It feels weird to start a column about the impact a single person made on sports radio with a Mt. Rushmore comparison. The practice is played out and wholly unoriginal, but if you are going to contextualize what “Phyllis in Mulga” was to The Paul Finebaum Show audience, you need to turn to one of our strangest national monuments.
Who is on the Mt. Rushmore of sports radio callers? Honestly, I do not know or care. What I know is that if there is such a Mt. Rushmore, to properly credit Phyllis, who passed away last week, you would have to carve her face on the moon.
Phyllis Chapple-Perkins wasn’t the most frequent caller to the show but she made an impression. Finebaum told me that he remembers her first phone call to the show in 1993.
“I said something critical of Gene Stallings,” he said. “What got her was he had helped her son and they were friends. Then, we got to know each other. She still screamed and hollered but we became close friends.”
In hindsight, it seems appropriate that it was defending a championship winning football coach at Alabama that put her on Finebaum’s radar in the first place. It was the very same thing that made her name known to people across the country 21 years later.
We’ll call it “The Cow Turd Call.” Phyllis could not let Colin Cowherd’s insistence that Nick Saban’s dynasty at Alabama was beginning to crumble following the 2014 season, when the team finished 12-2, stand.
She was on the phone in the next segment to deliver a rant that spread like wildfire. It didn’t just go viral on YouTube and other social media platforms. This call popped up on SportsCenter, Pardon the Interruption, and dozens of other shows across the ESPN networks.
First of all, hey Cow Turd [ESPN’s Colin Cowherd], you better shut your freakin’ mouth. You understand me, you little weasel? Let’s have a bowl game of our own, we could call it the Cow Turd Bowl….
Alabama won 12 games, Paul. They won the SEC Championship, that was a great feat. I don’t care what anybody thinks. Cow Turd or anybody else, I don’t care what they think. Alabama was good this year! Alabama played their hearts out. They won 12 freakin’ games. You can’t take that away from them Paul. My God, yes, they aren’t going to vie for the national championship. They lost last night, but I’m proud. I’m proud of every single game they won this year…. A few games cannot make the SEC look bad. You hear me Cow Turd?
“Phyllis from Mulga” on the Paul Finebaum show 1/3/2015
That call is all some people know about The Paul Finebaum Show. Case in point, a prominent figure in the sports media has talked about the call several times on air. When I asked if they wanted to participate in this little tribute, I was told that it didn’t feel right. That call was all they knew about Phyllis in Mulga. Her voice and disgust with Colin Cowherd had brought this person tremendous joy, but to say that they knew where she stood in the pantheon of Finebaum callers would be a lie.
To Finebaum though, that isn’t even the most memorable moment involving Phyllis. Paul says that actually came in 1999.
“She had used a profane word in a sentence and it upset a lot of people. So we suspended her. People didn’t like that either,” he explained in an email. “So we decided to have a trial. We billed it as trial of century. She had a former US attorney representing her. We had another attorney on the other side prosecuting. I was judge. I ruled that she had violated policy and we gave her a lifetime ban. The next day I overturned it to time served.”
Matt Fishman led the charge to get Finebaum on a national platform. He brought the show to SiriusXM in 2010. While Phyllis’s name was not mentioned specifically, Fish told me that she was a good representative of what he found attractive about the show.
“Paul is amazing at orchestrating the conversations and making these ‘characters’ feel special,” he told me. “When The Paul Finebaum Show went national on SiriusXM, it was important for me to not try to change the show. We took the show for exactly what it sounded like. How unique it was. So, the “characters” are a big part of the show. Sorry to see some of them pass throughout the years. Phyllis was one of the best. She will definitely be missed.”
Greg Sankey, commissioner of the SEC, echoed the same sentiments. When I asked about Phyllis, he said that she was part of what the conference value about Finebaum and his show.
“Paul has created a unique community of callers to his show that provides information and entertainment I believe is unlike any other daily talk show on television [and radio]. He has a group of regular callers that create their own persona through their on-air relationship with Paul. And then there is another population of first-time callers who dial in from all over the country, proving the national interest in SEC sports. The callers to Paul’s show provide a very unique daily experience.”
Tim Brando spent years making appearances on The Paul Finebaum Show. All of those iconic voices – Phyllis, Legend, I-Man, Tammy – have all let him have it a time or two.
“At times Paul’s callers were so effective & impactful ya thought he grabbed them out of central casting,” he told me in a text. “Phyllis, like Tammy, who tragically died a couple of years ago, was of that ilk. She has no filter, but a huge heart!”
The aforementioned Tammy was killed in a car crash in 2018. Her calls about Auburn were as synonymous with the show as Phyllis’s about Alabama.
Laura Rutledge attended her funeral along with Finebaum, who spoke at that affair, and will likely speak at Phyllis’s memorial too. Rutledge said that her time on the SEC Network and working so closely with Finebaum during her stint hosting SEC Nation, gave her a deep appreciation for his audience.
“Phyllis was the quintessential Finebaum caller,” she told me. “Full of personality, passion and fandom she was everything that has made the show great for all these years. What a fantastic woman. She will be dearly missed.”
Maybe you had to actually be in Alabama to really get to know Phyllis. She was invited on shows by Cari Champion and Jemele Hill after her Cow Turd call went viral, but it was the voices in her home area that had the pleasure of getting to know her.
Ryan Haney, who has been the program director of JOX 94.5 since long before it was on the FM dial, told me that the Phyllis he knew wasn’t all that different from the one we heard on the radio. He also couldn’t help but point out that she always created great radio!
“Phyllis was as authentic as it gets. Her calls were as genuine as the person she was. It didn’t matter who cheered for, when Phyllis called – you stopped, you listened and you even learned something new.”
In the sports radio world, the only person that knew Phyllis Chapple-Perkins as well as Paul Finebaum was Pat Smith. Now the co-host of 3 Man Front on JOX 94.5, Smith served as the director of The Paul Finebaum Radio Network. He is responsible for getting the show on in places like Tallassee, Albertville, Eutaw and a bunch of other small towns you’ve never heard of if you haven’t spent significant time in the state.
Smith mourns Phyllis, but he also mourns for all of the people that lost her. Chief amongst them are her immediate family, but her influence spread far and wide, both thanks to the radio show and thanks to her inclination for helping whenever and however she could.
“Many will remember her devotion to Alabama Football, but I’ll forever think of her as the woman who provided comfort to her area when it was struck by devastating tornadoes,” Smith told me. “Phyllis was genuine and that intensity for all things Alabama was incredible. No matter where Paul and I went nationally, folks knew of Phyllis and her love for the Tide. She was always gracious to travel with us statewide and do anything for us and the show. She was the original who all others after, tried to emulate. It was a privilege to have known Phyllis on and off air for over 25 years.”
The people that knew Phyllis Chapple-Perkins got to appreciate both sides of her and each was just as authentic as the other. Smith said that when a gift showed up in the nursery for he and his wife when their first child was born in 1998, he was touched, but not surprised to learn it was from Phyllis.
“Thats the way she was, but make no mistake,” Smith said. “She was ready to pounce on anyone who disrespected her Tide.”
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.
