a Donald Trump apologist about his character, words, truths or criminal intent. So, therefore, I will not debate them.
I have absolutely no desire to attempt an intelligent conversation with a random sports fan calling my radio show whose initial premise is “fire the coach” or “bench the quarterback” or “I know more about football than the offensive coordinator.” It might shock you but I’ve never met a phone caller or a Ravens fan who knows more about football than any real NFL coach and that’s probably not going to change.
And I certainly have zero interest in “creating a debate” on a social media thread that will invariably become a toilet of words, insults and reactions.
At this point in my life – and I’m pretty sure its embedded in my DNA to be inquisitive and always seeking more knowledge and accurate, reliable information – I only seek to ask questions of “experts” in any field. I only want to talk to smart people. I want to learn more. I want to grow.
Part of my “growth” is seeking to expand outside of the conversations and beyond sports and the world around the games that men play for money and the cacophony of noise that surrounds the Ravens, Orioles and Terps in our area. I’ve been doing that quite successfully for 27 years and today I retire as the G.O.A.T. of sports media in Baltimore.
While I have your attention, I’m going to self-brag here for a moment.
No one has EVER covered sports in Baltimore with as much depth, conviction, accuracy, integrity and reliability than the company I’ve built over the past two decades at WNST.net and AM 1570.
I spent half of my life taking every risk and employing 24-hour-a-day sweat equity building the careers of the people who now comprise my corporate “competitor” – a place that currently employs the kind of people who insulted my wife privately with vicious texts as she was dying two years ago. I don’t like them. I don’t want to be them. And I certainly get an enormous amount of pleasure kicking their arrogant FM asses all over both radio bands every year at Super Bowl time.
I did it again royally this week and the proof is in the timeline.
Spending the week at the Super Bowl over the past 25 years, I see a very accurate measurement of my work vs. the field across America. I see every local sports media interest of relevance from all over the country. I walk Radio Row every year and there is no one who has ever done it the way I’ve done it at WNST. That’s simply a fact. And if you check our website, my timeline, our Twitter or anywhere our outstanding product goes, and you’ll see why this week in Minnesota has further spiked the ball on our excellence, dominance and hustle.
It’s not hard to kick the asses of those folks at “Entercom Radio” or CBS Radio or whatever the out-of-towners are calling themselves these days. They didn’t get out of bed to compete during the biggest sports week of the year for the 10th consecutive year.
In many ways, I feel like I have nothing left to prove – nothing left to give or aspire to as a “sports only” radio host after 27 years of building WNST and having a nationally syndicated stint at the turn of the century.
My real life – from single parenting in my early 20’s to watching my mother die at 98 this summer, from running a small, local (and oft misunderstood) business to making changes in my life during my wife’s two gruesome battles with leukemia and her survival – has been its own challenge every waking day. I know that I’ve been running a small AM radio station in a major American media market in a fashion that has no rival, peer or comparable. One day I’ll write at length about the fallacy of Arbitron and how it’s another rigged system in America designed to profit for the rich and corporate and punish the poor and independent.
Many things have happened along the way in my real world that have been far more significant to me personally than whether the Ravens made a play on 4th and 12 a few weeks ago. So, therefore screaming about firing John Harbaugh or Ozzie Newsome or why Steve Bisciotti is tone-deaf having a 1:30 p.m. press conference on a Friday before the Super Bowl, is something I’m really not interested in doing all day, every day.
I love to talk about sports – and I feel like I do it at a very high level and with great expertise as a professional – but I also have a personal perspective I didn’t have when I built this thing 20 years ago.
I watched my wife fight for her life twice over the past 46 months and it has inspired me to seek happiness for the rest of what life and years I have left on the planet.
Life is short and I want to grow and expand and improve.
I love our website at WNST.net. I still love sports. I certainly still love Baltimore, which I have an investment that at this point is unalterable. And I even love most aspects of social media and the ability to communicate on a grand scale – especially for a guy who cobbled together every nickel he had in August 1998 to buy a small, AM radio station with inherent limitations that has now blossomed into a web and social media market leader and launched the careers of dozens of people who have sports media jobs all over the country.
I’m extremely proud of that!
I still love helping local businesses grow. I still love signing new sponsors and watching the advertising and promotion I do help them and their companies grow and families thrive. I still love partnering with good human beings whose goals extend beyond squeezing the last dollar and ounce of joy out of every human transaction.
As you can see from any of my work in Minnesota this week at Super Bowl 52, I still very much love talking sports and business and “the world” with intelligent people who have a significant message or ideology they wish to share in
