The Gospel According to Cowherd

[Fool]

I'm not banging on Michigan or Detroit, I am merely relaying the facts concerning how things are there.

You're not relaying any facts. You are regurgitating headlines. You are also making many different wide ranging statements. Its 6:20 Zip. I'm outta the office in 2 seconds. I'm taking the wife bra shopping and if Mxy doesn't get to this before I'm home we'll start in on facts.

Note: You're initial claims are much more inflamitory than your last post. No one's going to disagree with the broad claim of "Man that auto industry sucks and is in trouble, bet that hurts Michigan." But we'll talk about sports franchise viability, the overall health of the state, and the extent to which it depends on carz.

[Zip Goshboots]

I'm ready. I'd LOVE to be proven wrong on this. And don't patronize me with "oh Zip, you just rely on Colin Cowherd for yer stuff" and other assorted bullshit.
And please, unless you got some HARD info, don;t you DARE try to tell me that Michigan isn't as dependent on the auto industry as everyone thinks.
Maybe up in Marquette or Copper Harbor they aren't, but be honest with me.
Make that bra a "push up", black leather thing with tassles on the end, just for fun.
Wait a minute: Did you just say you are going "bra shopping" with your wife? And I commented on it without really thinking. Wow.

[Zip Goshboots]

You're not relaying any facts. You are regurgitating headlines. You are also making many different wide ranging statements. Its 6:20 Zip. I'm outta the office in 2 seconds. I'm taking the wife bra shopping and if Mxy doesn't get to this before I'm home we'll start in on facts.

Note: You're initial claims are much more inflamitory than your last post. No one's going to disagree with the broad claim of "Man that auto industry sucks and is in trouble, bet that hurts Michigan." But we'll talk about sports franchise viability, the overall health of the state, and the extent to which it depends on carz.

Fingerbang, I don't see where my comments were terribly "inflamatory". I have re read all my posts, and other than the "Boner for a Mustang" comment, these aren't "inflamatory" remarks. I'm not here to flame. I'm here to engage discussions. But, I will definitely argue as much as the next guy. To wit:
b-diddy: Is this thread any more ridiculous than the other 5,000 threads that generate about eight posts per day from the entire board membership?

[b-diddy]

ha, maybe not, but this one isnt entertaining me.

and im not the type of guy to go do research, especially for a message board discussion.

but i do have evidence, the anecdotal kind.

bagdad has lost ~2 mill citizens since war broke out (of its ~27 mill). thats not even 10% of its pop. your boy might refer to bagdad as detroit east, but detroit is paradise compared to bagdad. we're not losing 10%, we might lose close to that still (which will still leave us more than capable of supporting the teams). money is in the burbs, if not in the city.

i will concede that alot of teams will be heading south soon. pretty soon everyone will be living in arizona, and we'll all be speaking spanglish. but my tigers, lions, pistons, and wings arent going nowhere.

[Zip Goshboots]

You're right about one thing: This isn't Baghdad, and we're not talking the Baghdad Tigers.
Also, Detroit is well under one million within the city limits.
Now, keep in mind, Cowherd is basing his opinion on the trends continuing. They could reverse, or even stabilize. I mean, ALL the people aren't going to leave Michigan, and ALL the people aren't going to live in Charlotte, NC.
But lemme ax ya dis: You keep talking about the Detroit "Metro" Area, and isn't that where Michigan's problems are going to be felt most, and the consequences felt deepest?
Today, a Metro population of 4.5 million. Tomorrow???? (Tomorrow being 10-15 years down the road).

[HipDigIt]

Face it. Peeps in Michigan don't like him because he's always busting Lloyd's jiblets proclaiming that "no one has done less with MORE!!!" He also has MSU football pegged for the joke that it has sunk. Ouch! Could the guy be more correct? Even the most "M-yopic" of Blue-Ade guzzlers are starting to admit that may be the case. I heard the Cowherd dealio and he was not bashing Detroit exclusively. He was all over the "rust belt", a name he cannot be dredited with originating, and querying what the future might hold for these franchises. I love Michigan. I'm from there but have an aversion to the cold. I have two brothers & a sister there who are doing fine. They are not in the Metro Area. As Zip said Cowherds argument is based on population shifting, jobs etc. He cited a program started at Penn State a couple of years ago dubbed "Stay in P A" which tried to reason with grads not to abandon their state. Failed miserably. This all just may be some pop phenomenon but I'm skeptical. I'm sure many saw the articles in the Detroit newspapers a couple of months ago about the big moving companies that detailed how Michigan is the #1 state for departure for their moving vans. Hell there are peeps taking jobs in Green River, Wyoming in mines, fucking mines, who previously would never been able to find Wyoming on a fucking map. Let alone Green River. Do the math. Costs in running a franchise escalate. Is family income in Metro Detroit on the rise or even closely commensurate with what it will cost to take ONE SON to a Lions, Piston, Wings game for ducats, swill a couple of $4 cokes, $5 Hot Dogs, and God knows what else? I thought it was a very thought provoking segment. I'm a fan but too often when we don't hear what we want to hear we kill the messenger.

[Fool]

Shit, I forgot about this thread last night. I'll see what I can pull together while working today but the easy thing to address is Cowherd.

I regularly listened to ESPN Radio when Kornheiser was on and when he got the boot Cowherd was his replacement. I gave the guy about 2 months and that was all I needed. I don't give a shit if he bags on Lloyd or MSU (hell, I'm one that wants Lloyd gone every year). I even liked the fact that he gave a shit about the Pac-10. What I didn't like was that the dude's knowledge about basketball is non-existent. I mean, the guy started in Portland and he doesn't know shit about the only sport that's in his city. (No shit the dude didn't create the term "rust belt", welcome to the 1980s.) I'm sure if you are a football honk then you probably want to slob his knob as last I knew he still had a segment a day devoted to football, literally all year round. His claim to fame was brought to Detroit radio in the guise of his former Portland producer who got a morning radio host job here (fuck if I can't remember his name) on 1270. It was a segment called "Around the Globe" (or something similar) where he calls up beat writers and has then summaries their latest columns (riveting). BTW, his former producer took Cowherds personal 100% and barely lasted the duration of his one year contract (John Lund, I believe). I wish I had listened to him in the last 3 or so years I suppose its been because I might have some more current references but when I did listen Cowherd he was throwing around "pay for dinner at Morton's", like everyday Morton's was brought up somehow. As though his 90K a year (that's an estimate drawn from the fact that Dan Patrick was pulling down 110 K for his radio gig the year that Dream Job started on ESPN) is spent exclusively on fine dinning. The guy's a condescending prick who uses logic like "I trust Las Vegas because the line makers are paid to know the final score" (even though the line makers are paid to know where the public will place their bets, not who's going to win).

Mainly however, I didn't like his obviously dumbing-down of sports topics by his ever present ridicule of "nerd" subjects like stats and stratedy. Topics on his show never had any depth because as soon as anyone would turn toward something that wasn't superficial the guy would say "I don't care about stragedy, I like points and cheering. I want to be entertained and points are entertaining." To an extent we all agree with that, but taken to the level this fuck-nut took it its ridiculous. I'm a sports fan. The hype is everywhere and easy to see. I don't need to listen to a show that only covers the hype. I want to hear about why people think the 4-3 is better than the 3-4 for whichever team. I want to know how zone defense has affected shooting %s league wide. I like finding out that D'antoni plays his running style because of his belief that defenses are at their weakest in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock.

That's just Cowherd, I'll see what I can get to on Michigan.

[Zip Goshboots]

Just a quick hit:
Stats and Stragety make for bad radio. Kornheiser NEVER talked stats and stragety.
You are right to say that Cowherd falls short of Tony The Korn, because that show was the best ever. But Kornheiser was more irreverent than Cowherd could ever hope to be. That show was almost surreal. I remember one time when some dink like Greg Beikert of the Raiders was in the studio and they asked him on air if he wanted to talk Raider football with the guy for some upcoming game, and he just about barfed all over his mike, exclaiming "Hell no I don't want to talk to Greg Beikert! Who the hell is Greg Beikert"
So much for diagramming the 4-3 defense for ya.

[Fool]

True. But Kornheiser didn't play it off like those things didn't matter. He always just came out and said he didn't know shit about them. I've no problem with someone not doing what they don't know. I don't like listening to a guy pretend he knows it and then claim they aren't important and deride those who are interested in the topic. Kornheiser certainly covers superficial shit (btw, he's on Washington Post Radio currently if you want to listen to him, though this version of the show is pretty terrible as its only barely sports related being on the newspapers radio lineup and half his sidekicks are commited to other shows so he's got a bunch of laughing hyenas in the booth with him) like fucking American Idol which I couldn't care less about. But he didn't run from depth like it was the plague as Cowherd does. Plus TK is funny and Cowherds little impressions are lame and sleep inducing.

[Zip Goshboots]

Well, then it's a personal taste issue, which is OK by me.
But I don't think you give enough credit to Cowherd on sports related info. He does, I'll agree, have those moments when all the sudden he goes on a rant about stats and shit and derides a guy, but I think he'll get specific, like when he goes off on a guy who speculates how Penn State will do with Morelli as the backup. That, in his words, and I'll agree, is local hack stuff. So is positing about who your team will trade so they can acquire a third string backup center.
Tony was WAY better, also, at moving on to his next bit, whereass Cowherd can get bogged down with something he thinks is golden, like his currently too long running gag on female body builders.
But I think his opinions and takes, if you can put them into context, are pretty dead on most of the time, and one should be able to sift throught the hyperbole to get to the heart and soul of what he's saying.
I'll say this: Local hacks all over the country are still busy trying to blatantly imitate Kornheiser's show, and alot of them claim not to like Cowherd but still quite often morph into Cowherd imitators.