Professor of Intellectual and Entertaining Sports Talk.
I had someone send that to me the other day. I like it. I’m going to use that. It’s already in my Twitter bio, because of course it is.
That encompasses my goals and exactly what I try to do with my show, podcasts, blogs, and video blogs.
Knowledge with a little entertainment.
Sports are fun. They’re supposed to be fun. So why shouldn’t we have some fun when we talk about them? Some programs are all business and straight up facts and analysis. Nothing wrong with that. Some are just straight up about being entertaining and nothing more. Nothing wrong with that.
But my style is a mixture of both. Because for me, sports were and are my escape. They’re my sanctuary. My passion. My joy since I was a kid pretending that my sidewalk block was a basketball hoop because I didn’t have a real one. Or throwing football passes to the clothes line polls and pretending that was a receiver. Or using sidewalk chalk to draw a square on the home foundation to work on my pitching accuracy. I’ve always found joy in playing a sport, because I believe that’s at the heart of it all. I daydreamed all the time about sports and being a part of them.
But along the way, I discovered that not only did I enjoy playing these games, I absorbed knowledge about it. And it would stick with me and I wanted to learn more and understand more. You probably heard me tell the story about writing a letter to the Orlando Magic as a kid with a trade proposal for Eric Montross to replace Shaq. They obviously didn’t listen to me. Or in 5th grade we had a contest on who could write the most names of current Green Bay Packer players in one minute. I wrote down 24, first and last name. I won a can of Spaghettios.
I remember weird stuff like that. But I remember a lot of sports stuff too. My friends and I always joked that if there was a Harvard school for useless sports knowledge, I would have been the valedictorian.
But I love sports and I love studying and talking about them. And that’s why I try to incorporate knowledge and fun in my programs. Some may not like it and some may. It might sound weird at times or cool the other. But that’s me.
And I guarantee you all, it’s all natural. I don’t write scripts or write anything ahead of time. I don’t write notes either. The only thing I do is I have a small marker board with a few topic ideas that I carry into the studio with me or when I get ready to record a podcast. I’ll look up stats and dates and numbers on the computer, but I never write anything ahead of time. I want to be real. For interviews, it’s the same. I’ll jot down a few words, but then I go with the flow of the interview, because maybe something will pop-up during it.
For the longest time I thought my mind was full of useless knowledge and thoughts about sports. Not anymore. Damn I’m lucky.
Professor of Intellectual and Entertaining Sports Talk. Best compliment ever.