OPEN THREAD: What Happens When You Tell a Friend About the Ticket?

November was supposedly Tell a Friend About the Ticket Month. 

Whenever I ask a conversational friend whether they listen to The Ticket, assuming that he's male, I never get a response that they've never heard of The Ticket.  So telling them about The Ticket is usually unnecessary.  I usually get one of several reactions:

--  they're Ticket listeners and enjoy it.  Given it's healthy ratings, I'm surprised that this is the reaction I get least.

-- they don't listen to The Ticket because it doesn't have enough sports.  They split equally between FAN and ESPN.

-- They don't listen to The Ticket because it's too dirty.

What reaction do you get?  If, in fact, you proselytize for The Ticket.  As we all should.

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URGENT MESSAGE TO ALL CONFESSORS:  The circumstances of my employment have kept me away from the channel for the last few days, and that may continue for a little while.  I would appreciate if anyone hears anything of interest that they'd like to comment on, please do leave a comment here.  Sorry for being a little distant, and hope to be back with more blasts soon.

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Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310

Does Coach Denny Green's Voice . . .

.  .  .  make YOU want to reach for a Coors Light?  Me neither. 

I am trying to picture the brainstorming session at the ad agency: 

"We want to appeal to the kind of guy who likes to hang out with guys who sound like they gargle with coal dust and speak in a loud, falsely-enthusiastic and borderline accusatory tone of voice."  

"Only one way to go -- we gotta reach out to Coach Green." 

"That's genius.  And isn't he completely out of NFL and NCAA coaching?"

"Who knows?  I envision the Coors Light drinker as a guy who identifies strongly with terminated pro coaches who, unlike other terminated pro coaches, can't even manage to hang around the league as an assistant or front-office guy or find a college gig."

"I hear ya, bro.  Hey, his Facebook fan club has 17 members!   Before we run Coach up the flagpole any further, anyone know if he's already fronting a competing insipid brew?"

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Unfair, I know.  Coach Green may be a great guy.  Probably is.  And you know  .  .  .  maybe hearing that desert-floor voice demanding that you drink Coors would make you thirsty.

And come to think of it -- the ad did make me remember the product.  So maybe those ad guys knew what they were doing after all.

Why I Don't Believe the Kopechne Bear-Trap Story

This morning, Gordon’s “Bear Trap of the Week” winner was an account of a guy who was visiting his friend’s family in the late Seventies. Extended family members were present. On one occasion, the guy and the friend (I think the friend was the submitter) were playing ping-pong and drinking some beer and swapping jokes. The guy decides to tell a Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick joke. Someone tries to get him to stop telling the joke by giving him the finger-across-the-throat sign, but the guy presses on to the punch line. (Joke not specified.) A silence descends upon the room, and a man and woman leave the room, the man saying that “We don’t appreciate jokes like that.” At that point, the friend tells the joke-telling guy that the couple who left were Mr. and Mrs. Kopechne, Mary Jo’s parents. The name of the family the guy was visiting was not “Kopechne.”

Gordon vouched for this story, saying that he knew some of the people involved.

I believe Gordon believes the story and that he knows someone involved, but I don’t believe the story.

First, someone would have told any stranger to a family attending a family gathering of the presence of persons as historically significant as the Kopechnes, parents of the most famous reckless manslaughter victim in U.S. history.(1)  Not to keep the stranger from making inappropriate references, but because it is extremely interesting. If you visited a home where Marina Oswald was going to be present, don’t you think someone would have mentioned that fact to you?

Second, the story of adults hanging around while young men are playing ping-pong, drinking beer, and telling jokes doesn’t ring true.

Not that it matters much, but a prize as esteemed as the Bear Trap of the Week should be held to the highest standards of likelihood.
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(1) I’m not trying to make a political statement here. There are a few investigators who think Kennedy’s failure to report the accident was nondeliberate, but not many. (These investigators thing Kennedy was not in the car at the time, contrary to his own testimony.) The inquest testimony was that she probably lived for quite awhile after Kennedy guided that Oldsmobile into the pond. For the record, however, the coroner’s verdict was accidental drowning.

The Musers Offer a Note of Grace

You've got to love the Ticket. I mean, you simply have no choice.

Just when you're about to smash your Sausage McMuffin with Egg into the car radio when Gordon (contrary to my request here) wrongfully accuses George of some absurd prejudice, or Dan McDowell interrupts someone unfunnily, or the AM and FM signals both pretty much vanish in the heart of Dallas, you hear something that reminds you of why you can't really listen to any other station in any other format, much less any other sports-talk station.

A couple of mornings ago, both Junior and George offered some extremely kind and generous thoughts on the subject of Tom Hicks. I've only lived in Dallas during a time when Hicks was the least popular of the major sports owners in the area, so it was quite arresting to hear from Craig and George what almost sounded like a nostalgic fondness about the man.

It was good to hear. It was gracious. And you what else it was? – it was manful. It was the way guys react to guys who are having a hard time, no matter what their past failings. It was a way that men say goodbye. It gave me a good feeling about the Musers, and about the Ticket – and about Tom Hicks, a guy whose qualities I might not otherwise have heard anything about.

"Full Disclosure" and One -- Actually, Two -- of the Funniest Typos of All Time

Since yesterday was the sixteenth anniversary of the birth of The Ticket, I thought this might be the right time to post this item that's been rattling around on my topic list for awhile.

I read "Full Disclosure" in hardcover. It's not "Gone with the Wind," but it isn't badly written and moves along nicely, tells you some things the Ticket fanatic needs to know. And then I came to this typographical error that absolutely put me on the floor.

Now, the error appears in the course of George relating a story that was very frightening and unhappy for him and his family. But once you factor this out, and think about what this typo is saying, it's hilarious. And what is even more hilarious is that the book contains exactly the same typo a few pages later in an even more hilarious context.

Congregation, please turn to page 97 in your hardcover copy of "Full Disclosure." On that page you will see the dramatic story of how an out-of-control boater almost struck George's son Blake who was in the water having fallen off his skis. The bad boater missed Blake. You can imagine the drama of the scene when it was clear Blake was going to be OK. You yourself experience this relief, until you see this passage:

"It was just horrible. Everybody was crying, and my wife was balling." 

I defy you to read that sentence and not have an image flash through your mind of Mrs. Dunham engaging in some grossly inappropriate behavior while everyone else is crying with relief, and I'm not talking about a pickup game of hoops.

The same error appears a few pages later as Junior is describing how he left a girlfriend in Dallas to try his luck in Colorado. They had dated for two or three years, but, Junior reports, "the relationship was wobbling a little bit." Upon parting, Junior recalled on page 107:

"It was really tough; I remember leaving her that morning and we were both balling." 

Doesn't sound all that tough, really.  I love that "both," as though perhaps they were not balling, uh, together.  (If they were, you wouldn't need "both.")   Of course, the word the writer (who apparently was working without an editor) was searching for is "bawling." I note the unusual acknowledgement in the front of the book: "Proofreading by Jennifer Canzoneri."

Someone must have brought this to the publisher's attention, because neither error appears in the paperback version. So hang on to that hardcover first edition, P1's – like a misstruck penny or a stamp mistakenly bearing a likeness of Pauly Shore, or Billy Ripkin's notorious 1989 Fleer baseball card – it'll be worth a fortune someday.

Or Would You Rather Spit on a Star?

This one is out of date, sorry.

Before the third Eagles game, the story circulated of Eagle employee Dave Spedaro, the guy who runs their website, having recorded himself spitting (a couple of times) on the blue Cowboy star in the middle of the field at Cowboy Stadium. It was a major story in the Dallas market.

The Musers and the Hardline both criticized the media coverage, arguing, in effect, that no one should care whether an Eagle employee spit on the star, because it was only a symbol. Desecration of the American flag, they said, was different. I couldn't tell if they thought it was different because (1) the flag is a symbol of America and America is a lot more important than the Cowboys, or (2) the flag is more closely associated with America than that blue star is with the Cowboys (in other words, the blue star hadn't attained true "symbol" status). Had to be one of those.

Surely wasn't #2. The star is sitting in the middle of the field. It's large. We all noticed when it wasn't on the field when the stadium first opened. It is on the helmet. Spedaro thought it was meaningful to spit on it. Terrell Owens thought it was meaningful to preen on it before he was a Cowboy.

So the Musers'/Hardline's thought must have been that, even though it symbolized the Cowboys, it was no big deal that an adversary's representative expectorated on it.

Now, we may all acknowledge that fights having to do with symbols are less important than the play of the game itself, and that a spot or two of saliva on turf are less significant than an injurious personal foul on a player. But to scorn the coverage of a deliberate injury to an acknowledged symbol as dwelling on something insignificant strikes me as wrongheaded. If the Dallas Cowboys are important to people, then a gratuitous insult to its symbol by a significant enemy is also important to those people.

Thus, the Ticket hosts' position translates into an argument that in the grand scheme of things, the Cowboys aren't important enough for it to matter that Spedaro spit on the star. Really? These guys make their living talking about the Cowboys! Of course they matter to people. Yeah, football is a game, it's not life, it's not Haiti relief, it's not government-sponsored health care, but it is a gigantic part of the lives of lots and lots of people. And once you understand that, then the Cowboy star is "important" in the same way, and a Spedaro recording himself spitting on it is a worthy story. I'm not going to argue about degree, or media overkill – but it was a real story that mattered in the grand scheme of coverage of that playoff game, and the Musers and Hardline sounded a little out of touch in dismissing it.

The Hardline -- The Curtains Part (Slightly)

The Hardline boys made one of their rare forays into commenting on the nature of their partnership today. I forget the context, but Corby had said something naughty, and Mike was complaining that if he had said it, the music would have come down and it would have been dumped. Danny then referred to Mike as the “Patriarch” of the show by way of suggesting that Mike’s role was to “keep the monkeys in line” (and, the implication was, to lend some dignity to the proceedings by virtue of his age and seniority). That is, Danny and Corby were arguing that they were allowed to get away with impish misbehavior that Mike should not be associated with and should be discouraged from pursuing. Mike objected that he wanted to be every bit as disruptive (I forget the actual word he used) as monkeys Corby and Danny.


Corby and Danny were right, and this supports something I have written several times in the past:  The one thing missing from the Hardline program since the departure of Greg Williams (which I favored) is balance. Mike has become infantilized because he can’t compete with the barrage of juvenilia issuing from the Danny-Corby axis in the way he used to, when he had some support, however sporadic, from the Hammer. He can’t beat ‘em, so he’s been trying to join ‘em, and it’s a little sad to hear.

I actually have a solution to what I perceive in this one problem with the Hardline, and I’ll sketch it out sometime in the future. (Would need to stretch over a few posts.)  In the meantime, I thought today’s colloquy showed some interesting program self-awareness.

Junior Miller Looks Back

Being a sports talk-show guy has got to be harder than it looks, or require more charm, or skill, or something, than we lesser mortals think. After all, aside from The Ticket, other stations throughout the country are constantly shuffling their guys, firing guys, changing formats, to achieve a fraction of the The Ticket's share. (And failing.)

But one thing a talk show guy doesn't have to be is right. He can crticitze, predict, and analyze all he wants, and unless he's an obvious buffoon, being wrong about matters of substance isn't likely to come back to haunt him in the ratings.

So it is always nice to hear a Ticket host recall a wrong opinion from the past. Junior Miller did so on Friday's Musers. I don't have any statistics to back me up, but I've always thought Junior was one of the more astute analysts on the station. (He usually wins the season contest to pick the weekly high school/college/NFL winners.) On Friday he confessed error as to his earlier criticism of the Rangers for asking Michael Young to move to third in order to install Elvis Andrus at short. Startling but refreshing.

Rhadigan and Bacsik

Listening to John Rhadigan and Mike Bacsik filling in for the Hardline. It was OK, for a drydock show. I don't watch a lot of local news and wasn't familiar with Rhadigan. He was knowledgeable and kept the show moving. (I'll have more to say about Bacsik in an upcoming post.)

I got to thinking about why the Hardline is so much more enjoyable than this show. Sure, part of it is that we're familiar with the Hardline team, and we know all the inside jokes, and there is more nonsports fratboy content that is of interest.

But there was something else, and here's what I think it is: Between Rhadigan and Bacsik, there were no quiet spots. Someone was always talking. No pauses. The show was dense with sound, and Rhadigan was projecting into the mic. It was loud, it was nonstop. It did not have the same coversational quality as the Hardline. It did not have any periods. It sounded like the moment one guy had to take a breath, the other guy was ready to jump in.

As I say, it was OK. Pretty informative, actually. No objections to the show. But when you're used to the more comfortable, natural quality of the typical Ticket show, it was hard to listen to.

The Corby Question

In general, Corby does not suck. He has his broadcasting weaknesses. Too many things are the best or worst of whatever category is up for discussion. Too many "no way"s. Other things we can get into. But he's reliably listenable.

When Greg Williams left the Hardline, we all waited with bated breath to see if Michael and Corby could keep the high-wire act going. In a way, it seems almost impertinent to comment on it, because their amazing success has continued and, if anything, they're doing better than ever. So, you know, who needs any critique of the show? Even Corby's detractors really have to admit that his elevated profile has not wrecked the show for most of its audience. Personallly, I thought the decline of the show in general was becoming pretty apparent in the better part of a year before Hammer's bailout, and I'm one who was glad to see him go. Know that not everyone shares that opinion, but his misogyny, gratuitous vulgarity and obvious lack of show preparation was detracting from my enjoyment of the ride home. So the Corby & Michael show, for me, was an automatic improvement.

But this begs the question as to whether it could be better, and now, more than a year-and-a-half after Greggo's departure, I think the answer is yes. As I say, it's a confession -- I like the two Michaels and Corby and Danny a lot, but I gotta say: The show is overweighted to Corby and Danny, aided and abetted by Gruber. The post-Greggo makeup of the show entirely changed not only Mike's role, but his personality. Whereas he was the appealing Old Grey Wolf before, now he's on the defensive against the onslaught of the youngsters (who aren't all that young). For lack of a better word, he needs an ally to free him to reassert some adult control over the program and restore the appeal of his Greggo-era persona. He needs his own sidekick.

Preliminary Considerations

Like hundreds of thousands of other persons living in the DFW metro area, I spend a lot of time with The Ticket. Like most of them, I defend it vigorously against its detractors; and, like most of them, I suffer through those cringe-inducing moments and from time to time wish that they would make a policy change here or there.

Back when Greggo departed the station, I went in search of blogs where contributors and commenters stretch a bit -- perhaps think before they type, try to introduce some strong original thinking beyond the "CORBY SUXX!!!!" or "STAY HARD GREGO!!!" The contributors to Richie Whitt's blog were pretty solid, I thought, but Richie isn't writing about the Ticket every week, and after awhile it petered out and got stale. Thought I'd try to start a little something permanent along those lines.

As I say, there are those moments, those shows, and sometimes . . . sometimes, those hosts that drive you nuts and you want to reach out to management and say -- this could be better.  But the moment passes, pretty soon you're chuckling absent-mindedly about something someone says, and you realize that it's like a family.  More than that -- it is family.

And that -- the affection behind the agitation -- is My Ticket Confession.