Not every professional sports franchise in a given city is going to be good every season, and while good times make for plenty of sports talk fodder, so do the bad times.
97.1 The Ticket host Mike Valenti knows all about the bad times as a host in Detroit. The Tigers are perennial losers, the Red Wings haven’t made noise as a playoff team in over a decade, the last time the Pistons were relevant Ben Wallace, Rip Hamilton and Chauncey Billups made up part of the starting five, and the Lions are the Lions.
But last week, Valenti said in an appearance on The Ringer’s The Press Box podcast with Bryan Curtis that something feels different about this year’s Lions team. They have galvanized their fanbase which yearns for success. He said there’s a good mix of hype, optimism, reservation and pessimism among Lions fans.
“Half the fans are ready to roll and ready to book tickets for Vegas for the Super Bowl, and the other half are sitting in the corner going, ‘You just wait, they’ll ruin it again,'” he said. “And you’re like, alright let’s find a middle ground here.”
While it’s easy for sports radio hosts to dunk on bad teams, that’s not going to get people to tune in with some regularity or carry the torch forward in Valenti’s eyes. It’s imperative that hosts keep those creative juices flowing.
“I always find it funny people think you want to be negative,” he said. “Or people think that that’s what sports radio is for. And yes that’s a part of it, but that’s not fun for me and that’s not good for business.”
“As a host I want games to talk about. I want moments,” Valenti added. “Those moments of tension, drama – the high-leverage moments in sports – you want those because that’s organic response for your audience. And so when your town has been as bad as Detroit has been, yeah creativity has to happen. Because if you just get on the air every day and say, ‘This team is bad,’ well yeah water’s wet.”
Mike said in terms of his own professional growth, having to stay creative given the lack of success from local pro teams has been supremely beneficial.
“I think for me, I can only speak for myself, I think what’s been great for my development as a radio host is you have to keep reinventing you and how you approach your show,” he said. “And then the elements you bring to it, the things you do, versus staying the course. You can’t get stale when your teams are bad. You must be creative, you must bring in new elements.”
