I wake up every morning to Mike & Mike In The Morning. Not on the radio, mind you, but I actually sit there and watch it on ESPN2 for about a half hour before I get ready for work. There’s plenty of things about the show that bother me from time to time, but you’ll have that with any national radio/tv show. And sure, I get a little tired of the way they only talk about the large market teams, but again, you’ll have that with pretty much any national radio/tv show. But for the most part, when Greenberg and Golic are hosting, I find the show enjoyable. I think they’re a good tandem and they play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses really well, which is pretty much the #1 key for any good talk show.
What I don’t know, though, is why I watch the show when Greenberg and Golic aren’t hosting together. When they bring in the “B Team”, or, in the case of the holiday season, the “D Team”, that chemistry is strikingly absent and the show tends to devolve into these bizarre exchanges, people yelling at each other, and people interrupting each other and trying to talk over one another.
Well, I wake up this morning, and who’s hosting? Erik Kuselias and Stephen A Smith. Now, while I personally don’t agree with 90% of Kuselias’s opinions, at least he’s a professional. He knows how to conduct himself on a talk show. But Stephen A Smith, on the other hand…..well, lets just say he has the nickname “Screaming A Smith” for a reason. So, I knew he would be shouting his opinion in my ear all morning. But I was a little surprised when I heard the following exchange open the show (slightly paraphrased because I’m doing this from memory, but the context and points are the same…you can always listen to the podcast from ESPN’s website when it’s up if you want to hear the exact quotes):
Erik Kuselias: “We know the coaching carousel has already begun, with the Lions, Browns, and Jets all firing their coaches yesterday. We know Bill Cowher will be the top candidate for pretty much any job he wants. Well, according to Browns owner Randy Lerner, Bill Cowher is not interested in the Browns job…”
Stephen A Smith: “…He shouldn’t be.”
EK: “…but sources in New York are saying that Cowher is interested in talking to the Jets about their coaching job…”
SAS: “…He should be.”
EK: “Well, if you’re Cowher, wouldn’t you want to talk to everyone about every opportunity?”
SAS: “Consider this the point where LeBron James and Bill Cowher get mentioned in the same sentence. New York is just more appealing than Cleveland.”
Wow. This is the brilliant analysis ESPN is paying for? Now, I know the line about NY being more appealing than Cleveland is going to rub a lot of people everyone on this site the wrong way. But to be honest, that’s not even the biggest problem I have with this.
SAS is a New York guy, and you just kind of expect comments like that from Stephen A. What gets me, though, is the complete ignorance and lack of knowledge about the Cowher situation that SAS displays here. Whether Cowher goes to the Jets or doesn’t, it’s not going to be about the appeal of the “bright lights” of the Big Apple. That’s not Bill Cowher.
Cowher played in Cleveland. He coached in Cleveland. He coached in Pittsburgh. His family lives in North Carolina. He’s not a New York guy, like SAS is. Which isn’t to say he won’t take the Jets job. There are legit reasons for him to take it. He has a daughter going to school in the NY area, he has another daughter at Princeton, which would be near by. His current job for CBS is in New York, so he’s been in NY for a while now and is familiar with it. Those are all reasons for him to consider taking the job. But it’s not about the city itself.
Nor is his rebuttal of Lerner about the city of Cleveland. To think he just doesn’t want to be in the city of Cleveland shows a certain nescient quality to Stephen A Smith’s opinion on this matter. The Cleveland Browns would be a perfect fit for Cowher…..had he not already been the coach of the Steelers for so long. Cowher’s refusal to coach in Cleveland harkens back to his promise to the Rooney family when he left Pittsburgh that if he came back, he would not coach within the division. It’s as simple as that. He obviously doesn’t want to tarnish his legacy in Pittsburgh, and to be honest, I don’t blame him. For all the things we can say about Bill Cowher, he certainly has always been an honorable person, and so I get why he won’t consider taking the Browns job.
And let’s not even get me started on throwing LeBron’s name into this. That’s another post for another time. But I will say this much, Bill Cowher’s decision and LeBron James’ decision have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Those decisions aren’t even in the same stratosphere. They are both in very different phases of their lives and their careers, and they both have very different needs, agendas, and reasons for doing whatever it is they choose to do with their careers. The comparison was folly, and the whole point of bringing it up was nothing more than Stephen A Smith simply being Stephen A Smith. Thanks for the early morning insight and analysis, ESPN. I appreciated it.