There really isn’t a standard formula for doing a great show. Those are the words of 850 ESPN Cleveland host Aaron Goldhammer. It’s a refreshing perspective. So much of sports radio is, “Do this, don’t do that.” He basically says figure out what your best ingredients are and make a meal out of them.
“We know that we’re not First Take,” Goldhammer told me. “There are some people who do those shows, Stephen A is the master, I listen to Mad Dog and I’m like, this guy is a genius at what he does. It’s so entertaining, but I know it’s not who we are. I know it’s not where we’re at our best.”
Goldhammer says at the core of what he and Tony Rizzo discuss on The Really Big Show is either Cleveland Browns, drama or fun. Most of what they talk about has at least two of those elements, if not all three. It’s a formula that has lead to a lot of entertaining shows and success for the duo.
In our conversation below, Goldhammer shares some pro wrestling stories related to Rizzo’s dad, who used to be in the business. He also talks about how there is a pro wrestling aspect to their radio show, and describes why he isn’t exactly the Cleveland’s knight in shining armor. Enjoy!
Brian Noe: How long have you and Rizz been together doing shows?
Aaron Goldhammer: We started in 2007. What happened was, I started with Good Karma in this town called Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, which is where our company was founded. I moved from New York City where I went to college. My whole life was there. I really wanted to try this; I think my parents thought I was insane.
I said, look, I love sports. And I was always a theater kid growing up. I performed in choir, I did classical piano, I was just on stage a lot from a pretty young age. So the sports talk thing was sort of like a fun marriage of my love to entertain and perform with my love of sports. I was never a very good player. I loved playing sports when I was a kid, but I was usually one of the last ones picked on the basketball team. I was never good enough to really make it.
So I got this job with Good Karma in this tiny, little town in Wisconsin. It was an incredible professional opportunity. Then when we bought the stations in Cleveland, I moved out. Rizz and I met each other at a Cleveland State/Butler basketball game where I think Butler won like 463-10. It was in the height of the Brad Stevens era, those teams that would go to the Final Four.
We got to know each other a little bit there, but pretty much we got thrown together. If Rizz had wanted, he could have said you’re the producer, you help me come up with topics, you pick the music, you book the guests, whatever. But his philosophy was always keep close to the microphone because I might want to check in on whatever drama is going on over on the other side of the glass.
That’s kind of how our on-air relationship started. It just so happened like so many other things, I don’t think there was any science behind putting the two of us together. But I think the luckiest turn of my career is that I got paired with Rizz. I’ve been a student at the Tony Rizzo school of broadcasting for 16 years. He’s an incredible safety net. Our relationship is very honest with each other. Some people in broadcasting that I’ve heard of in the past, these partnerships that fizzle and fall apart because of the relationship. Rizz and I have an incredible friendship in addition to our partnership on the air.
That’s not to say that we don’t scream at each other. We’re good to get into it once a quarter or so. But I think we’re really honest and direct with each other. I think we really trust each other and I think we know that we’re really dependent upon each other. In that sense it’s been a blessing in my life to have Rizz around in multiple ways.
BN: I didn’t know this, his dad was the original Mean Gene Okerlund. Does that ever come up on your show at all?
AG: Well, first of all, it lives in the background of everything we do. He has this sort of wrestling showmanship about him. This sort of sensibility for the good guy, the heel, and all of that. We call Rizz’s dad JR, Jack Reynolds. He grew up in a broadcasting world where he couldn’t use his real name, which is Joseph Rizzo. He had to fake his name so that it didn’t sound ethnic.
The first WWF broadcasts, he did a lot of work. He was the play-by-play guy like Mean Gene. Jesse The Body Ventura was his partner for a lot of this stuff on USA. He traveled all over the world. The stories, Rizz still pulls new stories that in 16 years on the air together, I haven’t heard. About his dad and local wrestling stuff, and then when it went national, and sort of the history of all of that, that he was really involved in.
Rizz always says he shook the hand of the giant, which is that he met Andre the Giant. These guys would come to town and eat, come over to his house, hang out in the backyard, go to his family’s restaurant and eat like four giant plates of chicken parm. I think he got a certain work ethic, but also as I said, really a sense of the entertainment side of what we do that comes from a lot of the work that his dad did in wrestling.
BN: What would you say has been your proudest moment in your radio career?
AG: I was on the air when LeBron left Cleveland, and I was on the air when LeBron came back. One of the other incredible lucky breaks of my career is that it’s been centered in his two tenures in Cleveland. It’s just given us so much national exposure and given us so many opportunities to do things we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do.
I think when he left, I was proud of the fact that we were able to cut in to the middle of the decision that we were carrying live on the air, and have us be the ones to communicate to the fans that he was leaving. Before he said that he was taking his talents to South Beach, we thought it was important to take a little bit of the pain of that moment away by allowing us to convey it and not to leave it all up to him in the Jim Gray moment.
I think at that time we were really a good place of therapy for Clevelanders, not just basketball fans, but Clevelanders who were really disappointed about how that whole thing went down. The moment when he came back, I was on the air that day and Rizz was on vacation. So I felt a lot of pressure. And we were riding this incredible emotional up and down roller coaster of he’s coming back, no, he’s not. Maybe he is, wait, here’s this piece of it. We felt like detectives trying to piece this whole thing together.
We were on the moment that the story got posted on Sports Illustrated. We read it on the air. I remember thinking to myself, just try to convey your honest emotion in these moments. I’ll never forget the first caller, who I remember saying to myself just shut up and let these people talk. There’s nothing that you can say that’s going to be as good as what they’re saying. Sometimes I think as a broadcaster, even doing a talk show, how you shut up and listen is more important than what you’re actually saying.
I remember the first caller was talking about how his wife was a huge LeBron fan, grew up in Akron, and was so disappointed when LeBron left because she thought that he was a real Clevelander and was destined to be the person to break this championship curse. She had passed away in between when he was in Miami. And so that moment where LeBron was coming back, he was thinking about how proud she would have been of him in that moment.
I just remember sort of feeling like that summed it up, that it was bigger than basketball. I think even now, some of the fun stuff we do, the games, the contests, the funny things or whatever, what I hear from fans the most is about that day, that moment, that show and that time.
BN: Being from Denver, how long did it take for you to feel like you were part of the Cleveland community, and for the community to feel like you were part of them?
AG: Well, the second part of that, any day now they’ll let you know. I think relatively early on, I figured out that Cleveland was a really special place, that it has the best fans of anywhere without question in my opinion, which makes doing our jobs so much more fun. I felt like by the time I met my wife here, got married here, started a family here, at some point in there it became home.
On the air, I don’t hide the fact that I didn’t grow up here. I don’t try to act like I did. Rizz and Chris sort of afford me that opportunity. They’re huge Browns fans. I see things from a different perspective because I don’t have the same emotions tied up in it.
My first sports memory is my dad jumping up and down in front of an old Zenith TV in our living room, as the picture of the game was going in and out during The Drive. I saw the other side of that. I grew up loving John Elway. I sat on his lap and had him sign an autograph for me at a department store when I was five years old.
I really don’t try to fake that. I think it’s important to be authentic. People here, I would hope, are interested in what I have to say, but I’m definitely not the knight in shining armor of the Cleveland sports fan. That’s Rizz’s job. The stereotypical fan will tell me to go back to Denver. There’s a drop we play on our show from one of our callers saying, “hey, numbnuts go back to Denver.”
That’s all part of the hero and the heel, the wrestling part of the show. I think if you’re more sophisticated and you listen more closely, maybe you’ve accepted me during some of these moments. I have found some wins with Cleveland fans. Athletes that I’ve gotten to know, people that I fell in love with. But if the Browns play the Broncos in the AFC Championship game, make it very clear, you can put this in bold and underline it on the site, I’m rooting for the Broncos. Sorry.
BN: [Laughs] That’s awesome, man. Some people look at the Browns as the bad guys now instead of the lovable losers. Does any of that change how it feels for you to talk about them?
AG: Last season was like walking a tightrope for us. Whenever we were doing our shows, we had to think about our fans who in many cases are women, and in many cases are women who have been victims of some kind of sexual misconduct. At the same time, we’ve had to try to figure out how we can talk about the Browns as a football team and not just get caught up in that conversation all of the time. While that conversation is important and necessary, I’m not sure at a certain point, whether it really accomplishes what we’re the best at doing.
I think now that time has passed and Deshaun has served his suspension, and the vast majority of the legal side of this situation is settled, I think that we have been able to go back to talking about Deshaun Watson as a football player. But I think if he struggles, I think that it’s going to live in the background a lot. I think there’s some fans that have made the decision that they’re not going to be Browns fans anymore. I don’t think it’s a ton, but it’s definitely some. Rizz and I have a tremendous amount of respect for people that have made that call.
But I think this training camp now feels more like people are wanting the payoff of going through everything that we went through last year, which was a miserable season on multiple fronts. You didn’t win, but also, remember Browns fans didn’t choose this. We didn’t trade for Deshaun Watson, that’s for damn sure, or give him $230 million. To some degree I think it felt to a lot of people here like we were the ones getting blamed for not knowing how to unpack this and feel about your team when they do something that is questionable.
We’ll see. I think Watson’s got to get them to the Super Bowl for it to really pay off and he cannot step in it again. I think everybody is watching carefully for those things. But when you watch them practice, he’s also by far the most talented quarterback that they’ve had probably since Otto Graham.
BN: How about when you look forward? Is there anything that you would like to experience or accomplish down the road, anything you have your eye on?
AG: First of all, I feel so fortunate to be with Rizz and to be with our company. Good Karma Brands is a really special and unique place that feels to me a little bit like a family. Some of my closest friends are with the company and I really trust the leadership. As we continue to grow and evolve and have gotten involved in stations now in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, those opportunities that the company is getting excite me. But I still feel like until the Browns win the Super Bowl here that I might have some unfinished business in Cleveland.
And Rizz, I have so much fun working with him. We continue to challenge each other every day. It doesn’t feel stale. I don’t feel like I’ve got to push to be somewhere else. I don’t know where my career is taking me, but I’ve sort of realized recently that I don’t know that there’s really anywhere better for me to be than in Cleveland where we’ve been doing this for as long as we have. And Rizz has a lot left in the tank. I think he’d be up for a fifth hour of the show. We’ll see where that goes as far as goals.
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.
