I am embarrassed when I hear the 2007 Fiesta Bowl radio highlights. Sorry Paul J.
As we say on Idaho Sports Talk with Caves and Prater, it makes me sad.
We choose to play the worst moments of me doing color commentary and get a laugh out of it. We have never been about blowing our own horn when we are good, so maybe the negative has won me over. I was the color commentator in those days with broadcasting legend Paul J Schneider on 670 KBOI.
I hadn’t played football in 21 years at the time I started doing radio color commentary but, since I had a talk show on our sister station, and they were running out of guys to use, I was it. I am sure they figured it was better to promote a host from a talk show they owned then a former player who was a teacher or Boise State employee.
On the air, I cut Paul J off, cheered in the background of his calls, made self-serving jokes, insulted Bowl officials during half time interviews and had plenty of grammatical errors. JP plays those drops during Idaho Sports Talk to memorialize the horror. Prater says he rarely listened but agreed I was horrible. I had some better moments but nobody saw the value of promoting that. Maybe KBOI did but I never heard it.
Most journalists hate homers like me and I can see why. At the final game to clinch the Fiesta Bowl, I brought a bag of Tostitos chips, the Fiesta Bowl title sponsor at the time, into the booth. I thought it would be funny to shake the bag when Boise State scored. We were in Reno and the broadcast booth was right next to the sports writers. They could hear us through the glass. They motioned for me to stop it and looked as if they wanted to kill me as Boise State hammered Nevada 38-7.
I think I did color commentary from 2004-2007. KBOI lost the contract in 2008 and, when we got it back a few years later, I was turned down to return to the booth. I was never told why. Coach Pete endorsed me but he was told it was not his call. I enjoyed doing the games. I never thought the games should sound so serious. I used a lot of analogies to broaden the audience, inside information from coaches and my version of humor. Boise State won their games by an average margin of 22 points in 2006 and most of the years I was doing color, so why not mix it up?
I do apologize to Paul J though. Maybe he would have gotten a few more years on the air with a different partner. We did nothing but play the worst parts of my comments and I am sure that didn’t HELP the image of the broadcasts.
Oh well, it’s only another fire on the log.
