Big Time Rush

I was planning on getting through these explanations of the ESPN Radio Hosts Power Rankings a little quicker, and hopefully I'll be able to pick up the pace from here on out.  Next up is the Doug Gottlieb Show which, I have to admit, was a bit of a  surprise coming in at No. 2.  I mean, he's not even in the picture on the ESPN Radio homepage; but, the points don't lie (except that I just made the whole thing up), so here we are.

The Doug Gottlieb Show

Interestingness: 8

Reasonability: 8

Engagingness: 9

Hangability: 4

Humor: 4

Total: 33

Besides looking like one of the characters of Nickelodeon's "Big Time Rush", and Chad Kearby from Poplar Bluff, MO, he seems like a pretty nice guy.  I also like that his show is just his name, not unlike Bill Cosby or Dick Van Dyke.

Doug Gottlieb

Logan, from "Big Time Rush"

Chad Kearby, from Poplar Bluff, MO

Interestingness: 8

Though not quite as interesting as The Herd, Doug really does do a good job of taking an interesting perspective on topics.  He also has an ability to use personal stories in a way that is interesting, which is something I normally get tired of pretty fast.  I should have some example of his ability to be interesting, but I honestly haven't been listening to a whole lot of Sports Talk Radio lately, as interesting as the WNBA and the French Tour are.

Reasonability: 8

Even though I never have, and probably never will meet the guy, he seems to be that friend who has the ability to talk you out of doing stupid stuff.  Like if we were all hanging out at a a ballgame, and one of you got the idiot-fool idea to run out on the field and dodge security, he'd be the one to say, "Look dude, you don't really want to do that.  We already think you're a crazy guy, so you don't have to prove it to us by spending the night in jail.  And by the way, none of us have money to bail you out."  That kind of obvious levelheadedness is how he approaches sports talk radio.

Engagingness: 9

I don't really know what to say about this category, other than some people are just really good at talking about anything in a way that holds people's attention.  Some guys think they have that ability, and manage to ruin every rehearsal dinner their wives take them to.  But guys like Gottlieb really can make anything fascinating, and that's why he's a successful radio host.

Hangability: 4

Again, though I've never met him, he seems like he would be great to road trip with, or to get stuck in line with at the DMV.  I also feel like he would humor me when I tell long, anticlimactic, jokes and/or stories, which I do pretty regularly.  I'd also guess that he ends up at a lot of weddings of people that he only kind of knows, because as far as they're concerned, he's one of their best friends. All this hangability translates into believability on the radio, and contributes even further to his high score.

Humor: 4

Everyone on ESPN Radio is pretty hilarious.  Doug's humor is a little more subtle, which I love.  He also manages to keep from laughing at  his own jokes all the time (am I right?), which I also appreciate.  It's not very often that I actually laugh audibly when I'm by myself, but it's not uncommon for me to "laugh out loud" on my way home from work.  It's true that I'm not barreled over out of control, but the calmness and consistency of his humor easily renders a high score.

And that's how The Doug Gottlieb Show came in second.  After finishing this post, I realized how much I really do enjoy the show.  It's everything that sports talk radio should be, really.  I guess it's true that the numbers really don't lie.

One last thing, I'll probably take a one-post break from the ESPNRHPR's to offer my review of Christopher Nolan's newest release, "Inception"

ESPN Radio Hosts Power Rankings

I’ve been listening to the ESPN radio a lot lately. I decided to put together a ranking system to see which show/host(s) are the best. Here is what I came up with for a scoring system.

Scoring

Interestingness: 1-10

Reasonability: 1-10

Engagingness: 1-10

Hangability: 1-5

Humor: 1-5

The categories pretty much speak for themselves, but I may go more into that later. In the next couple of days, I’ll post about each show and why they scored the way they did. For now, here are the results.

AllNight with Jason Smith

Interestingness: 7

Reasonability: 7

Engagingness: 6

Hangability: 4

Humor: 3

Total: 27

Mike and Mike in the Morning

Interestingness: 7

Reasonability: 8

Engagingness: 7

Hangability: 4

Humor: 4

Total: 30

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

Interestingness: 9

Reasonability: 8

Engagingness: 10

Hangability: 3

Humor: 4

Total: 34

The Scott Van Pelt Show

Interestingness: 7

Reasonability: 8

Engagingness: 7

Hangability: 5

Humor: 4

Total: 31

The Doug Gottlieb Show

Interestingness: 8

Reasonability: 8

Engagingness: 9

Hangability: 4

Humor: 4

Total: 33

The Brian Kenny Show

Interestingness: 7

Reasonability: 7

Engagingness: 7

Hangability: 4

Humor: 3

Total: 28

Rankings

The Herd with Colin Cowherd: 34

The Doug Gottlieb Show: 33

The Scott Van Pelt Show: 31

Mike and Mike in the Morning: 30

The Brian Kenny Show: 28

AllNight with Jason Smith: 27

Five For Fighting

The past couple of Sundays, I've had the good fortune to catch a hockey game on NBC during the afternoon nap hour. Growing up in the South, I never really played much hockey as a kid. I did do a short stint playing unorganized street hockey after the first Mighty Ducks movie came out. I had a pretty good triple deak. Really, I never even watched that much hockey growing up, though I do seem to remember some cartoon version of Wayne Gretzky fighting crime with Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan. Ongoing train wreck aside, I’ve decided that I really enjoy the game of Hockey. It has the physicality of Football, the skill and tactics of basketball, and the strategy of baseball. What's more is, I think that Hockey has a lot to offer other sports in the way of rules and procedures.

You may not know this, but in Hockey, (at least in the NHL on NBC on Sundays) they don't have to call timeouts to make substitutions. Subs just jump onto the ice right in the middle of the game. Some guys will be skating along and all the sudden they just head to the bench and then a bunch of other guys jump over the wall and take their place. Imagine if basketball coaches didn't have to call timeouts or wait for free throws to make changes to the lineup. For one it would just speed up the game. But it would also eliminate the excuse for teams to have a dozen timeouts per half and consequently eliminate the absurd practice of fouling and burning timeouts to move the ball to half court. (This is a whole other post altogether, but may be the worst rule in all of sports.) Football kind of uses this substitution method already, but it doesn’t really speed up the game because of the fact that everything completely stops in between each play.

Something else you may not know about hockey is the penalty for fouling. This is probably my favorite. I’m still not sure exactly how it works; but sometimes when a player commits a foul he has to immediately sit out of the game for a certain amount of time. Not only is he out of the game for a while, but his team can’t even sub for him. That’s right sports fans; play continues with a mismatch. One team gets to keep playing with more players than the other team. They call this a “power play,” and it’s very exciting. Just imagine if Phil Jackson had to suddenly draw up a play for four players instead of five because Kobe couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Or, imagine if after a pass interference call, the defense had to suddenly defend Payton Manning with no more than ten players. It would be severely interesting to say the least.

Now I’ll admit that Hockey is not without its flaws. The whole fighting thing is kind of weird and, well childish, but admittedly entertaining. But, football is a pretty violent sport altogether and baseball and basketball players are just too cowardly to fight anyway. There is also this business of keeping up with some sort of points that don’t seem to contribute to the score of the game. Really it’s just an advanced way of keeping up with stats, and no American sport really has the right to accuse another of keeping too many stats. There is also the problem of basketball fans that are accustomed to hundreds of points in a game or football fans that always have the consolation of three points for not scoring a touchdown. These are the people who quickly get bored with hockey because someone isn’t scoring every two or three minutes. They could probably stand to learn some patience anyway, and I don’t think James Naismith ever planned on a final score of 121 to 119.

I don’t think that Hockey will ever be as big in the States as it is in Canada. But I do think it deserves a little credit. The pure skill level involved should be enough to entice any real sports fan. And, as much as I hate to be a front runner, the Pittsburgh Penguin's star Sidney Crosby is really fun to watch. Sure, the scoring is a little sparse, and the puck is a little hard to follow. But, what’s not to love about the only sport that has two halftimes.