Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A Nice Moment, I Thought

Of all the things that have surprised me about The Confessor Nation's attitudes towards The Little One -- all of those surprising things are among the delights of running this site -- it's that there is a significant faction out there that doesn't care much for Junior Miller.  I guess it shouldn't surprise me -- every host has his fans and detractors.  But I freely confess (of course) that Craig is one of my favorites on the station.

One of the things I like about Craig is that he isn't afraid to take definitive positions.  He has an analytical turn of mind, he favors us with his analyses, and he is pretty fearless about his opinions.  He doesn't hedge, he doesn't engage in endless qualifications on his point of view, he just blasts out his HSO's and there's no doubt about where he stands.

But even more admirable is that he frequently recalls those positions when they turn out not to be supported by subsequent events and reports on it to the Muser audience.  (I've noted instances of this in at least one or two previous posts.)

So when he opined that (1) that it didn't make much difference who the Mavs beat, if anyone, in Round 1 because they'd quickly be ushered out by the Lakers in Round 2, and (2) that Jason Terry should spend most of the playoffs reposing on the bench -- in rather harsh terms, I might add -- I wondered whether he would say anything about those views after the sweep and Terry's terrific performances.

And then I heard that the Musers were going to interview Terry.  And I wondered even more intensely.

Well.

Sports talk radio guys are entitled to their opinions.

It was hard to argue with Craig's opinion about Terry.  He was a big-talking, cheap-shotting, non-defending  .  . .  well, one could go on -- and Craig did.  It wasn't personal -- it was well within the bounds of sports-talk radio and, as with most of Craig's opinions, supported by the record.

So when Terry  goes off in the playoffs, it was unexpected.  A pleasant surprise, but most assuredly a surprise.

Junior didn't owe anyone an apology.

But on Monday's show, well in advance of the interview, Craig acknoweldged his prior opinion and said that he owed Jason Terry an apology.

I caught the interview on the Top Ten, and wondered how Junior would approach it.  Directly, as it turned out.  He began the interview with a personal apology to Terry, acknowledging his earlier critical opinion of The Jet.  To his credit, Terry brushed it off (I couldn't tell if he was aware of Junior's earlier opinions), although in the course of doing so managed to allude to his own greatness.

And that was the end of it.

I doubt that you hear a lot of sports-talk hosts forthrightly admit to an interviewee that -- on the air, but essentially behind his back -- the host had been slamming him and now regretted it in light of the interviewee's subsequent performance.  But Craig was as fearless in his admission of error as he was in his initial views, and I thought it was a pretty nice moment.

17 comments:

  1. It was a nice gesture, but really not that big of a deal. Kind of sounded like a suck-up to me; Junior hedging his bets just in case JET had heard his criticism.

    Doesn't surprise this reader that Junior is your favorite; of all the Ticket hosts, Junior's demeanor is closest to yours. You're both square, and out of your element, but don't want to face it.

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  2. "Square"? It's amazing you're able to post your opinions directly from 1963.

    I heard the apology too, and while I thought it was a nice gesture, it didn't really seem necessary. Terry hears all sorts of crap from every direction and I'm sure he's immune to it. He must deal with media folks all the time who say bad things about him publicly and then act like they're old friends when they're face-to-face. Announcing his change of heart and remorse would have been more than enough. I'm not saying it was grandstanding, but it sort of struck me as grandstanding.

    For the record (because people truly care what I think), Junior is in my top 5 favorite Ticket personalities and my top 5 most hated Ticket personalities. Most of the time I think he's the bee's knees, but there are times when I just wish he'd shut up.

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  3. Yeah he can be extremely polarizing for the reasons Plainsman like him. He annoys me to no end with thing like declaring the Mavs dead if they run into the Lakers. I need qualifications around that kind of thing.

    On a completely unrelated subject: can someone explain the premise of the "Pool Party" segment? I've heard it many times but I haven't been able to figure it out.

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  4. I don't know if it still is, but the Poo Party used to be a rotating Mike's Mind -- each day it was someone's responsibility to bring in a topic to kill the segment. They used to put work and research into it, and now I think the responsible party will just print a story off the Internet and talk about it for the segment. It was just supposed to be something they did during the summer when it was slow-ish. I think it's severely outlived its usefulness, but they discovered it's a good burner.

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  5. ercjunior e-mailed an apology to me for being wrong a few yrs back and im just some dude at the next cubicle over.

    he makes the morning musers in regards to sports.
    george is too wishy-washy on everything other than the cowboys.
    when it comes to the dallas cowboys its a competition b/w him and mickey spags to see who pick dallas to win the most games in a season.
    since the station has been on the air, dunham has picked dallas to win on avg 11 games every season.
    when they pick games with the p1, george picks dallas to win each and every game.

    craig keeps the show credible

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  6. btw today's hardline was bad. 2 segments of that god awful song?
    REALLY???

    normally when they talk music its an instant punchout, but this was SO bad that i thought it was a bit and stuck with it.
    but as soon as they brought it up AGAIN on another segment i was out faster than Usain Bolt.

    the sad thing is they can do 4 hrs of bad music talk and still crush the Tardline on 105.3

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  7. First Anonymous: You may be right, hard to say. What is Junior's and my "element" that we are both out of?

    I hope I'm as much out of my element as Junior is, since he anchors one of the most popular radio showgrams in the United States.

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  8. Jeremy in RockwallMay 11, 2011 at 11:43 PM

    I think Junior, at his worst, is the closest thing on the Ticket to the stereotypical shrill sports-talk man, in the way he'll just throw out a usually cliche sports point as absolute truth (see Mavs v. Lakers) and shout down (or in Junior's case, smug-voice down) any opposition. I think he's usually better than that, though.

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  9. Jeremy in RockwallMay 11, 2011 at 11:50 PM

    On another unrelated subject, don't know if this has already been discussed, but did anyone who listened to Danny's Wanda Jackson segment think the old lady sounded like total ass? Plus she seemed like a bitch (waited until 11:30 PM to start a 9:30 show because you "can't rock" until then).

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  10. @Jeremy - I think that's exactly right about Junior. He crosses the line into "sports blowhard" too often for my taste. I listen to Bob and Dan most days and I can't remember Bob ever taking a stance that made me think that way about him. He's always up for an argument and will argue his points rationally with an open mind.

    Speaking of which, I switched to RAGE the other day and had to punch out about 10 seconds into it due to Greggo acting this exact way. Looking back, I think Greggo was the main reason I was turned off by the ticket for so many years and I was able to fully embrace it once he left. He was and still is the worst of the worst in this regard. I don't care what anyone says about the current Hard Line, to me it's a billion times better without that crackhead hillbilly.

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  11. Where have Anon B and Anon C been? And Christy, for that matter?

    I like Junior Miller. A lot. I know very little about his personal life (just that I think he got married later in life and went to the Diamond Doctor for the engagement ring and he's a UNT grad when it was called NT) so almost everything I know about him is what he gives me on the radio to work with. I think he is very sharp and quick with his wit, and that can be hard to come by. Oh, Gordo is quick, too, but it's usually a shock factor kind of thing. Junior goes for the funny. (Anyone hear the Ja Rule joke this morning?) Additionally, because he has been in sports so long, I consider him to be one of the most knowledgeable sports Ticket hosts, beaten only by Rhyner and Sports Sturm. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, Norm has all the awards and history, but I don't listen to him so I cannot account for his knowledge firsthand.) I don't see his apology as sucking up or grandstanding; I see it as openly admitting that maybe he was a bit too harsh with his judgments and being a man and standing up and saying so. When do you hear Dan do something like that? Or Corby?

    I will say that cancer monkey has a point about Terry hearing all kinds of crap from the same media that kisses his arse. That's the way sports go.

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  12. Junior is one of my favorites up at the 'Lil Ticket, (Gordo is my favorite). I enjoy his matter of fact attitude about most things, but over the years he's shown us that he has some humor in him. I've seen him take part in most bits (with more characters to his credit), but do enjoy his interviewing skills as well.

    @ Joanessa, before Craig got married, it was always a joke (or was it) that he was gay. He had a girlfriend up north (probably his current wife, not sure), so no one knew much about her. Plus he probably has some tendacies, or habits that suggested that he might have been gay, or somesuch.

    As far as Junior apologizing on the air, I think that's just the type of person he is. He makes a statement about something and it turns out making him look less credible (as one confessor put it) if he just lets it slide without correcting it. It might be a slight grandstand, but I don't think that's why he does it.

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  13. To be clear, I thought his apology was really cool, and I think it's a rarity and admirable, I just don't think Terry could give a rat's ass, and I don't know how Junior thought that he would have. Going on the record and saying he was wrong and now sees the error of his ways should have cleared his conscience, and would have gotten the point across to any P1 that cared.

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  14. C-Monk, I agree re Terry's attitude. He didn't care about the apology, didn't need one, and his response brushed it off.

    But I don't think Junior thought that in apologizing he was assuaging Terry's feelings. He's doing it because he's gone on record rather colorfully bashing the guy, and he's broadcasting to legions of P1's who heard it and who remember and who (in general) want to think well of their favorite shows' hosts. And Terry, the hero of Game 4 (and having had a good series generally) was a big fish to grab for an interview, and he's a good talker. It was gracious of him to come on The Ticket at all -- and I thought Junior's graciousness in return was pitch-perfect and not overplayed in the slightest.


    So was he playing to the P1? I didn't think it sounded at all like grandstanding, but even if it were -- I'd rather hear a host grandstanding as a stand-up gentleman than as a hypocritical jackass.

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  15. It sucks that all comments from about 3 days went down the drain. I don't think it was MTC's fault, it seemed to be a Blogger issue.

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  16. Right you are, T4. See next post. Sorry, there were some interesting thoughts there.

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