In part two of my Q&A with Chicago Sports Radio veteran Dan McNeil, Dan talks about his second stint at The Score, dealing with mental health issues and his eight year run at ESPN 1000. You’ll read about the intriguing maneuvering it took to get his show at ESPN. Plus, you’ll hear inside details of the building of “Mac, Jurko, and Harry” and the show’s early growing pains. It’s all here in Part 2 of my three-part Q&A with Dan McNeil.
The Danny Mac Show on the Score (June 2009-June 2014)
Fishman: You return to the Score after more than eight years away at ESPN 1000…how did it feel?
McNeil: It was a very awkward return. I had decent relationships with some of the guys there, still, but I think they were very casual relationships. I think there was a mutual feeling with a few people that if we didn’t work together again that would be ok with everybody. There was a lot of tension already at the station.
Before Matt (Spiegel) and I jumped back in, there was a long period of dissention among the ranks. I can’t give an opinion on it because I wasn’t there to absorb all the toxicity, but the combination of North, Murphy, Mulligan and Boers made for a very volatile cocktail. As there always is, there’s some petty jealousies and we’re all insecure to varying degrees, but based on the descriptions of those who experienced it, I came back at a time when the morale was probably as low as it ever had been in station history.
Matt (Spiegel) was not warmly received. The fact that Mitch (Score Ops Manager/PD Mitch Rosen) gave me a voice in Spiegel’s hiring didn’t help the situation. Mitch also gave me a voice in one of the producers. That didn’t agree with several people. I get that. People who are in-house have every reason to expect that they will be examined, but I also had a track record of making some pretty good recommendations both for co-hosts and producers. I’d submit Jurko as one of those, and god damn, look at the guys who have produced my shows over the years who I’ve hand picked–there’s some pretty talented mother f**kers on that list. If the fact that I was given that freedom was disruptive for some people, I really don’t give a shit, Colonel Jessup. I earned that. I f**king earned that!
They just didn’t give me that. Had Terry Boers flopped in ‘92 and John Jurkovic flopped I wouldn’t have been given a voice, but I did get a voice. I was proven right with Matt (Spiegel) but he was not well received. So it was an awkward return.
Leaving the house at 7 o’clock in the morning to go to work didn’t agree with me. I felt we had a pretty good vibe on the show. Matt and I pretty much right out of the shoot I felt pretty comfortable with and after awhile as a unit we gelled. I told Matt at the beginning I typically look at these things as “let’s do five years together!” I think after five years is a lot of times a good time to reinvent yourself. And that’s what I decided to do.
The first two and half years were very good. The last (with Spiegel) was a struggle. I made it more of a struggle than I needed it to be, because I was not taking very good care of myself. I was not participating in a mental health program that somebody with as many issues as I have needs to.
Fish: I think you have to include the talent on the major decisions of co-host and producer when you’re putting that team together. Otherwise I think you’re asking for failure.
Mac: When I took some time off, Fish, I thought a lot about this– and I had a lot of time off in the last five or six years. I enjoyed civilian life way more than most of us would. It’s incredible how among any form of entertainment that you can imagine–the movies, music, whatever–radio people and sports talk radio performers have less control of their product than any motherf**ker trying to sell a f**kin’ act. I had shows blown up that none of us wanted blown up. Many others have had shows blown up.
Howard (Stern) is a hero to me because he’s the only motherf**ker who went out there and won. A lot of us have been paid well and it’s a rush and you do a lot of cool things. If you’re lucky you see a lot of the country and someone else pays for it–and that’s all great, but when you examine the absence of power for people who have achieved a high level of competency in their craft it’s remarkable how we’re all just f**king pawns on a chess board. Howard has been able to go out there and pick his own crew and say “f**k you!” to management for 25 years.
Fish: At what point did you realize that you weren’t taking care of your mental health? Was it while you were working with Spiegel? Was there a seminal moment?
Mac: It was very specific. It was in the summer of 2011. The two years of foolishly letting the behaviors and attitudes of others affect my disposition–which is absolutely hideous to let others rent that space for free. I went off my psych med, Lamictal, without consulting my doctor. I had a lot of success with that product. It’s not an antidepressant it’s kind of a mood stabilizer. It’s prescribed to people who are depressive, some people with anxiety–and I’m both of those.
I went off of it and within a month my world got black and white. I was playing free golf with three lifelong friends and I birdied the first hole. While walking back to the cart on a gorgeous summer day I remember saying to myself, “Thank God there are only 17 more of these f**king holes so I can go home, be alone, and watch Goodfellas.” I withdrew from even the things I enjoyed the most. Except for my sons and a few very close friends and my wife, I didn’t want to be around people. I was not feeling anything. There was a joylessness in almost everything.
The climate at the station I let get to me more than I should have. I should have focused on what was good and what was good was the vibe on the show–with Spiegs and Jay and Shep and Miska. Then Ben Finfer rejoined me which has always been some of the best radio I have done.
So that was a rough time. I grinded it out without going back on my med and continuing to eat pain meds which dulled me. I like to stay active and I have a lot of pain and I used those things as an excuse to keep eating Narco. It was a pretty dark last couple of years. I didn’t want to be there (at The Score). I wanted to try something different anyway but the climate there and how little I was respecting my conditions wasn’t a good time.
But we did some killer stuff. I remember a lot of it with fondness. I mean the stuff we did with the Blackhawks–Spiegs and I went to Philly and Boston.
In ‘13 when the Hawks were getting to the final against Boston I felt we were being a little too “hockey-ish” on the show. I learned from my mistakes in the 90s that hockey is not as center stage as other things in Chicago, but I said to myself I’m probably walking very soon. This is my way to thank the Hawks fans who loved me all the years. F**k the ratings. If I want to talk to Mike Emrick for an hour, I will and we did. We ended up out of the money (ratings bonuses) that book and I didn’t give a shit.
I ended up leaving in the summer of ‘14 after the Hawks got popped by the Kings in the Western Conference Finals. If they had made it to the Final, I was going to work without a contract and finish the Hawks run but I wasn’t gonna come back. I was pretty specific with Mitch (Rosen) about that. People remember it as my summer of discontent. Spiegel calls it “The Summer of Uncertainty.” I corrected him on that and said “remember when I walked in that June and gave anyone parting gifts?”
Mitch called me right before I crossed the border (into Canada) and lost cell service. He said, “We gotta work this out.” I said, “Mitch, it has been a month and I want to try something different. What’s there to work out?”
So when I got back from Canada in mid August I met with him and Rod (Zimmermann, CBS Radio Market Manager for Chicago at the time) as a courtesy. They offered me a lot of money–more than they had offered me in the middle of June. It was a fair-enough deal. There was no indecisiveness that summer. Without another job offer I said thank you, politely, but I’m going to try something different.
Mac, Jurko and Harry (May 2001-Jan 2009)
Fish: It seemed to me like an interesting mix–you, Jurko and Harry. Can you talk about the grouping, how it all came together, and the early days of the show?
Mac: Mitch and I started talking about it right before I resigned from The Score. Bob Snyder was the GM of ESPN 1000 at the time. He was pretty committed to Bill Simonson and Lou Canellis, but Mitch told me he would work him (Snyder) and I decided I would roll dice in October of ‘00. I resigned from The Score with a “maybe” that Mitch would have a spot for me once Simonson and Canellis continued to struggle against The Score.
So I leave The Score and finally Bob Snyder warms up. I had to use (Mike) Greenberg to get to Len Weiner (ESPN Network PD at the time) in Bristol to backdoor my way into Chicago. I needed an ally in Bristol. Greenberg set up a meeting with Len Weiner and me at Super Bowl 35 in Tampa. (Dan remembers the game like it was yesterday saying, “SB 35 Ravens over the Giants, Ray Lewis the Super Bowl MVP. Only Super Bowl with back to back kick returns for touchdowns–Dixon and Lewis. You can look it up!”)
I go down there on a recruiting trip and Len Weiner and I chew the fat for three hours talking radio after the “Mike and Mike Show” and fell in love. I started doing weekends out there to prove to the network that I’m not a crazy man for walking away from 200k at The Score with a rep for being a rabble rouser and that I’m worth hiring.
Eventually when (Ron) Gleason got fired by The Score I used that to pry my way in at ESPN. I said, “The guy who is taking over wants to hire me back.” I told Len that. There was some grains of truth of that because (Jeff) Schwartz was taking over. Schwartz might have taken me back. I saw it as an opportunity to play a card that I may not have had, and I played it and immediately Bristol put the pressure on Snyder to hire me.
So “Mac, Jurko, and Harry” is born and Snyder wants to keep some of the station’s DNA intact. He puts Harry (Teinowitz) on the show with me and Jurko and I had never considered a 3-man weave for a show in my life. Immediately I curled up and thought it was going to be uncomfortable, in particular because I knew Harry was going to be more of a shooting guard than he was hired to be. He was described to me by the suits as a “tip-in” guy. The funny guy. The occasional guy.
Well we know Harry. Harry grew into a role more like that, but initially, especially when Jurko started slow, Harry pounced on an opportunity to be more or a presence than I was comfortable with. So in those first few years we really suffered a LOT of growing pains as a show.
Fish: So when did it turn the corner from “growing pains” to when the show was really cooking?
Mac: It took Teinowitz several years to let this more of a desire to have a playground than a classroom sink in for me. I think Harry taught me after a number of months to lighten it up a little bit and I agreed that the easiest way to make people feel like they are welcomed warmly is to create a saloon atmosphere–so that’s what we started to call it. And while we had a lot of tension and fights, it was a place where people felt compelled to hang out.
They weren’t going to be lectured to. It wasn’t going to be “The Sermon on the Mount.” We weren’t going to tackle issues that were polarizing for half of a show like steroids or anything that got us too far away from an opportunity to laugh. We’ve decided to plant the flag in the ground that we were going to be the goofball show.
Fish: So you weren’t going to get into Race issues and you’re not getting into the Steroid issues..
Mac: (Jumping in) No, No, we’re not getting into politics and we’re also going to get into other forms of entertainment and make casual sports fans feel welcomed. And eventually, women even came around to that show.
Fish: So you get cooking on that show and you’re a few months away from the end of a contract and you get pulled off the air? Were you surprised by that move?
Mac: I wasn’t surprised. When we were told in December that we weren’t going to the Super Bowl I sort of sniffed it out. Advertising dollars were drying up because of the market. Everybody was taking hits. I mean it was a f**king depression in ‘08.
They decide they’re not sending us to the Super Bowl. I was not our literal union steward, that was Bruce (Levine), but when programming had issues, the one who took those issues to management, Jim Pastor(GM) and Justin Craig(PD), was me. That meant being a dick to Justin. None of it was personal because I truly like him as a guy but he came in replacing (Jeff) Schwartz, shoving ESPN programming down our throats. Mandating things. In essence telling us, “Forget everything you’ve been doing. This is how we’re gonna do it. I’m gonna mold you into another “Mike and Mike.”
Now Justin did a lot of good things, too. He had an interview coach come in and do a seminar with us. My jaw dropped at how much we needed that. I’ve told Mitch how much we need that at the Score. He came in and did a three hour presentation on interviewing and I wish I would have had that seminar in 1992.
Fish: What were the biggest things you took away from that interviewing seminar?
Mac: In key interviews, not regular contributors you talk to every week, but when you get a guy on you’ll only talk to 1-2 times a year, a key interview–ask short direct questions! People want to hear from him. I got the rest of the f**king show where I can give my opinion. I don’t need to give him my opinion. Get his opinion. Get him talking! It’s what he’s going to say. It’s not going to be some brilliant way I shape a question. It’s what I’m going to get him to talk about. So ask a short, direct question. The biggest offense that most of us make are the double barrel and triple barrel questions-where you give your guest complete control of the interview. He picks one of the questions to answer and talks for three minutes and you’ve lost the time for a good follow up question.
In part three of my Q&A with Dan McNeil, Mac talks about the start of The Score in 1992, his partnership with Terry Boers and his longtime friendship with the late Doug Buffone.
Matt Fishman is a former columnist for BSM. The current PD of ESPN Cleveland has a lengthy resume in sports radio programming. His career stops include SiriusXM, 670 The Score in Chicago, and 610 Sports in Kansas City. You can follow him on Twitter @FatMishman20 or you can email him at FishmanSolutions@gmail.com.
