Growing up in Alabama, I frequently attended college football games in Birmingham’s Legion Field. The “Old Grey Lady” was a stadium built well before anyone knew what a luxury suite was or even could be. It was the oldest of old school municipal stadiums, but it hosted some of Alabama and Auburn’s biggest games. It was also home to fly-by-night leagues like the World Football League, the original USFL and the XFL. Emblazoned on the face of the now condemned upper deck was the phrase; “The Football Capital of the South”.
I believed that to be true but it did not necessarily include the NFL. Birmingham has never been a one team NFL market, it is a true melting pot of NFL fans. Like most anywhere, the Cowboys and Steelers are big among the fans that grew up in the 1970’s. There are Dolphins fans here because of the numerous Alabama players that historically played for that franchise. Or, in my case, because the Dolphins were the AFC team NBC showed to Birmingham every week.
A city like Birmingham attaches itself to the college heroes from each fan’s chosen college team. When Bo Jackson was a Raider, Raiders shirts, hats and jackets were everywhere. The same was true a decade earlier when Alabama legend Kenny Stabler quarterbacked the silver and black. Covering the NFL can be odd when your market has no obvious NFL Team tie but plenty of NFL player ties.
When Cam Newton was drafted by the Carolina Panthers, every little Auburn fan became a Panthers fan. I knew that wasn’t true, that they were only fans of a single player on that team. That didn’t stop the local FOX affiliate from feeding us a steady diet of Panthers games each Sunday. Just as soon as Cam retired, *POOF*, the Panthers’ gear disappeared from the streets of Birmingham. Now the thrift stores are cashing in on that discarded gear because Alabama’s only Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Bryce Young has baptized a whole new generation of Panthers fans living in Alabama.
As someone who has hosted a show here for years, I have learned the vast majority of this market is far more interested in the performance of those college heroes than in the performance of each team. It makes talking about the NFL a little tricky. If the Arizona Cardinals are really good but their team has zero local ties to your market, how interested are the listeners?
“Not very” is the answer. They would much rather hear about the performance of a player that played for the local school but is now part of a 6-6 team.
If you have read much of what I have written in this space, you know I believe in not beating your head against the wall trying to force your favorite subjects down the throats of an unwilling audience. The far better strategy is to talk about what the audience wants you to discuss. In the markets where former college stars matter more than NFL franchises, give them all you can on former college stars. It may mean a show in Omaha, Nebraska is talking about the New York Giants because a Cornhusker great is now a star for the G Men but that is what the people want.
I am a big golfer, I play as much as I can. I watch a good bit of golf and could easily lead a coherent discussion on the sport. What I learned over the years was my audience didn’t care to talk about golf, but they loved to talk about Tiger Woods. Woods was the star that transcended the sport. He got the attention of the guy that didn’t know the difference between a duck hook and a lip out. As the old saying went; “Tiger Woods didn’t move the needle, Tiger Woods was the needle”. Covering the NFL in a college football hotbed is the same thing. People in Jackson, Mississippi may not care about the NFC East but you better believe the Mississippi State fans care about Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys.
When I was first starting out in sports radio, our operations manager was a guy that came up as a music DJ. He was raised in the business under one motto; “Play the Hits”. He didn’t know a ton about sports radio but he tried to apply the “Play the Hits” strategy to it. He was misguided in his approach but he was not wrong in his strategy. Your coverage of the NFL from a college football market has to live on that strategy, it may mean talking about teams fighting more for draft spots than playoff spots but the former college players are the “hits”, play them.
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.
