The Andrew Extravaganza

Good Friday, the day Jesus took four nails and didn’t make a peep (as Bobby Dooley once described it). In years past, this magical day was celebrated as the ultimate day of Smack in the great American institution known as the Jungle.

Maybe it was Greg In Vegas’ emerging fascination with amputation and illness that led Jim to connect the dots and foresee the inevitable crucifixion smack. Or maybe it was Jim Harbaugh’s infamous Easter holiday inspired smack impotence that led Jim to fear the dirty bomb of Nice Radio. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the reason, Romey has seen fit to stray from Jungle tradition in recent years and hold the Smack-off later than the usual Good Friday.

The 12th annual Smack-Off will be held on Friday, May 5th, 2006; mark your calendars. Like I did for last year’s event, I will handicap the field (once it’s finalized) and then provide a call-by-call recap with my own rankings of every call.

Contract Time For the last four to six months, Jim has been talking up a big career decision: stick with terrestrial radio, move to satellite radio, or switch to television exclusively. I can’t blame him for cutting down on work to spend more time with his two young kids and his wife. I can’t blame him for chasing the biggest payday. But I don’t have to like and agree with his decision either.

Television

Presumably he would be continuing on his daily, half-hour ESPN gig, Jim Rome is Burning. This is the doomsday scenario, think 9/11 all over again, but this time actually affecting me.

Frankly, the TV show sucks. Still, it’s not in the same ballpark as Around the Horn of course. It’s not even the same fucking sport as Around the Horn. But it sucks in its own unique way.

The show looks too slick and sterile. And worse, it doesn’t know what it wants to be: Is it a Romey smack vehicle? Is it a panel discussion show? Is it an interview show? It tries to do too much and subsequently fails to accomplish anything.

Rome’s takes are fine, but I heard them on the radio earlier, and they sounded better then. I still don’t like the way he reads from the teleprompter, for some reason he ends up with an odd way of phrasing his sentences that comes off as distracting.

The panel usually has a couple of decent guests, but there’s hardly time to develop ideas and actually discuss a topic. Maybe someone gets off a good line, but you know the panel model is flawed when a guy like Skip Bayless is the ideal. It encourages guests to talk over each other and spout crazy shit they don’t believe to get more airtime. Even it were the focus of the show, the forum would still suck because in the end, who really gives a damn what Roger Loge thinks about an issue?

It could work as primarily an interview show, but can they rely on two guests per day to show up for live interviews in studio or via satellite with no wiggle room?

I’d probably watch the TV show if radio were not an option, but it wouldn’t be a priority. The TV show just isn’t the best avenue to showcase Jim’s talents.

Radio

The Smack-Off last year was a tragic event: it was by far the single most outstanding day of caller participation ever in the Jungle, but at the same time it was a reminder of past greatness, the Golden Age of the Jungle. Hearing the old school Legends at the top of their game only reminded us how seldom they call and it highlighted how poor the calls are every other day. Even Terrence in Sierra Madre has called less often in the past year. When Trapper called it quits, who replaced him, Rachel in Houston? In Kerwin’s place we have to accept Orrin in Denver? I could go on and on, but nostalgia trips are best led by Silk every year in the Smack-Off.

The old Legends are a dying breed (or at least aging/maturing to the point where calling a radio show once a week doesn’t do it for them anymore). In their place we find flash in the pan upstarts that typically earn a spot in one Smack-Off only to disappear during the next year, the list is long and forgettable. The Jungle desperately needs new Legends to rally behind.

Interviews are the bread and butter of the Jungle. Would we have ever seen Tolbert telling the Dr. Boudreaux story on JRIB? Would Mark Grace have given us the Slump Busting story? Would Steve Elkington have gotten off so many classic lines? The radio show provides the freedom to go off-color and the freedom of time to take tangents into classic radio gold.

Radio is the proper format for Jim Rome to be at his best. I’ll follow him to satellite if necessary, but does he really want to gamble with the massive nationwide audience that he’s put so much effort into building? The Howard Stern to Sirius switch should show us that such a move would be uncertain at best.

I’ve said my piece, so let me end with the following:

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that Jim Rome could piss his radio show down the drain in favor of a bad TV show in a bad timeslot. Do the right thing Jim and stay on the radio. Maybe God will forgive you if you run to television, but this Clone won’t.

Hey Drew, looking forward to your Smack-off post. It wasn't until this past year that I became a regular Romey listener. Your very right, the interviews are what make the show great. I have to think Orrin in Denver has to be this year's favorite for the Smack-off. I still remember him absolutely destroying some caller from West Virginia about a month or so back. Classic stuff. War coming up with 700 ways to call somebody a hillbilly. War Romey staying on terrestrial radio. And war you, Andrew, stepping up and becoming the next Jungle legend.

Orrin is good, but don't put money on him until you hear the real Legends.

I'm going to cut some audio from the 2000 Smack-Off and have that available when I do my 2006 Smack-Off handicapping post. Look for that as soon as the XR4Ti crew sets the field.