The first job that Carrington Harrison ever had was being a shoe salesman at Sears. He’s certainly come a long way since then to the point where he is now the solo host of The Drive on 610 Sports Radio in his hometown of Kansas City. There was actually a point in his life a couple of years ago when he considered leaving town.
“I really thought about moving to a bigger market a couple of years ago after COVID,” said Harrington. “I had already seen the Chiefs win a Super Bowl, and I had already seen the Royals win a World Series. My sister had graduated high school. I kind of felt like my time in Kansas City was coming to a close and I was ready for a new challenge.”
In sports radio, there are a million paths that one could take when climbing up the ladder and reaching for the ultimate success in the industry. There’s a school of thought that you start out in a smaller market and work your way up through mid-size markets and then eventually to big markets like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. There are also those that are happy with being home, whether that’s where you started or that’s where you’ve been able to get back to.
Sometimes, the chase for a bigger payday and bigger notoriety is outweighed by the importance of being in familiar surroundings. So, ultimately, Carrington Harrison clicked his heels and said “There’s no place like home”.
“I just came to the conclusion that I still have some goals and aspirations and I still feel like I can reach a lot of those in Kansas City,” said Harrison. “I became really happy with that decision and I feel like I made the right decision. Every day, I get to cover the best team in the NFL (the Kansas City Chiefs). The quarterback of the team (Patrick Mahomes) comes on every Monday. I was maybe more appreciative of that because of that decision and choosing to stay and feeling like Kansas City was the best for me.”
Harrington’s career in Kansas City reached new heights when he became the solo host of The Drive. Hosting a sports talk show five days a week is certainly different when you’re flying solo as opposed to being with a partner. But Harrington’s experience on national sports talk radio helped him make the transition to solo local host.
“I would say the experience from working at CBS Sports Radio was a great help just getting those reps every week,” said Harrison who holds down the 6 AM to 10 AM ET spot every Saturday on CBS Sports Radio.
Carrington Harrison — who also hosts nationally on Sirius XM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio on Tuesday nights from 7 PM to 11 PM ET — also attributes the way his Kansas City show is formatted to helping him become a successful solo act. The way the show is constructed allows for his personality to come out, for listeners to get involved, and for the show to flow in a way that is entertaining.
“What makes our show unique is that we don’t really take calls very often,” said Harrison. “We use the text line. It’s kind of the de facto third member of the show (along with producer Rob Brenton) and it’s always sort of been a major part of the show.”
Harrison also doesn’t stay on the same subject for a long time. Each day, the show is broken down into five or ten-minute bits or segments, and that allows him to talk about different subjects throughout the show and have all of his bases covered.
“It’s easy to talk about anything for five minutes,” said Harrison. “Once I started breaking the show down and not looking at it as a four-hour show, it became incredibly manageable at that point.”
What has been incredibly manageable and enjoyable for Harrison and so many sports talk radio hosts have been talking about the romance between Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and pop superstar Taylor Swift. More and more “Swifties” have become football fans, and Swift has benefited from Kelce fans now following her.
Carrington Harrison, who doesn’t shy away from talking about non-sports subjects, has embraced the story.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Harrison. “I think it was easy for our show because we do a lot of movies, music, and pop culture anyway. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a Taylor Swift fan, but the city is excited about it and the city thinks that it’s fun so you could either go with the flow or go against the flow. What benefit does it get to go against the flow? How does that help me?”
There’s a saying in radio, especially in music and talk formats, that a host has to “play the hits”. In this case, sports people are making references to Swift songs like “Karma”, “Love Story”, “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” while fans of Swift are keeping close tabs on how Kelce and the Chiefs are doing. There was a point where Swift attended a few Chiefs games sitting in a suite, generally next Kelce’s mother Donna, and the networks couldn’t get enough of cutting to Swift for her reaction when Kelce would make a catch and or score a touchdown.
It was an early holiday present for any sports talk show host, especially those in Kansas City including Harrison.
“On the show, we really leaned into it and just embraced it,” said Harrison. “On a personal level, I’m not dating Taylor Swift and it has nothing to do with me. He’s happy, he’s happy, their parents seem happy, all the fan bases seem happy. Why would I be the one who is unhappy about it? I think it’s great. I think it’s awesome. It’s been a lot of fun. Hopefully, they get married.”
Harrison has become part of what is a very small fraternity of solo African-American sports talk show hosts. It’s not something that Harrison thinks about that much but it is something that he notices when Barrett Sports Media puts out its Top 20 lists of various sports radio subjects each year.
When he sees the lists, the reality does set in.
“I do notice that very few of the people do look like me,” said Harrison. “I do notice that. You and I, regardless of how much we love sports, we view sports and life very differently because of our backgrounds and cultures. That’s impossible to sort of remove ourselves from these conversations because sometimes the line between sports and life, especially over the last five years or so with things that have happened.”
When Carrington Harrison set out on a career in sports radio, he drew inspiration from a few people along the way. Initially, it was the likes of Jason Whitlock, Jim Rome, and a local Kansas City host — Steven St. John — who helped get Harrison interested in the business.
“In terms of what really got me into sports radio, those were the three people who were really instrumental to me in the beginning,” said Harrison.
After he graduated from Missouri Southern State University, Harrison interned for Nick Wright, co-host of First Things First on FS1. Learning from Wright had a major and profound impact on Harrison’s career, even if sometimes it wasn’t intentional on Wright’s part.
“Nick was the best and worst teacher,” said Harrison. “Nick really isn’t the one who is going to teach you how to do a tease. He’s more like you’re around him and you soak up all this information and you watch him and you kind of pick up on things.”
While Wright wasn’t really an “X’s and O’s” type of mentor for Harrison, Danny Parkins was, especially when Parkins and Harrison were co-hosts of The Drive. Now, Parkins is the afternoon drive host on 670 The Score in Chicago.
“We worked together for a long time,” said Harrison. “Danny is really going to go through the technical and all that kind of stuff so I would say I had two really good teachers with two very different personalities on school of thought that were really instrumental in the beginning and helped me create a solid radio foundation.”
Harrison’s career as a sports talk show host has also been molded by the program directors whom he has worked for.
“I had a program director John Hanson (at 610 Sports),” said Harrison. “His big thing was interviews…they don’t need to be 20-25 minutes. You can get the most out of somebody in a really good ten minutes and use that to push the conversation forward and jump back into it.”
He’s also learned a lot from his current Program Director, Steven Spector, especially when it comes to understanding that not all 20 hours on the air each week has to be about sports.
“He’s really helped me learn that 18 hours over the course of the week can be sports but use your personality and use stories that you think are funny and weave them in and out for five or ten minutes,” said Harrison. “I think that’s when the show is at its best.”
Carrington Harrison could have left Kansas City, but at the end of the day, it was the perfect situation for him. He’s home with a successful local show and he also gets to dabble in national radio.
“I’m really happy here,” said Harrison. “I’m really happy with our show, I’m really happy with my producer, I’m really happy with the program director, I’m happy with the radio station in general, and I’m happy about my relationship with CBS (Sports Radio) and Sirius.”
No need to change a thing.
