After a decades long run at WEEI, including hosting and calling Boston Celtics games, Glenn Ordway announced his retirement in June of 2021. He and his wife are snowbirds now spending most of the year in Scottsdale, returning to Boston for the summer. He’s been able to travel, which is something that he could not do hosting a show five days a week.
Ordway is also spending more time with family, but there’s still fire inside when it comes to talking about sports.
“There’s no question that there’s days that I wake up and I can feel the juices when sports stories are breaking and I’m sitting there going man I wish I was involved in that right now,” said Ordway.
At first, Ordway didn’t miss the grind of sports radio on a daily basis. For the first five or six months, there was a combination of travelling and scheduling upcoming trips. However, he would get to the point when getting on planes made him yearn to do talk sports again.
There have been chances, but to this point, his connection to talking to sports has been limited to X/Twitter.
“I do miss it,” admitted Ordway. “I’ve had some opportunities over the last couple of years because people have called me who are from my past who have said hey I’m doing this and hey we’re doing this do you have any interest and I’ve kind of turned them all down.”
Ordway certainly has the itch to get back in the business in some way. The technology in the industry may be just what he’s looking for. Podcasts could be the venue that gets the radio legend back in the game.
He wants to do it and he has the ability to do it.
“I think I would like to do something because I’ve got all my faculties,” said Ordway. “I haven’t become Joe Biden yet. I’m at the point now where I really can do it. I don’t think I would ever do it again five or six days a week. There are some projects now that I’m interested in and I’m thinking about.”
Ordway enjoyed a storied run at WEEI that included hosting “The Big Show” in afternoon drive. His first stint at WEEI ended in 2013 under some frustrating circumstances. That drove Ordway to a platform that wasn’t necessarily big back then, but is huge now.
“I got fired for being in second place and I started doing a daily podcast,” said Ordway.
And that’s how “The Big Show Unfiltered” was born on SportsTalkBoston.com.
When WEEI brought him back in 2015, Ordway decided to end his podcast, a move that he regrets now.
“I look back at it and it was rough,” said Ordway. “It wasn’t rough doing it but it was rough trying to monetize it because I was way ahead of the curve. I should have continued to do that and should have understood that eventually the marketplace was going to open up to podcasts and it was going to become an important part of our landscape. I should have stayed with it because I think by now it probably would have had a pretty good following. That was a mistake.”
Now, Ordway is ready to dip his toes into the sports radio waters once again, but not full-time. He still wants to travel and still wants to have the freedom that comes with retirement. However, returning to a chair in front of a microphone is something that he’s very interested in.
Retirement has given him the opportunity to become more invested in watching games and sharing information with his fans.
“I watch more NBA basketball now than I ever have at any time in my life,” said Ordway. I’m on the west coast so I can watch the Celtics at 4 and then I can watch the Lakers, the Clippers and the Suns at 7. I’m able to do more research now that I’ve ever been able to do. The problem is I can’t really use that information anywhere because I’m not spouting out to anybody other than Twitter.”
Other than Twitter, Ordway hasn’t discussed the biggest sports story in Boston, the fall of the New England Patriots dynasty. First, quarterback Tom Brady moved on to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where he won another Super Bowl. And now, Bill Belichick is out as Patriots Head Coach.
“I’m amazed, just from my reaction of going back and forth with people on Twitter, that people were so caught off guard by it,” said Ordway. “What did you think was going to happen? I think a lot of the fans up in New England are spoiled. In the last couple of years, they didn’t know how to deal with this.”
While Ordway waits to find the right opportunity to get back into sports radio, he has been able to pay attention to how the landscape of the business has changed since he has retired. Social media has played a huge role in how the industry has evolved, not all of which has been good.
Ordway wonders if small clips of shows posted on social media has hurt the ability of hosts to be genuine and to be at their best.
“We’re picking up comments now because of social media that somebody makes in a small forum and suddenly we want them cancelled from their job at ESPN or in some major platform,” said Ordway. “I think that’s a little scary. You’ve got a lot of people who are a little bit frightened when they sit there with their microphone so we’re not being spontaneous enough. We’re fearful that we’re going to say the wrong thing and sometimes you don’t even realize when you say it that there are some people who are offended by it.”
Glenn Ordway is living the good life now in retirement, but still has that itch to talk to sports fans in some capacity. Once he finds that venue, and he does have some options, there will certainly be a great reaction from Boston sports fans who have missed his voice and his presence in the New England sports radio community.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
