How many times have you heard someonecall the NFL “a copycat league”? Like too many to count, right? We’ve all probably been guilty of using the tired phrase on the air a time or two.
We hear that a lot because it is true. Tony Sparano lined Ronnie Brown up under center and was consistently gaining big yards, so all of the sudden everyone had a version of the wildcat formation in their playbook. Sean McVay comes along and turns Jared Goff into a stud and the Rams into a Super Bowl team, and suddenly anyone that has ever made eye contact with him is a candidate for every NFL coaching vacancy.
Someone will try to do that again this offseason. We have seen Lamar Jackson go from gifted athlete who showed promise to undeniable MVP frontrunner. The Ravens are leading the AFC as the regular season winds down, and that means that every scout and GM is about to overvalue any college quarterback that Bill Polian would prefer to see lineup at wide receiver.
I was listening to my buddy Nate Kreckman on Altitude Sports Radio in Denver last week. He made an excellent point about how this could wind up going. He called Lamar Jackson’s 2019 success “a perfect situation of the guy with the right ceiling also being the guy with the right work ethic and put with the right organization.” You can try to copy the formula, but maybe whether or not it is successful depends on having the absolutely perfect ingredient.
Radio can be something of a copycat league too. Surely at some point either you or someone you work with have taken a look at a segment or a host that is having great success elsewhere. It could be across the country or across the street. Either way, the question “how do we replicate that?” has most certainly been asked.
Consider what Nate said about Lamar Jackson though. NFL teams can’t really count on copying the formula that worked out so well for him and the Baltimore Ravens. Jackson was the guy perfectly suited to succeed in the way he did.
Maybe that could be the case with some of the elements and talent you want to import or at least have your station emulate. Sure, it is great for the other station, but maybe your station or your talent doesn’t have the right ingredients to duplicate its success.
I used to have this consultant when I worked in the rock radio world. He had a big binder of every idea that his stations had executed over the years. That binder had everything in it from imaging scripts to major promotions. If you asked him for help with a bit idea, he didn’t give you something new or original that he had considered just for you. He would open his binder and rattle off a list of things his morning show in Detroit did in 1999.
It didn’t matter that we were a Southern market. It didn’t matter that ten years had passed. It worked once, so surely it would work again.
Romeo Crennel flopped as a head coach in Cleveland. He really flopped as a head coach in Kansas City. Eric Mangini was only the Man-Genius for three years in New York before he was run out of town. He wasn’t even the Man-Genius in Cleveland, and got run out of there in two. Josh McDaniels flamed out after two forgettable years in Denver. Matt Patricia seems to be well on his way to doing the same in Detroit.
All of those teams wanted that Bill Bellichick magic for themselves. They never once considered the possibility that the coach isn’t the only ingredient to attain that kind of success. You also need a once-in-a-lifetime quarterback…and apparently a blatant disregard for the rules.
So before you try to pry one half of the show from across the street that is kicking your ass in morning drive or demand your mid day host start doing this great bit you heard while driving the family down to Disney last summer, look at what you have at your disposal. Is your mid day guy the right guy to be doing a bit like that? Do you have the right talent in your building to pair with the co-host from across the street to form a killer new show?
Sports is far from the only place this happens. Think about the trailer for the new Ghostbusters movie. Do you think that gets made if Hollywood wasn’t going through a “let’s just make Stranger Things a dozen times” phase?
There’s nothing wrong with copying success. Just remember that a copy is always a little bit worse than the original. And remember that no matter where your ideas are coming from, they are only as good as your ability to successfully execute them.
Some NFL team is going to go into Draft night in April thinking that Jalen Hurts or Jordan Love can do for their team what Lamar Jackson did for the Ravens, and maybe they are right. I can guarantee that there will be more teams thinking that way than are actually capable of turning that vision into reality. If you’re looking to borrow someone else’s plan for success, make sure their plan can be executed by your people.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at 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 or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
