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:
MONDAY: Best Local Show
TUESDAY: Best National Radio Show
WEDNESDAY: Best College Football Podcast
THURSDAY: Best TV Show
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.
