Dan Patrick Leaving ESPN

God I hope he doesn't end up hosting TPIR.

So that was the big announcement they've been teasing on the show for the last two weeks.

And yeah, Price is Right is beneath him. I do hope he stays in sports.

The rumor was that he was going to be looking to do a show about sports and general news. Norby never lived it when Keith came back to play.

He was the only good thing about ESPN (since they've decided to become more an entertainment entity and less about journalism).

I was thinking the other way around, but whatever keeps him away from "Price" is okay in my book.

As much as I despise where ESPN has gone in regards to their TV personalities and broadcasts (and I do despise almost every facet of their TV network), I do like ESPN radio. None of their shows are great, but all are decent. The one ESPN radio host I liked the best was Erik Kuselias and he quit to host a Nascar show (ugh) on TV. I used to really like Cowherd, but he has grown to be way too smug, haughty and "hip" for me. Maybe he's always been like that and his humor and opinions I generally agreed with colored my view. But these days he grates on me more and more.

This opens up quite a prime time slot for someone else with DP leaving. I like Gottleib but don't think he's necessarily ready for this slot and prestige. I wonder if ESPN will do what they did when Kornheiser left radio and grab an up and coming regional star? Or else we may get the Gottleib/Stink/Wingo radion hour.

I hate the direction ESPN is going (Who's Now... Who Cares). Sportscenter is becoming E! News. In 10 years, ESPN will be like MTV, with all the sports going on ESPN2 or the Ocho and all the talk shows and reality programming on the flagship channel.

National and Local (NYC) ESPN Radio is unlistenable. I would love to find good sports-talk but can't stand ESPN Radio (and WFAN).

Cowherd is angry and bitter because he's too ugly for tv. Anytime he's on ESPN he gets the "Marla Hooch" shot.

Who's Now? makes that ridiculous show where Herbstreit and May move little velcro signs around a board to hypothetically play out the college bowl picture from week to week look like can't miss television.

Edit- And Smails I agree with you about Cowherd for the most part, but if you hate smug I don't see how you can like that Kuselias guy.

Really? What you got against Patrick?

Long.... Pauses.....?

As ESPN guys go he's not so bad. I don't want to bleed him like I fantasize about doing to Chris Berman or Stuart Scott. Patrick just has a wannabe Costas vibe, without having Costas' wit.

I find him unfit to wear the crown of the Barker Kingdom. I hope he stays far away from Stage 33 at CBS Television City.

I'm a Keith Oberman Yankee-apologist, so I'll be sorry to see him go. I like the Reggie Miller segments, too.

Costas' "Hello, loser" quote he plays everytime he mentions Costas makes me smile.

He's awful on the radio. ESPN radio is to sports radio what Sandler movies are to comedies. It's brain dead, and the only reason to listen is that ESPN radio tends to get the best guests on the air.

Dan Patrick was mediocre, at best, on ESPN radio. Unfortunately that was enough to place him in the upper echelon of sports radio journalists (at least, amongst those available on So-Cal AM radio).

It's truly a wasteland out there. Has anyone else had the misfortune of experiencing the eardrum assault that is the Steve Hartman, Mychal Thompson, and Vic Jacobs show?

So just asking, what do you guys consider good sports radio?

*crickets*

Tough to name a consistently good sports radio product. Jim Lampley's guest spots for Jim Rome typically outstrip Rome's show by a wide measure. If not for the idiot "jungle" phrases and the moronic callers, I'd consider Rome's show to be an excellent product.

Matthew Berry used to host a fantasy baseball show (haven't heard it in a while) that was uniformly excellent, although obviously catering to a specific niche.

I'll have to give this some thought.

I'm not fond of the national shows and rarely listen to any of them. There's a guy on Fox Sports Radio late at night who's not bad, George Zadano (sp?).

Mainly I stick with the shows on KNBR in the Bay Area. They have a lot of enjoyable hosts, mainly Gary Radnich, Damon Bruce, and the drive time show with Ralph Barbieri and Tom Tolbert. They're way better than the sports station out here in Sacramento. With them it's basically all Sacramento Kings all the time. Plus they actually air Sacramento Monarchs games. Absurd.

Good sports radio tends to be local, because nationally there's too much going on to really get into it. There are things to do, though:

1) no athlete/celebrity interviews. They're awful 99% of the time.
2) Good guests, aka reporters who have an opinion, are into the game AND are smart. All of ESPN gets pretty good guys for this, but they mix it in with too much crap (see #1)
3) Don't overproduce your show. The repetitive routines get old. Show killer isn't funny and he never was. Those songs Mike and Mike do...
4) Have an opinion you can back up. Patrick goes around this by not having opinions until it's safe to do so.
5) Be funny and real. We can hear through the scripted bullshit.

The Tony Kornheiser show was the last really good national radio show I heard. The evening/late night crew on ESPN is pretty good, but you know once those guys start getting airtime during main hours, they sell out to become the next Mike and Mike.

Agreed. He's now on XM, right?

If so, that's a reason to consider getting it.

I haven't really heard a great sports radio show. The best I've heard have been guys like Rome who seems fresh and funny at first, but their shtick eventually gets old. I hate the FOX guys because they're all so phony. Sporting News Radio has/had Berger and Stelton, who were good, but usually they just spent time recapping scores. I also used to like Bob Kemp in the 90's... he was a little too surly though.

When I lived in northern California I liked listening to the Razor and Mr. T. But I can't honestly say that's a great show... more like good background noise. Hey Moltisanti, is Grant Napear still polluting the airwaves in Sacramento?

Has anybody ever heard JT the Brick's show or the Chris Russell show on Sporting News? Those are, by far, the worst I've ever heard.

Brick is bad, but not worse than the Hartman, et al., show.

GuFaClu was right, interviews are universally terrible. These guys (particularly baseball players) tend to be about as insightful as piles of cracked bricks, and typically have nothing interesting to say whatsoever.

Yeah, Napear is still the top dog out here which is one of the big reasons that station blows.

I've been listening to the Razor and Mr. T since they've been on, and Barbieri for a long time before that when he was a solo host. I enjoy that they're layed back and don't treat sports too seriously.

JT the Brick is awful. His whole "Be passionate!" attitude is torture to sit through.

I remember listening to Bob Kemp years ago. Surly is putting it mildly. What was up with that guy?

Does this mean more time for the most pissed off man in America: Stephen A. Smith?

Kornheiser just left radio to get ready for another season of Monday Night Football. He said he'd be back on the air in January 2008. His show was great and was the reason I would always leave my apt late in the morning to get to the office. I wouldn't classify him too much as a sports show because he doesn't touch upon it as often anymore (he even says as such himself), but he's good when he has someone on to discuss a topic.

Dan Patrick has been hinting at making a major announcement on his radio show for the last couple of weeks. He's all ready said that he's not going for the Price Is Right hosting gig. I think him leaving ESPN is a good thing since he seems to sound so tired of it all every time he's on the radio discussing sports. I think he would probably do better following Olbermann's example and branching out into different types of news.

Since Patrick's leaving, I don't really see myself listening to anything else on ESPN radio. Maybe Max Kellerman's show since I find him to be funny sometimes and he wants to be another Kornheiser when he grows up.

Maybe the Sirius - XM can happen before Jan 2008.

Kellerman was a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine when he first came back to ESPN after the failure of his FOX Sports show. He was doing 7 - 8 on ESPN New York and was enjoyable.

STEPHEN A. SMITH WASN'T HALF BAD WHEN HE STARTED. IT WAS CLEAR HE DIDN'T KNOW NEW YORK SPORTS BEYOND THE KNICKS SO HE WAS RESTRAINED. ONCE HE BECAME CONFIDENT, HE BECAME UNBEARABLE.

Now that's a tough question. I think it depends on the market. Here in Atlanta, all sports all the time fails. The local AM sports networks talk sports but pepper the conversations with other topics as well. And it works better here. If there was a show that just talked Braves/Falcons/Hawks and box scores it would die a quick death.

I find that I like parts of sports radio. I like certain hosts some of the time, but not all the time. I hate bits, but I like some parodies. In the mornings I find myself switching between the two local morning sports shows. That helps me avoid annoying bits/guests and the nine million AM commercials an hour.

My favorite sports show/hosts was when local 790 The Zone had Cellini/Domino doing "The Bottom Line" afternoons. They were fantastic. But mgmt broke up that pair to play 2 Live Stews (ugh) and now they're on in the morning with the worst local sports "celebrity" Steak Shapiro. He is awful. Speaking of the Stews, they're on ESPN TV now so I wouldn't be surprised if ESPN tried to get them national to go the diversity route. I don't care for their show, but they are a million times better than Stephen A. Smith.

So all in all, I don't have a favorite. I'm open-minded though, I'd like to see who ESPN picks.

Jcassady, No need to frame your comments in the style of...

I like Patrick -- maybe it's having gotten used to him from years of watching the Big Show with him and Olberman, but I just like him. And I'd much rather listen to him than the ego festival that is Jim Rome, who airs at the same time.

As for our local guys, we've got two all-sports stations, and the older one had been slowly losing ground to the ESPN affiliate, so they made the genius decision to get rid of the guy who'd been hosting their afternoon drive-time show for the last ten years (Marc Daniels). Of course, it doesn't help that they feel obligated to broadcast every single UCF sporting event imagineable -- nothing like a college volleyball game at 7pm on a Tuesday!

Then there's the blight that is Dan Sileo every morning, but the less said about that the better.

Patrick by his self is a train wreck. His best stuff was with Dibble and KO. But around here it's either that or Rome. The Lampley comment was dead on. Good stuff when he fills in. We get one hour of the Fox morning show The Zab(?) out of DC, the first hour is really good never heard anything more than that. The Herd is tough to listen to at times but, I like Mike and Mike.

Come to think of it, it's really bare out there isn't it? Does James Brown still have that show on sporting news radio, heard it once and it sounded okay.

Dibble? Now there was a train-wreck. IIRC, he was fired for saying "good to hear Nancy Reagan is back on the market" the day after Ronald passed away.

I always thought his contract was up, and all he brought to the show was comic relief (that based on him being stupid), so they let him go. That is kinda funny to hear.

I generally prefer national shows over local shows, since I like a bigger picture view on things. I guess if what you want to hear about is your favorite team and it is the local team), then local shows would seem better. But a lot of the local guys I have heard seem way too limited in their viewpoint, this especially true for the New York guys.

Yup. Management waited till his contract was up (I think it was only a few weeks later, so the timing worked out for ESPN) and supposedly that was the reason it wasn't renewed.

I was actually listening the day that he said that, and I couldn't believe it was uttered on national radio. There was silence for a few seconds, then Dan spluttered about some other topic. Oddly enough, the Reagan comment didn't offend me nearly as much as Rob's "I played baseball, person "X" did not, so I don't care what they have to say" schtick.

Dibble is, was, and will always be awesome.

I always loved Dibble for his rants about how pitchers couldn't have been using steroids because it would make them too muscular. Wrong again, Dibs.

He at least brought some life to the show.

Wow I did laugh at some of the things that spilled out of his mouth, it was mostly a result of him being a moron. When he tried to make an actual point about sports, if it was not funny in its silliness, then it would be head shaking bad. I guess that would be the allure for some.

Kornheiser's show was the best, and I was sorry when it ended. Never liked Cowherd as his replacement, he just annoyed me with his style.

I prefer FOX Sports Radio over most. They have a lot going for them and they are fairly consistent. They usually get lower teir athletes to call in on a consistent basis and you really get to know them because the hosts are familiar with who they are talking with. Sometimes it's nice to hear hosts talking to athletes about things other than sports. There's more than just that, but it's one of the main things I appreciate about the network.

ESPN is tolerable these days; I leave Around the Horn on in the background when I'm doing other shit in my house. Sportscenter is a wash most of the time.

Who was they guy that was one Fox before he got replaced with Sedano? Did some of the funniest sports impressions I have ever heard. He did Bob Knight and Lou Holtz to a tee, now that was some funny shit. Last I heard he was a MLB radio, even called in to Sedano show a few times.

ESPN should find him, whatever his name was.

Jorge Sedano is great when he gets in arguments with the drunk callers on the overnight show.

Not sure who was around before Jorge.

I have been enjoying Patrick and Olberman. Shame not to have them on anymore. Patrick's show was the one show I enjoyed.

I sometimes enjoy the Fox guys midmorning, but I get turned off with their insignificant sports comments and when they dog ESPN; especially after hearing multiple ESPN guys praise Fox sports coverage.

Cowherd used to be enjoyable, but damn he has become obnoxious. Tired of hearing about how in shape he is and how "big boy" his show is. Rome is ok when it is just him, but the callers and e-mails and pretty boring and rarely as funny as he makes them out to be. Really, sports radio needs less of talking with fans and more talking with the people in sports.

Stephen A. Smith annoys the shit out of me when he is on. His yelling and ranting reminds me of the crappy conservative radio we get here.

Read that Cedano is leaving the third shift. Bummer I like that show.

Anyone heard about a replacement for Dan Patrick?

Here's a question, when did sports radio go bad? Was it always this bad and we didn't realize it or did something or someone change it. Between Colin Cowherd saying people who support dogfighting have the same mental impairment as pedophiles to Stephen A Smith saying that 60% is the samething as "everyone", I wanted to break something.

Sports Radio went bad during the mid to late '90s. As we saw an explosion in sports and radio networks, and as the money went up, it became more about branding yourself and creating a unique voice/screech rather than intelligently and articulately discussing athletic endeavors. Kind of like how Dennis Rodman didn't get jack shit in terms of endorsements until he decided to go completely wacko.

The self promotion of jackasses like Cowherd, S. Smith, and Jim Rome is a direct result of this dynamic.

Goddamn it. Will that be anywhere online?

Sports Talk radio has always been bad. It's just now more apparent than ever.