SportsTalk 980/WTEM

If you want to be berated all day for how everything you thought you knew about sports is false, because you’ve never played the game, and then finish things off by giving a big middle finger to everything but the Redskins and golf golf golf golf, then WTEM is for you.
How has sports reporting/​entertainment become such an obnoxious jockocracy? Why do people think fans want to be told how little they know «because they never played the damn game»? Considering the fan base of all sports consists of people who have never played the game at the collegiate level or above, they should be a little less abrasive. Without these idolizing fans, pro athletes today would still be struggling to pay their medical bills or working blue-​collar jobs in the offseason.
Worst of all, these guys have obviously never played the game of sports reporting before it fell into their laps, with 90 percent of their comments seemingly made up of cliches or lifted out of NFL Films scripts.
The biggest culprit of this grating trend is 980. Rich «Doc» Walker and Brian «B-​Mitch» Mitchell really only know football, and thus it’s the only sport they talk about with any sort of sincerity. The same goes for basketball and John «Coach» Thompson, who seems to have WTEM by the balls. Why else would he be permitted to run over hard breaks on the hour with ad nauseam talk about «kids these days and their Walkmans» and incoherent ramblings about race, while at the same time having a stock of rants contradicting everything he just said?
«Smokin’» Al Koken is a breath of fresh air, but this might only be because he’s the only non-​jock, non-​Redskin cult hero on the station. If I were him I would go home every damn day wishing I were dead, though. How can anyone from the outside of this elite athletic circle stand to put up with them all afternoon?
Then, at the end of the day, you finally get some regular joes talking sports. However, Steve Czaban is like your raging conservative relative, always complaining about women’s sports, soccer, hockey and taxes and counting down the hours before his next tee time. Andy Pollin is a little more palatable but seems like a jerk to callers (although maybe they deserve it for calling in).
Fortunately, Mike Wise from The Post and Thom Loverro from The Times have been coming on with increasing frequency. The print columnists ad some legitimate insight to Pollin and Czaban’s show and are much lest hateful and cynical than either of them. Yet somehow they’ve never played the game!
In conclusion, I’d like to give WTEM one star.
But I listen to it almost every day.
I hate commuting.

Let me say, I COMPLETELY agree with everything Kevin says. He is dead on in his review. However, I find Szaban pretty funny, and I think the Koken/​B-​Mitch/​JT show is funny as well. Doc Walker is a little light on content and high on «balla of the week» type shenanigans, but on the whole is a decent 2 hour show. I do like that Doc grills Skins GM Vinny Cerrato.
Read Kevin’s review because he is dead-​on correct, but listen to the shows yourself and form your own opinion.