Monday, August 28, 2006

It's Been Some Time

But Sports Guy found his A-game again in a visit to Wisconsin. Within the first four entries, we have this section:

(Note: You have to appreciate any baseball stadium that offers a "special sauce" along with mustard and ketchup. That's one of those terms where you immediately assume that it IS special, kinda like when a restaurant throws in the phrase "world famous" to describe any of their foods, even though it's impossible for some random seafood joint in Cape Cod to have "world famous" clam chowder. And yet if I see the phrase "world famous," I'm always stepping in. Needless to say, I'm knee deep in the special sauce right now. I'm that easy.)
And it gets better.

On an only somewhat related note, let me give you a small sampling of how terrible the sports radio is in Kansas City. This morning the big local morning sports talk show was playing excerpt from interviews they had done with players from the Chiefs after Saturday night's game. The interviewer, who is also the co-host of the morning show (and also has something of a stutter, which is fun), was talking to Chiefs rookie defensive end Tamba Hali, and asked Hali about 'the experience of playing in front of all those Kansas City fans for the first time.' Now, this is not a dig against KC fans, who are loud as hell for football. But the way the guy asked the question made it sound like Hali was some kind of wide-eyed kid who had never been in big stadium before. In other words, it was an ignorant question and therefore a set up for disappointment.

Tamba Hali played his college ball at Penn State, which plays it's home games at Beaver Stadium, which holds over 107,000 fans. KC's Arrowhead holds 79,000. So Hali answered, 'It was kind of like Penn State.'

The main problem is that the local sports radio guys do such a terrible job of covering sports outside of the region that they have no sense of perspective. They don't even give scores from all of the other games in the major sports. They rarely report on major trades or free agent signings in major sports. The ignorance is stunning. Last week, one of the guys during the afternoon drive time actually went on for five minutes about this new backup quarterback from Patriots who the Chiefs should trade for to be Trent Green's backup. As if everyone in the league hasn't noticed since last year's training camp that Matt Cassel looked like a winner.

Everyday these guys get athlete's names wrong, make uninformed arguments, and waste hours covering minor local sporting events like Arena league football or some car race at a local track. And I can't even find a national ESPN radio feed to listen to Mike and Mike in the Morning. Infuriating.

Truthfully, the local sports radio might be the worst part about living here. Which, in the end, is a pretty good endorsement for Kansas City, even if it doesn't help me on the drive to work in the morning.

(Thanks for reading. I feel better.)

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