College football tapped me on the shoulder this past weekend and told me I needed an attitude adjustment. I’ve been guilty this year — as many other hosts have — of focusing too much of my attention on Alabama’s dominance. Highly ranked teams were slow out of the gate to start the season while Bama looked more like Usain Bolt sprinting down the track. After the Tide dusted Miami 44-13, I turned into a “can’t-beat-Bama” broken record. I now see how that’s the wrong message to harp on.
It wasn’t the Florida Gators that made me realize this as they made Bama sweat out a tough 31-29 win. It was actually the great atmospheres at various colleges Saturday that caused me to rethink my stance. Penn State was a madhouse as it hosted and beat No. 22 Auburn. Indiana’s home crowd was so hyped to face No. 8 Cincinnati that fans in the student section ripped out an entire bleacher. Why? Because they were fired up beyond the point of making rational decisions.
The thought finally popped into my head; it’d be really sad if fans around the country said, “We can’t beat Bama so what’s the use?” Think about that. Picture half empty stadiums as fans refused to show up until their odds of dethroning Nick Saban improved. No energy. No excitement. Just blah. No jumping around at Camp Randall. No tomahawk chop at Tallahassee. No white outs in Happy Valley. Nothing.
Passion is what makes college football so great. You can even feel the electricity in the crowd while watching at home. It would be depressing if great fan bases shrugged their shoulders and weakly accepted that Alabama is better.
If all of that would be lame, then why would harping on Bama’s dominance work in sports radio?
Look, there are certainly times for hosts to stir the pot and be the bearers of bad news, but it shouldn’t be all of the time. Nobody wants a nonstop reality check. Imagine if you grabbed the mic from the PA announcer and said, “Hey, all of you Penn State homers, don’t forget that Bama would smoke you by three touchdowns.” Think that would go over well? Nope. So why would it be much different on the air?
Hosting shows is about more than just being right. Rosie Perez once said in White Men Can’t Jump, “Sometimes when you win, you really lose.” Sometimes in sports radio when you’re right, you’re actually wrong. Instead of predicting the winning team on ESPN’s College GameDay each Saturday, picture Lee Corso saying, “Neither one of these teams is beating Bama so the heck with it.” Although Corso would probably be correct, he wouldn’t benefit from the wrong approach.
One of the things that makes the NFL so great is hope. Many fan bases have realistic hope of winning a championship. That isn’t the case in college football. Imagine if the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers got the first pick in each round of the NFL draft. They’d be even more dominant. Well, that’s basically what happens with Alabama as the defending champs reload with the best recruiting class each year.
Constantly reminding people of that reality is like your smartwatch saying, “You’re overweight. You’re overweight. You’re overweight.” Nobody wants that. You’d chuck that thing into the closest body of water if that were the case.
It’s not just about what hosts are saying, it’s about what they’re selling. If a host keeps saying Alabama can’t be beaten, that host is selling a reality check that most people don’t want. Instead of a vendor at a baseball game saying, “Get your popcorn here,” the host is actually saying, “Get your harsh dose of reality that you really don’t want here.” Who’s buying that?
Hosts should be mindful of how things land. Colin Cowherd once alluded to this thought on his show. I can’t remember what he was specifically talking about, but he referred to a topic and said something in the neighborhood of, “It’ll probably be clunky. It’s not going to land well.” The last part always stuck with me.
It’s a great advantage to be aware of how your comments will land with others. It’s one thing to say, “Hey, wanna take a trip somewhere? It’d be fun.” It’s completely different to yell at your partner, “I refuse to be in a relationship where we don’t go out and do things.” The goal is the same; let’s go do something. But the approach and outcome is much different. If you’re aware of how things will land, you can arrange your comments to be beneficial.
I understand that one of the core ingredients of sports radio is stirring the pot, but not all stirring works. Saying the Dallas Cowboys stink or the Los Angeles Lakers are overrated largely works because most people want that to be the case. Who wants Bama to be unstoppable? Bama fans. Anybody else? No, that’s pretty much the entire list.
By touting Bama, you are selling Bama. Hosts might not even realize they’re doing it. Heck, I didn’t until this past weekend. I was focused on being right instead how things would land. It’s always wise for hosts to ask themselves, “What am I selling?” It’s so simple yet so easy to overlook. You start thinking, “What can I talk about today? I can mention this. I can bring up that.” You forget that your stance on any topic is basically a sales pitch.
Why would you sell despair? Especially relating to college football! One of the greatest strengths of college football is the enthusiasm. Don’t throw a bucket of ice water on that excitement; tap into it. At the very least don’t beat a dead horse. If you’re going to talk about college ball, bring more to the table than, “Can’t beat ‘Bama.” All it will earn is a collective eye roll. That basic take won’t land well.
There are certainly times for hosts to go against the grain, to argue against what listeners think or want. But it’s hard to make a career out of that approach. You’re selling what they aren’t buying. Like Jalen Rose quoting The O’Jays; you got to give the people what they want. There is an excellent line from Proximo in the movie Gladiator; “I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd and you’ll win your freedom.” You can’t win the crowd in sports radio by selling what listeners don’t want.
Brian Noe is a columnist for BSM and an on-air host heard nationwide on FOX Sports Radio’s Countdown To Kickoff. Previous roles include stops in Portland, OR, Albany, NY and Fresno, CA. You can follow him on Twitter @TheNoeShow or email him at bnoe@premierenetworks.com.
