plus
Seller to Seller: Dr. Ed Cohen, Formerly of Cumulus Media
Seller To Seller: Mike Scott, Formerly of iHeartMedia
Sports Talkers Podcast: Bob Wischusen, ESPN
Sports Talkers Podcast: Carl Dukes, 92.9 The Game
Sports Talkers Podcast: Tim Kurkjian, ESPN
Sports Talkers Podcast: Linda Cohn, ESPN
Sports Talkers Podcast: John Jastremski, The Ringer
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Let’s Go! With Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald, Jim Gray Returns
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Sean Roberts, Heather Burnside Begin ‘The Drive’ on KXNO
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Jason Goff Signs New Deal with NBC Sports Chicago
Burke Magnus Says the Longhorn Network Will Fold Into the SEC Network
Survey Shows Most Fans Don’t Want ESPN To Replace Lee Corso on College GameDay
MLB.TV Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Free Streams Of Every Game Friday
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Rich Eisen Nearly Returned to ESPN
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Stephen A. Smith Launches New Podcast with Audacy
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Bill O’Reilly: Media Running Fake Approval Polls on Joe Biden
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Dan Mandis: Podcast Movement Exaggerated Ben Shapiro Reaction
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Ali Vitali: Female Presidential Candidates Face Innocuous Pitfalls
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Lewis Kamb Joins NBC News’ Digital Division
John Jastremski talks about his move from WFAN to The Ringer, his time folding shirts at the NBA Store, why a good broadcaster treats 1 AM the same as 3 PM.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sports-talkers-podcast/id1630977774
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0GNnMUIOvkvweJgeKo5hAH?si=b456453c9756482b
iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-sports-talkers-podcast-98564776/
Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ibHVicnJ5LmNvbS9mZWVkcy9zcG9ydHN0YWxrZXJzLnhtbA
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8770fe3f-91ba-4926-8620-cabe84b7ad7f/the-sports-talkers-podcast
Stephen Strom can be heard hosting ‘The Sports Talkers Podcast’ for Barrett Sports Media. In addition to hosting here, Stephen works as a broadcasting assistant for the Miami Heat and color analyst for Nova Southeastern. Additional career experiences include working for SiriusXM, performing analyst duties for Princeton basketball, and hosting shows for TalkNorth.com. You can find him on Twitter @SStrom_.
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Mike Francesa: ‘Mike & the Mad Dog Is Reason Kids Want To Be Sports Talk Hosts’
Jason McCourty Doesn’t Want To Be Hot Take Artist
Robert Kraft Tried To Get FOX To Hire Al Michaels
“The best local shows are the ones that are going to give you three entertaining, uninterrupted hours on the local team that’s fighting for an invite to the Sun Bowl!”
College football season is nearly here.
Forget last Saturday. It’s called Week 0 for a reason. Do you really want to believe the first game of the 2022 season was 3-9 Northwestern and 3-9 Nebraska playing halfway around the world?
Here at Barrett Sports Media, we are celebrating college football from a media angle. All week long, our editors and resident college football superfans, Arky Shea, Demetri Ravanos and Garrett Searight, will be looking at the best the media has to offer in terms of college football coverage.
The entire schedule is as follows:
TUESDAY: Best National Radio Show
WEDNESDAY: Best College Football Podcast
FRIDAY: Best TV Play-by-Play Booth
College football, like all politics, is local. That is why it is important to put a spotlight on the shows that really capture the atmosphere of a fanbase.
Fans across the country know that Ohio State is really good. They know Lincoln Riley is out to prove football isn’t dead on the West Coast and they know every NFL GM is licking his lips and fighting the urge to throw 17 games in order to be in position to draft Will Anderson Jr.
The best local shows are the ones that are going to give you three entertaining, uninterrupted hours on the local team that’s fighting for an invite to the Sun Bowl! They know College GameDay and Big Noon Kickoff will have the top ten matchups covered.
Which shows do that best? Here are our picks.
OFF THE BENCH – 104.5 ESPN IN BATON ROUGE by Garrett Searight
This will sound like a sales pitch for Guaranty Media, but I found Off The Bench while looking for radio shows utilizing video streams of their shows. I found myself watching Off The Bench daily.
Off The Bench is one of the rare radio shows that isn’t “radio guy paired with former player”. It’s former player paired with former player as former LSU greats Jacob Hester and T-Bob Hebert. Their ability to talk about college football’s — not just LSU or the SEC — biggest topics sets them to the top of my list. They’re fun, energetic, knowledgeable, and most importantly entertaining. I’ve always found it’s more difficult than you think to sound like two dudes having a conversation that a listener is eavesdropping on. Hester and Hebert do it flawlessly. The pair are rising stars in the industry.
THE OG – 99.9 THE FAN IN RALEIGH by Demetri Ravanos
College football, whether we will admit it or not, is mostly about misery. There are 131 teams in the FBS and at the start of each season; roughly 128 of them have no shot at winning a national championship. Every team in the state of North Carolina is amongst those 128, so it makes sense that no one has more fun with that misery than Joe Ovies and Joe Giglio on 99.9 The Fan in Raleigh. It’s a show that sounds like the market it serves when talking about college football.
Where else can you go from hearing about one host’s private texts with UNC’s athletic director to taste-testing unopened cans of baby blue Carolina-themed soda and neon red NC State-themed soda from the 1980s? The show is subversive as hell, but it is the kind of subversion that is only possible if you really love the institutions and people in your crosshairs.
MCELROY & CUBELIC IN THE MORNING – JOX 94.5 IN BIRMINGHAM by Arky Shea
There simply isn’t a more fervent market for college football, and only college football, than Birmingham, Alabama. The show that talks it best is on Birmingham’s flamethrower WJOX. McElroy is the former Alabama quarterback Greg McElory and Cubelic is former Auburn center Cole Cubelic. What these two do goes beyond sticking two players from in-state rivals on the same radio show and expecting great talk. WJOX is fortunate to have two extremely smart analysts who also double as traveling television analysts during the season. They take real playing experience and mesh it beautifully with what they see every single week on the road during the Fall.
The show, though very driven by college football, doesn’t get stale because the two show hosts aren’t sitting on past laurels. Every day is a chance to watch film of draft picks, current college production superstars and future names you are going to want to know. No one uses their access to better accommodate their show with college football knowledge and frivolity than McElory and Cubelic. They bring on top-notch analyst guests thanks to their well-earned relationships throughout the country and have the pull to grab any college football coach they desire to the salivating Magic City football capitol. No stone is left unturned to bring you more football information because they want it for themselves too.
“This column is not a criticism at all. It is more of a therapy session.”
A new college football season is here and that means we are in Comin’ to Your Ci-tay season. I poke fun at College GameDay and its god-awful soundtrack regularly, but I would be lying if I tried to convince you that I don’t genuinely like the show. It has been part of my Saturday morning routine for decades at this point. That is why I come into this season with some trepidation.
If you are a college football fan, you have been living with the reality that any season could be the last one for Lee Corso on the show. A recent study from The Athletic’s Chris Vannini confirmed what we all know: no one wants to see the coach go. But the reality is that he is 87 years old. At some point, he won’t be on the show anymore.
This season, we enter uncharted territory. What if this is Kirk Herbstreit’s last year on College GameDay?
ESPN has always asked a lot of Herbie on Saturdays. There is a reason that College GameDay is sponsored by a rent-a-jet company. Getting from the site of a top-five SEC matchup Ann Arbor for the Michigan/Penn State game ABC is obligated to carry in prime time requires precise logistic planning on the part of ESPN and a dedication to a lack of rest from Herbstreit.
Now, we add the wrinkle of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football to the mix. I have no doubt Herbstreit will succeed in the NFL calling games alongside Al Michaels. They already scored rave reviews in their preseason debut.
My concern is just how long will he want to maintain this insane go-go-go schedule.
Who knows? Maybe Kirk Herbstreit is looking down the road and thinking “I won’t have to spend Saturday afternoons in the air traveling from Tuscaloosa to Iowa City for much longer. I can deal with it for another year.”
But maybe one year of living on the road is enough. Maybe the Saturday commitment makes it harder to prepare for Thursday or vice versa.
Kirk Herbstreit is a pro. I am not demanding you declare him the greatest football analyst in the history of television, but no one can deny that 1 – he is very good at what he does and 2 – being that good requires he dedicate a lot of time to studying game film, scouting reports and other materials provided to him.
College football will always be my favorite sport. You can put a game between the Buccaneers (the NFL team I grew up rooting for) and the Saints (the team I kinda hate the most) on one screen and a meaningless MAC game on another, and I cannot honestly say the Bucs would have my undivided attention.
I love college football. I want the best for college football. I think when it comes to game analysts, Herbstreit is undeniably the best.
But my fear is that if Herbie starts to feel burnout setting in, it will be college football that is sacrificed. After all, what more does he have to prove to the Saturday audience?
He and Corso have been the anchors of College GameDay for the entirety of my adult life. He has been in the primary ABC college football booth, first with Brent Musburger and now with Chris Fowler, since 2006 and has called the majority of National Championship Games in that timespan. Hell, he was one of the signature voices of EA Sports’ NCAA Football video game series! What on Earth is there left for him to do as a college football broadcaster?
Maybe I am not giving Kirk enough credit. Maybe he is a machine that not only loves the work, but actually needs it. Maybe staying busy doesn’t give him time to realize how tired he is mid-season.
Or maybe there is a happy medium. He could experience some level of burnout and find relief by giving up Saturday night games in order to still be on the GameDay set every Saturday morning. I know that is what I would prefer in the event something absolutely HAS to give.
The fact is, if Kirk Herbstreit needs some relief by season’s end and is ready to move on from College GameDay, ESPN has a two-fold problem. First, the show loses one of its two icons. Second, how do you replace Kirk Herbstreit on that show?
Desmond Howard’s star has risen to the point that he is seen as equally knowledgable and nearly as integral to the show’s structure. David Pollack has proven that he is a pro and knows how to create fun on set. They are both very capable, but neither are going to be able to assume the place that Herbstreit holds in college football fans’ minds. They have been the support players for too long. It would be like going to see Queen now. Sure, everyone else is there, but without Freddie Mercury, it doesn’t even really feel like Queen.
This column is not a criticism at all. It is more of a therapy session. I want Kirk to succeed in everything he does. He is such an important part of my favorite sport that it is impossible to root against him, even when I completely disagree with what he is saying.
‘mI don’t want to think about a college football world without Kirk Herbstreit in it, or even with less Kirk Herbstreit in it, but in my role with BSM, that is kind of part of what I get paid to do.
Demetri Ravanos is the Assistant Content Director for Barrett Sports Media. He hosts the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas. Previous stops include WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC. You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos and reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
Having nothing of note on your television channel for five months out of the year, in a landscape where your largest competition is programming relevant hours daily, seems like malpractice.
After the appetizer that was Week Zero, college football gets into full swing this week. As a resident fan of a Big Ten school, who lives near the middle of the Big Ten’s heartland, I can’t help but ponder one question: Why hasn’t the Big Ten Network created their own Paul Finebaum?
I’ll turn on the Big Ten Network Saturday to watch North Dakota play Nebraska — just to see how long it takes bewilderment to come across Scott Frost’s face — and it will be the second time I’ve turned on the channel since Friday, March 11th and the Big Ten basketball tournament’s quarterfinals. The only other time the channel has been at the forefront of my mind was when USC and UCLA made the jump to the conference earlier this summer.
That’s it. Five and a half months without even entertaining the idea of turning on the channel, outside one of the largest college sports stories of all time.
In an ever-increasing “war” for college football media rights, marketability, notoriety, and publicity, I just can’t fathom why the Big Ten Network hasn’t tried to create their version of The Paul Finebaum Show. Having nothing of note on your television channel for five months, in a college sports landscape where your largest competition is programming relevant hours daily, seems like malpractice.
As just a general sports fan, I’ll turn on The Paul Finebaum Show on the SEC Network periodically just to see what the talk around the SEC is that day or week, hear what the callers believe, and generally enjoy the conversation. I’ll also dial up Marty & McGee, as fun as a radio/TV simulcast can be, which also airs on the SEC Network.
Meanwhile, on the Big Ten Network, they’re airing Big Ten Classics of Nebraska games that happened while the school was a member of the Big 8 and StudentU broadcasts of field hockey. I understand the summer programming, to a point. There are 168 hours in a week you have to have some moving pictures on the screen, but it’s easy to take a nice 20 hours out of each week with a radio/TV simulcast that features strictly talk about your — now 16 — institutions.
I have a difficult time believing it wouldn’t benefit the conference, the cable network, and radio stations in the Midwest, and now both the Eastern and Western seaboards. I’d be hard pressed to think 101.7 The Hammer in West Lafayette or KXIC in Iowa City, or WLVN in Olney, Illinois wouldn’t love to air the Big Ten’s version of The Paul Finebaum Show.
Paul Finebaum, who Brady Quinn recently called an “SEC Thumper“, has been the sports radio show in the South for more than two decades. There are few radio stations in the south, sports or not, that wouldn’t love to have his show air on their station. It’s simply a matter of fact. And yet, the Big Ten Network, apparently, has no interest in building something similar.
Maybe I’ve misjudged demand. One of the biggest gripes Big Ten fans have with the SEC is their motto of “It Just Means More”. And it’s easy to see the grudge. 50% of all college football fans follow 16 schools. Four of those schools — Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, and Wisconsin — are in the top 16, according to a study commissioned by the NCAA. Now in full disclosure, seven of the 16 schools are in the SEC, but the point still stands. There’s obviously a demand for constant college football and basketball talk.
Maybe I’ve misjudged the lack of a slam dunk talent to host the show. An obvious choice doesn’t stand out to me at the moment (if Francois McGillicuddy is reading this, have your people get in touch with my people). Maybe the Big Ten East and Big Ten West are such drastically different divisions that a conference-wide show wouldn’t work 12 months out of the year.
Maybe I haven’t considered that FOX Sports — majority owner of the Big Ten Network — and iHeartMedia’s ability to work together to create a radio/tv simulcast that would air in Big Ten markets and also air on the cable network. They’ve worked together, obviously, in other areas. Why not this one?
Maybe I haven’t considered the Big Ten Network’s appetite for creating a relevant show. Maybe it’s just not something they want to add to their programming. Whether it be budget related, whether it be a behind-the-scenes effort they don’t want to undertake, or maybe they just don’t believe such a show would be profitable. That sounds like you don’t care about your audience or the programming you put together, but it’s their network. They can do as they please. But letting your chief rival own a portion of the media, and the all-important narrative, sure feels like a missed opportunity.
Or maybe, all things considered, the beauty of The Paul Finebaum Show is that it isn’t that easily recreated. Maybe it isn’t necessarily Paul Finebaum alone that makes the show great. Maybe it’s the listeners, the viewers, the callers, the coaches, the players, and Paul himself all in unison that make The Paul Finebaum Show what it is.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason why the Big Ten Network hasn’t created their own Paul Finebaum.
Garrett Searight is the Editor of Barrett Sports Media and Barrett News Media. He previously was the Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH. He is also a play-by-play announcer for TV and Radio broadcasts in Western Ohio.
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