More from The List

You may remember from earlier this year, we introduced the first few members of our list, those people that we would banish if we were in charge, for no other reason than we wanted to and could because we were in charge. This list is limited to sports figures, as clearly there are more evil people in the world that would be banished long before any sports figure.

We start at #5 -- Colin Cowherd -- ESPN Radio blowhard
I spend a lot of my free time reading, talking, watching, listening to, and thinking about sports. i spend a lot of my time that supposed to be spent on other things thinking, watching, and reading about sports. I don't understand how people who are paid to do the same thing I do for fun get their facts wrong on such a regular occasion. I understand that radio talk show hosts are trying to provoke listeners, and unpopular opinions are one of the best ways to do that. But please back up your opinions with some evidence. I also understand that a national host doesn't follow teams as obsessively as fans or local beat writers do, but spend a little time doing some research, or get one of the multitude of flunkies working for you to look things up. Cowherd is just one of many hosts to have the same problem, he stands in for the entire group due to the plagiarism issues in his past and a recent show discussing college football when he claimed that "Penn State had handled Michigan pretty well" in the last few years (they are 1-9 in their last 10 meetings).

6, 7, 8) Jim Delany, Mike Slive, & Roy Kramer -- Godfather of the BCS and its current champions
I'll admit that my distaste for Delany is not in my team's best interests. Delany's (and Slive's and Kramer's) support of the BCS is what is in the best interests of the schools in the Big Ten and SEC that they represent. The BCS keeps those two conferences rich, along with the ACC, Big 12, Big East and Pac 10, to a lesser extent, and is the biggest single thing that keeps programs like Michigan on top of the college football heap, money wise.
But like most college football fans, I want to see a playoff. And Slive and Delany, and the universities they represent, are the biggest roadblocks to that.

Bohica Baby!

I'm not normally a big Jim Rome fan, but I occasionally catch a little bit of his show if I head out to lunch someplace. Today I caught a piece of it where a Boston fan was talking smack to basically the rest of the country and he introduced the term "bohica" which stands for "Bend Over Here It Comes Again!" You know that feeling when you are watching a game and you know when something bad is going to happen because you've seen it happen so many times before. I liked the term so much, I put together a little list of some bohica moments we all might be familiar with:

-The direct snap to the kicker who pooch punts from the FG formation from the opponents 32 up by four with 2 and a half minutes to go in the game, also known as Lloyd's favorite trick play
-The rush of spartan football fans who proclaim that "this is the year" or "Pride comes before the fall" before the inevitable crushing defeat at the hands of their bitter rival and the season implosion that follows
-The Rasheed Wallace technical / meltdown that comes at a key point of a deciding playoff game.
-The Florida State field goal attempt that sails just outside the uprights as time expires against Miami
-Penn State complaints about officiating after losing to Michigan. Actually the whole Michigan series must seem like one bohica moment after another for Penn State fans.

Jim Rome Disease

One of the signs that I've gotten way too old is that I no longer listen to music. When I was younger, I would listen to music all the time: at home, at work, in the car, while walking anywhere. Now whenever I'm in the car, or at home, all I listen to is sport talk radio.

Sports talk is full of boobs who don't know what they are talking about, are just out to make people angry, or think they are god's gift to radio. But the one thing that annoys me the most about your standard, garden-variety, sports-talk host is their inability to present an original thought or view point without repeating it 50 times in a row. If you've listened to Jim Rome at all you know how it goes:

You get in your car to run an errand and turn on your local sports talk show.
Host makes a point about a topic of interest to you.
He pauses for effect...


He restates the post using slightly different words
pauses again...


He reiterates the point, this time talking slowly so as to emphasize each and every word.
and pauses again, just to wait for someone else to turn on the radio, so that he can make the point again in 5 seconds...


and so on, until you arrive at your destination and get out of the car.

Now I don't know about you, but when I'm having a conversation I don't repeat the same idea over and over unless I'm talking to a third grader or Andy Katzenmoyer. Would it be too much to ask of sport radio hosts to treat us with respect and not talk down to us like we are children?