Greg McElroy and Cole Cubelic are two names that are very familiar to college football fans. McElroy led Alabama to a national championship, spent a few years in the NFL and then signed on at ESPN in 2014 and has become one of the top analysts in college football. Cubelic grew up in Homewood, Alabama and was a team captain at Auburn before making a name for himself in sports radio in Huntsville. He joined the Sun Belt Network in 2009, ESPN in 2011 and since then has risen to being one of the top field analysts in college football, working the SEC Network’s marquee matchup on Saturdays with Tom Hart and Jordan Rodgers.
Both make several other appearances on ESPN properties throughout the year inside and outside of the college football season, which now extends well beyond the August through January timeframe.
Their weekday mornings are spent together and have since July 2021 when JOX Roundtable signed off and McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning became the new morning show on JOX 94.5 in the college football capital of Birmingham, Alabama. For college football fans, especially in the SEC, this show is the motherload. So, I eavesdropped in on the show as I was curious what it sounds like when there isn’t much going on in college football.
The day I chose to listen happened to be a very unique day and ultimately proved this show is much more than just college football talk. With the PGA Championship going on I expected a little golf talk, maybe some scoring updates. I certainly didn’t expect golf to take up almost the entire first half of the show. However, I nor anyone else expected to wake up to the news that the No. 1 player in the world had been arrested.
Immediately as the show began, they brought the listeners up to speed on what happened and continued to update the story, literally as it happened. Sometimes these stories are difficult to cover as you don’t have a lot of information, but these ‘football guys’ did one heck of a job of covering this breaking news.
As ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington posted a video with audio from the scene, the show turned the audio around quickly and played it as well as what Darlington was saying on SportsCenter. Like most people, McElroy and Cubelic, or ‘G-Mac and Cube’ as they are known, thought this was one of the most bizarre stories and believed a lot of the blame here was on the PGA of America and the golf course.
But they tried their best to look at this from all sides. McElroy pointed out in the video that the police officers were wearing raincoats and looked more like security at an event and also pointed out that due to the tragic accident that had occurred earlier, the people on the scene were most likely on high alert and a bit tense. They mentioned a few times that there was a lot of blame to go around and not to go too crazy blaming any one person or side.
When Scheffler’s mug shot was posted and he was listed as 6 foot 3, 170 pounds, the hosts were able to have some fun with that without losing the seriousness and insanity of what was happening. As the official charges came out, again it was interesting to hear the hosts respond in real-time to what was happening.
“Days like today are what social media is made for,” Cubelic said as he read some of the memes and jokes that were coming across.
As Scheffler was making his way back to the course, McElroy and Cubelic had a hilarious conversation about how now that Scheffler is a father, he has to get used to this kind of golf. “This is true ‘Dad golf’ that he is going to experience today,” McElroy said. “No warmup, no putting green, no breakfast, no stretching, no gym. Welcome to fatherhood, Scottie, this is what golf looks like when you have children.”
The show then brought on James Colgan, a writer from Golf.com who was live at Valhalla. Colgan gave great descriptions about the scene as far as the traffic even before the tragic accident had taken place. He made good points as well about being surprised the traffic was such a problem with Valhalla having hosted major tournaments before. I am always a fan of a strong guest who adds to the conversation, and this was a perfect example of it working out well.
Another great example of how well they covered the story was when Scheffler’s attorney, Steve Romines, was shown and Cubelic saw KSR host Matt Jones post about him on X. Cubelic texted Jones and asked what they should know about the attorney. Cubelic read Jones’ response, “Best lawyer in Kentucky for criminal defense. If I got arrested, he’s the first person I would call.”
As they started to wrap up their coverage of what was happening, Cubelic asked McElroy what his prediction was for Scheffler’s round that day. “Under 67.5,” was his answer. Scheffler would end up shooting 66.
I cannot stress enough how good of a job McElroy and Cubelic did covering a story for almost two hours when driving to the station that morning, they expected to spend most of the time talking about Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney’s thoughts on taking players out of the transfer portal. Pivoting the way they did and covering the ongoing story at the level they did, shows these guys are true pros. They even used their own experiences trying to get into busy football stadiums and the traffic issues that can arise. Sometimes the best live radio comes from unexpected topics and stories, and this was certainly the case here.
“It’s been absolutely mind blowing,” McElroy said about the show. “I can’t even believe how much there is to even discuss. Never in a million years did I think we were going to talk this much about golf.”
“Just an unbelievable situation,” Cubelic added.
The show would continue to keep an eye on Scheffler and the golf tournament as they moved on to other topics such as the hockey playoffs, which was the second biggest surprise of the day. Cubelic has adopted the New York Rangers as his team, and the guys had a fun discussion breaking down the team as well as all the potential Game 7’s that could happen in both the NHL and NBA.
Finally, they got to what I expected to mostly hear, a discussion about Dabo Swinney’s comments and a breakdown of the Clemson football schedule for the 2024 season. As you can imagine, McElroy and Cubelic talking college football is pure gold. It helps they have excellent chemistry and not many stations can say they have two of the best analysts of a single sport on the air together five days a week.
The show has plenty of laughs and quite a few endorsement ads, which is a sign of a healthy show. I like they do some of the ads together and play off one another. They have fun with the ads and work to tie them into programming.
A fun listen, I look forward to popping back into McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning during the heart of college football season. Hopefully on a day where nobody else ends up in handcuffs.
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.
