I have a confession to make to start out this week’s column. When I first saw the previews for ‘The Dynasty’ on Apple TV+ about the New England Patriots, I threw up a little in my mouth. No way was I going to dedicate any of my precious time to watching a series about Belichick’s cheaters.
I was born and raised in St. Louis. You might be familiar – middle of the country, have that arch thing and yep, two-time losers of NFL franchises. So, if you think YOU hate the Patriots, imagine being me.
In February of 2002, I was doing on-air work with KFNS in St. Louis, co-hosting morning drive and doing football shows on the weekends. I had also been doing play-by-play for a local basketball team and traveled with them, so when it came time to decide who would get to travel to the Super Bowl and who had to stay back, I drew the short straw and stayed.
Financially, this was actually a great deal for me. Pretty much all the other hosts got to go to New Orleans and our sales team had sold a ton of remotes for the days leading up to the game. I recall doing a remote that Saturday morning from a closed business, being rented by someone just to sell merchandise. You know the typical remote setup of a table and two folding chairs? This had no second chair and no table. I believe we were getting power from the business next door.
Then came game day. The Rams were favored by 14 points. I did the pregame show from a packed bar and had several of our other hosts on live from New Orleans. The atmosphere was incredible. If you knew St. Louis pro football history up until this point, you would understand why everyone was in complete disbelief that in a few hours, the Rams – a team from St. Louis – was going to win its second Super Bowl in three years.
Then, the game happened. Instead of the Rams being labeled as a “dynasty,” it was the Patriots and Tom Brady who were being celebrated.
And I still had to do a postgame show. Live from an emptying bar with no atmosphere in it whatsoever. My cohorts scheduled to join me down in Louisiana were of little help. One of them had lost his voice during the game and the other was too despondent to say much.
Then spygate, deflategate, a couple of dynasties, and as I said, I hate the New England Patriots with a passion.
However, when ‘The Dynasty’ came out and I saw the comments being made about it on X and heard several sports radio stations mentioning it, and realized how much I love good storytelling, especially when it has to do with sports and hearing the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on. So, I decided I would watch it, but I would “hate watch” it. You know, fully prepared to dump all over it and not enjoy it, but see it so I know what others are talking about.
I wrote not that long ago about the NASCAR show on Netflix. It truly inspired me to at least have an interest in what is happening in racing as I am now aware of more of the drivers, and their stories, than ever before.
Similarly, with ‘The Dynasty’ you get a better feel for what was going on with the Patriots from the beginning. Bill Belichick was who he was and pretty much didn’t change. That guy you saw at the press conferences who avoided as many questions as he answered, that’s just him. He is a football coach, he cares about football. His focus is on winning the next game and he doesn’t really care what your agenda is.
He might put on a suit for your cameras, but he isn’t talking about topics he doesn’t want to discuss. He isn’t going to “play the game” and say things just to give out a sound bite. If he is willing to talk on a subject, he gives you his honest answers in short sentences. He saw coaching his team as his job and didn’t really feel the need to talk any more than he had to about most things. I believe when analyzing games becomes Belichick’s job, he will be really good at hard-core, nuts and bolts football talk.
On the other hand, I am wathcing Tom Brady and realizing he could really be special as a football analyst. He reminds me more of Kurt Warner than I thought, in that he is so good at talking about and explaining football. He isn’t doing it from a place of ‘Hey, look at me, I won all of these rings, I am the expert on this stuff.’ He is talking to the audience and saying what he feels in a very natural way. But, there is a lot of passion behind what he is saying and that is a good thing. You can tell he absolutely loves the game.
The more I watch Brady I also think about how much he must really want to do analyst work and be great at it. Why else would he do it? He can do anything he wants to do, go anywhere he wants to go, be with pretty much anyone he wants to be with. And, you automatically know that somewhere between 40-50% of the people are going to be nasty to you just for doing it.
In the end, the real reason I am writing this column is to encourage content creators to keep doing these sorts of shows. Keep them coming. The NASCAR one was great. I am getting in to the F1 racing show, which started several years ago. The shows about the Lakers, especially the HBO show, Winning Time, were fantastic. Apple’s Lionel Messi one was another that was really well done. ‘Full Swing’ and ‘Quarterback’ from Netflix were excellent. Netflix announced recently there will be one on the downfall of the Montreal Expos that I can’t wait for. Inject these in my veins. Give me all of them!
I love this era we are in when it comes to content. So much so, I will even watch when it’s about a team that I absolutely hate.
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The Best Thing I Heard This Week
I love podcasts. I love the industry because it is all based around listener choice. What is it you want to dive into? There’s a podcast for that.
Sports media is of course of great interest to me and the national guys who do sports media podcasts really do an excellent job. I will miss the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast, which Sports Business Journal and the New York Post had been doing. I look forward to seeing what, if anything, might happen in the podcast space now that Andrew Marchand has moved to The Athletic and John Ourand is with Puck. The SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast is also a great listen each week and this week Gregg Giannotti of WFAN was his guest. Really a good listen.
Austin Karp from Sports Business Journal is who has taken over the Sports Business Journal and New York Post podcast, which is now known as The Sports Media Podcast. He was the guest on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast recently, which is another I never miss.
Having the two of them on one show allowed them to cover a lot of ground. Of note, I thought the part of the conversation where both said they believe the NFL will soon add at least one more streaming-exclusive playoff game was quite interesting.
You can listen to the episode by clicking here.
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In Case You Missed It
Last Wednesday, BSM’s Derek Futterman profiled 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh’s Colin Dunlap who is set to receive the Champions Award at the upcoming BSM Summit in New York. Derek shared the story that earned Dunlap the award, which involed him assisting a caller who had called in on the topic of West Virginia head basketball coach Bob Huggins and his struggles with alcohol. The caller shared his story and ultimately said that if he didn’t get some with his own alcohol problems, his wife was going to leave him. Dunlap offered to help him find a treatment plan and went out of his way to assist the listener.
When you read the article, you learn more about Colin Dunlap and find out this wasn’t an isolated incident, it is more of just who he is. Read more about a host going out of his way to use his platform in the best way possible by clicking here.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.