Watching Sports Talk Radio

I watch talk radio on ESPN from time to time. Strange to say I watch talk radio but it's just one more sign of how the world gets bizarre-er and bizarre-er.
I started doing that because SportsCenter bores me with the hosts and guests who think they are the show.
When Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick started this whole thing, it was obvious that they were sports lovers who had a fantastic sense of humor. And they are intelligent. Their personalities added to the sports discussion, they didn't try to overshadow it. Of course they took a look around as ESPN grew and said "This ain't what I signed on for - I'm outta here." One more in an endless example of how corporations destroy essence as they grow.
Exit Keith and Dan, enter the Keith and Dan wannabes. The people who thought there was a formula for this and if you repeat it you will succeed. What they didn't realize is that you actually have to have a sense of humor, you have to be intelligent, you have to ask intelligent questions and you have to know how to balance the whole thing.
The most asked question in interviews today is "How did you feel when......................" Every time I hear it I throw up. Which is good because I am losing weight.
There is no originality, no thoughtfulness. Sportscasters have accepted the fact that athletes will never say what they want them to say, so they just ask the same questions over and over again.
SportsCenter bores me so I started checking out sports talk radio. Oh my god this is a whole other world entirely and it ain't pretty. These guys are all athlete wannabes. Probably played high school sports, maybe college, but that's as far as it went. They turned their love of sports into words.
Dammed up testosterone floods every set. These guys try to come across as tough, which is hilarious because the only callouses on their bodies are on their typing fingers. They act tough to impress the athletes and their audience. I guarantee you that in the locker room the athletes probably have caricatures of these guys on their jocks.
These guys make themselves even more pathetic by using phrases that the athletes use. If you try to talk like Kevin Garnett, people will laugh but not for the same reason. Garnett is hilarious. You look like a brain damaged parrot.
And they do all the fist bumping and all that crap too. Once again, when athletes do it it is genuine (sort of). When you do it, you look like a three year old swinging a baseball bat.
I love Around The Horn. The format is unique, I like Tony Reali's brash confidence and sense of humor and I love Woody Page's cartoon face, his chalkboard and his over the top personality. But I will never understand Reali's scoring system.
I love PTI. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon carry on the Keith and Dan tradition in their own way and it is good. They make me laugh. Especially Kornheiser. But their chemistry makes me laugh too. I love their relationship. And they are intelligent and knowledgeable.
Sports coverage was a simple thing when I was a child. Curt Gowdy. Then it became technical and sophisticated which is OK; it's a natural progression. But now it is ever present, overwhelming and smothering. I suppose it follows the path of TV entertainment from Dick Van Dyke to reality TV.
I don't want reality TV when I look for sports information.
I just want information, I want intelligence, I want to laugh a little.
But then again I'm just a dinosaur.