That don't make no sense...

Yesterday I posted the Power Rankings of all the ESPN radio hosts. I’ve already had a couple of questions about the scoring system so I wanted to expound on that a little bit. Before I go on, I’d like to say that ESPN radio is by a mile the best sports radio there is. The least engaging and most unreasonable segment on ESPN radio is way more compelling and interesting than any other brand of sports talk radio. Sometimes, when our ESPN is usurped by local high school sports, I’ll switch it over to another sports station. I can only stand to listen to it for about 45 seconds at a time. It might as well be college radio. That being said, here’s a look at the different categories and how they’re evaluated.

Interestingness

This has to do with the topics that are chosen. For example, tomorrow, everybody will be talking mostly about the second game of the NBA finals. Whether or not it is interesting depends on what about the NBA finals they decide to talk about. Excessive game analysis or a ton of personal stories, is just not fascinating, especially if I’m just running some errands and happen to get in my car mid conversation. I’m not going to keep thinking about that stuff when I get out of the car.

Reasonability

This has to do with how much plain sense the host makes. Some radio hosts, sports talk and others, try to generate ratings by being as outrageous as possible. This category tries to offset the tactic of getting tons of exposure by taking extreme positions on every issue. It brings to mind one of my favorite movie quotes of all time, which I've hollered at the radio more than once.

Just because a radio host is loud, demanding, well spoken, or clever, doesn’t mean that what they are arguing for actually makes sense. In fact, the louder voice in an argument usually has more to prove or to gloss over.

Engagingness

This is different than interestingness because it has to do with how well the material is presented. Some things are inherently interesting. Some people are inherently boring. No one on ESPN radio is boring, but this category measures just how captivating the host is. It really comes down to how good the host is at being a host. It does go hand in hand with what they choose to talk about (interestingness), but some people can make anything fascinating. The better they are at that, the higher they score in this category.

Hangability

That word is the most made up of all the categories. All it means is how easy it is, or would be (theoretically) to hang out with the host. Of course, this category is all about perception, but at the end of the day, all they’re doing is talking about sports. And with me (and you) as a listener, we’re just a bunch of guys sitting around talking about sports. How willing I am to hang out with a guy has a lot to do with how seriously I take what he tells me, and by extension how effective he is as a radio host. As an example, Donald Trump is a wildly successful real-estate mogul who obviously knows what he’s doing as evidenced by his wealth. But, judging by what I’ve seen on the TV, he’s not a guy I would want to meet at the Wing Stop to watch a game with. Not that he cares anything about that, but hangability does have some importance when grading radio hosts.

Humor

This one is mostly cultural. For whatever reason, a person’s sense of humor has been lumped in with other character traits like honesty and integrity. If a person is funny, we automatically start to give them the benefit of the doubt. Conversely, if a person is socially awkward, we’ll naturally question whatever they say. Because we appreciate humor so much, it’s included here as a partial measurement of how effective a radio host is.

Next, I'll go into detail about each show and why they scored the way they did. Hopefully these will make more sense when you see how they're applied to each show.