2 Pros and a Cup of Joe kicks off the day on FOX Sports Radio, airing in morning drive from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET each weekday. The show, like the title indicates, features two former professional athletes in Brady Quinn and LaVar Arrington. The ringleader for the program is Jonas Knox.
It just so happened the day I planned to tune in for the full show, Brady Quinn was off. So, that actually gave me the chance to check out some of their ‘Best Of’ episodes they put up after each three-hour show. It’s a great opportunity to listen to what their team thought was the best couple of segments of the show and have them condensed down into one 40-ish minute segment. As I eavesdropped in on what takes place each morning and sampled the ‘Best Of’ segments, one word kept coming to mind: chemistry.
Most are probably familiar with the history of Arrington and Quinn on the football field. A former Penn State All-American Linebacker, Arrington was the #2 pick in the 2000 NFL Draft. The three-time Pro Bowler played for Washington from 2000 to 2005. He later joined the New York Giants before retiring in 2007.
A four-year starter at Notre Dame, Quinn set 36 single-season and career records for one of the most prestigious and storied programs in college football. Quinn left South Bend as one of the most accomplished passers in the nation and was chosen by the Cleveland Browns with the No. 22 overall pick in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft. He played seven seasons with six different teams in the league, spending 2013, his final season, with the New York Jets and St. Louis Rams.
Jonas Knox you may not know as well. He worked his way up the ladder at FOX Sports Radio, starting as an overnight weekend editor in 2011. He would later start filling in on shows and then was given weekend shifts which is where he first started working with Quinn.
In late September 2021, after Clay Travis went to the News/Talk side to team with Buck Sexton, the three were chosen to take over the slot and are now coming up on three years together. When they were announced as the new morning show, Scott Shapiro, Vice President of Programming for FOX Sports Radio, had said in part, “…we are injecting fun, personality, credibility, strong doses of caffeine, and thought-provoking conversation into morning-drive.” I would say he summed it up well.
As I mentioned, it is the chemistry between the three that hits you almost right away. You can tell the guys are friends on the show and away from it and you get the feeling they probably have quite the group chat going throughout the day when they are apart.
If you had to label them, Knox is your straight man who keeps the show moving, Quinn is the consummate analyst while Arrington provides comedy relief and has been known to bust out into a song at any moment. However, what I found really unique about the show is that they all can weave in and out of the other’s lane a little bit and it still works.
While you get plenty of coverage of the national sports topics of the day, it is a lot of the more personal or ‘off-topic’ segments that seem to make it into the ‘Best Of’s’ and for good reason. On a Monday show where Quinn was expected but had international travel issues and didn’t make it back to the United States in time to join the broadcast, Knox and Arrington had a blast talking about how Quinn was probably handling the troubles.
“We should have a whole entire show dedicated to airlines and travel,” Arrington said. “I think more people than you can imagine deal with the same type of travel complexities and snafus.”
There were plenty of laughs on the various shows, which is always good to get the morning started off on a light note. The sports takes would follow and when the NBA playoffs came up, Arrington made a bold comparison when it came to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards and arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan.
“I’m not saying he’s MJ, but I’m not saying he ain’t,” said Arrington. “We might be seeing the next iteration of what MJ was in the era he was in. We might just be seeing the start of an era of a person that is as electrifying and has all those elements that Michael Jordan brought to the table in Anthony Edwards.”
Whether the topic was the NBA, the Dallas Cowboys, the roast of Tom Brady, officiating, gout or heat packs versus ice baths, the hosts move through the topics at a good pace. Knox is an excellent traffic cop and whether he is throwing to audio clips or bringing it back to the main topic when the show goes off the rails, he seems to have a knack for knowing just when to transition. He also knows when to let the others go on a bit if they have a strong take such as what Arrington thinks Tom Brady will be like as an analyst.
“I think he’s gonna crush it,” Arrington said. “He’s gonna crush it because he took an entire year to train and learn and figure it out, which is why he has always been great in his career is his preparation and his attention to detail. He’s gonna crush it and if he wasn’t going to crush it, he won’t do it because it means too much to him to be successful at what he does…At this point in his life…he’s not going in front of the camera if he felt as though his performance wasn’t going to be up to the standard of being a great of all-time.”
These moments are when it is great to have ex-athletes who understand the competitive mindset of someone at the top of their game. During the talk of Brady’s roast, you could sense Arrington has a lot of respect for the work Brady put in that made him one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the game.
At the same time, Arrington offered a take which was a little bit different than what most had to say about the roast. He thought it was an outlet for Brady and his friends and former teammates to get some things out and off their chests, under the guise of humor.
Arrington added about Brady, “I just think you need to be strategic because he could come off as an arrogant cornball if he’s not careful. Maybe that’s what it’s meant to be, maybe it’s meant to humanize him a little bit more and make him relatable to people. I don’t think that roast made him relatable I think it gave people an opportunity to laugh at him which humanizes a person when you can humiliate a guy like that and he’s there taking it.”
Another topic that came up last week was the NFL Pro Bowl after playing some audio from Cincinatti Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
Quinn had a strong opinion and said, “It’s not as great an honor as it used to be…the business model is what killed it, because they got so focused on trying to make it more profitable…it lost its luster, it lost the allure of what it is and now you don’t go to Hawaii, now you don’t have the best guys going, now they’re opting out and now there’s not even really a game.”
A lot of national sports talk radio shows have a clear star. That is not the case with 2 Pros and a Cup of Joe and is a big part of what makes the show unique. Just three friends talking sports and life.
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.
