ESPN pay cuts?

Here's the thing.

about








doing radio by yourself.






... its about timing.

And anticipation.









Have a take and don't suck!

 

Rack him.

 

I cannot believe that the one segment I remember from the tiny blip in time where I listened to Rome made it to YouTube.

I did not realize anyone else even remembered the Merkur. Dad sold cars at a Ford dealership then and they had a Scorpio in stock that was absolutely gorgeous. He had me howling for the second half of this bit (once he makes it through the 10 worst list).

 

Good for him, $20m/year
ESPN, Stephen A. Smith negotiating historic $20 million per year deal: Sources

 

Bad for everyone else, given that they’ll probably have to let some people go in order to keep Screamin’ A on.

 

I think Rome was on evening drive or overnights for ESPN radio or syndicated by one of the Boston or Connecticut or RI stations, so I'd hear him driving to and from assignments. One of those "time and place in my life" sort of memory periods, along with falling asleep to the George Michael Sports Machine when I was a kid on Sunday nights.

 

Jim Rome Is Burning

 

I don't know where he "ranks" or whatever. Doing it for 30 years says something, yet I don't think he's as revered or respected as much as someone like Dan Patrick. You seldom hear big name guests on the Rome show outside of Super Bowl week when they show up everywhere to plug something. I know Rome made the Radio Hall of Fame a few years back, but Rome still seems like an "outsider" in the sports media world.

 

Finally finished the Rome video. It was interesting, as JC said. Honestly, I didn't know he was still on the air. Sports talk radio is so out of my realm now that the only thing I know about it is what I read here.
Yes, I listened to him frequently back in the day, I knew about the Huge Call of the Day and the Smack-Off, which was really repetitive. His Jim Everett thing, to me, was just stupid radio hi-jinks like all of the nonsense on morning shows.

I was on his show once, back in the beginning when he was still in Santa Barbara. UCSB was playing Pepperdine in basketball the next day. I was in the newspaper office in Torrance when his assistant called. He asked if we covered Pepperdine so the phone guy asked me to take it because I covered Pepperdine. I had done no research, but they put me on the air within a few minutes. He said he was doing a segment on the Gauchos-Waves game and asked me what Pepperdine's attitude was going into the game. Off the top of my head, I recalled that UCSB had beaten Pep the previous year, something like 60-35, a horrible game that I did not cover. So I told him that Pep's loss the previous season was one of the worst in its history. He goes off: "WOOOOAH, Pepperdine is coming in trying to avenge the worst loss in school history. The War by the Shore. If that doesn't get you going, nothing will." Or something similar. It was a pretty brief interview.

 

Boston had a second-rate sports talk station that had him on during middays. He was so over the top it was comical. I couldn't believe a word he said. How he holds a job after the Jim Everett interview is beyond me.

 

The stranglehold ESPN and Fox have over college football is nothing compared to their hammerlock on sports talk radio. The podcast universe is so fractured and specialized I couldn’t tell you who’s a big deal there besides Le Batard. But even then it seems like the biggest names at least got famous via ESPN first.