It's the Jon show!!!!

I do tend to complain about WEEI; this includes message boards, this blog, my friends and family, and the prayers at night I say to God in hopes that Gerry Callahan will let go his hatred of liberals for an entire week and talk sports for 5 hours a day. As you can tell from the fact that WEEI's format has not changed and they still remain the number one sports station in the region, they're not paying attention to me. I believe this is because all I've done is make fun of them. In other words, I'm not being constructive in my criticism. It's one thing to mock Fred Smerlas for being unable to go 5 minutes without talking over his co-hosts, it's another thing to give him advice on how to make his stepping on them more entertaining. So, to keep things positive, here is what I would do if I had my own sports radio show.

(Yes Jenny and the Curious Offbeats, this will be yet another sports entry. Sorry. Next entry I'll suggest we convince Charlie Chaplin that Ann Coulter's head is a ball of yarn. Given her intelligence level, that shouldn't be hard.)

No politics: I don't care, the listeners don't either. Besides as a moderate, does anyone want 5 hours of me waffling about whether McCain is a bigger creep than Hilary? Come on now. (Besides, the answer is obviously Hilary. Just kidding)

Talk about any and all sports: I'm tired of turning on WEEI and hearing nothing but Red Sox and Patriots - with five seconds of talk about whether Kevin Garnett is better than Larry Bird was. What the hell? If I had show, we'd talk about all four major sports (yes, hockey counts) and college sports and anything up to and including NASCAR. I think it would be interesting. I might be alone in that.

No... You could NOT manage the Red Sox better than Terry Francona. Tito get's more criticism than Deval Patrick, yet has a better record. I'm hanging up on any caller who can't understand that he probably wouldn't out manage someone with two World Series rings. What's next, people who think they can out gameplan Bellichick? Out fox Red Auerbach? Out dress Don Cherry?

No celebrity callers: ... because most of them are miserable. Especially the ones on WEEI. Jim the Wrestling Goon? Umm, pro wrestling isn't a sport. Unless he's going to discuss the big Cyclones/Hawkeyes meet in Iowa, it's not sports related. How did he get on the air? Angry Bill is even worse. Here's someone who's criticism of the Red Sox actually INCREASED when the Sox won the world series. And it got even worse this year when they won AGAIN. How is that possible? Then you have Dakota, who moans about the Patriots during the season where they go undefeated (well, kind of undefeated). Huh? No celebrity callers. Every caller will get a chance to get on the air, but no more than once a week. Viva democracy.

I do not have a crush on Hazel Mae: Or Tina Cervasio. Or Amelie Benjamin. Probably not Sonny Watrous either. Because I'm pretty sure she can kill me with a slapshot.

My enterance music: I have a few choices: "Hell Awaits" by Slayer? "This is Hardcore" by Pulp? "A Shoehorn with Teeth" by They Might Be Giants? Lot's of places I could go with this...

The Chili Guy would be my cohost: He's the richest guy through the country baby.

So those are my ideas for the Jon show. Now you know why no program director in their right mind would let me near a microphone.

10 Reasons Why the NHL is Crap

I love hockey. But not the NHL. And here is why.

10. Rule changes. While I do like the elimination of two line offsides, this nonsense with the "trapezoid" and the sudden inability of two players to look at each other crosseyed without getting a penalty is comical.

9. Endless power plays! Because of rule number 10, it seems like wwwaaaayyyy too many games get decided by the guys in stripes. That's not hockey. I don't know what sport that is, but it isn't hockey. How about some 5 on 5 action?

8. The shootouts I hate them. I know some people like them, but what was wrong with having ties? The penalty shot might be "the most exciting moment in hockey" (TM), but not if it happens 50 times a week.

7. Crappy music College hockey is not immune to crappy rock/pop music (Schneider Arena, anyone?) or repetetive music ("Hail to the Victors"? Again?!), but the NHL has descended into the same level as the NBA with this silliness. Less piped in music, more ORGANS. And more to the point, we probably shouldn't be drowning out crowd noise.

6. Horrible horrible officiating Did anyone actually think that letting the refs make more calls was a good idea? Hockey is a tough sport to officiate. Do we really need to make it harder?

5. Continuing to allow Jeremy Jacobs to own a team No explanation needed, I would think.

4. Over expansion I feel like Abe Simpson, but there are too many teams in too many cities where no one cares about hockey. Please eliminate ten of them.

3. ESPN Most of the NHL's wounds are self inflicted. But the move of the general public away from ice hockey was accelerated by ESPN and their bloody idiotic programming options. Aside from pissing me off with their lame "Spygate" obsession and hiring some of the dumbest people to ever pick up a microphone (I'm still waiting for the Yankees "dynasty" to win a trophy this millenium, you ignorant nimrods), ESPN continues to promote lame idiocy like the NFL draft, the World Series of Poker, and - my personal favorite - the short lived series on Barry Bonds. Ugh. Why do we put up with this excrement?

2. The NHL is stupid Season crippling strikes at critical times? Check. A total lack of discipline - should we really allow the Flyers to attempt to kill opposing players in every game? - Check. Horrible labor and management decisions? Check. Insane television contracts? Check. The list goes on.

1. Cup winners I'm not snobbish enough to say that fans from Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Anaheim SHOULDN'T see their teams win a cup, but it would be nice to see a team from the North - especially Canada - win one of these things for once. Obviously, the NHL can't do a blessed thing about this, but one of these years, the league has to luck out and have a Canadian champion and/or a champ from early expansion or the Original Six. Right? I don't think it creates a ton of interest when teams the average person has never heard of are winning this thing.

There you go. No suggestions, just complaints.

WEEI vs Jon

So, I'm sitting in the back seat of my buddy's SUV this morning at about 2AM when the conversation turns to WEEI - mostly in an attempt to keep ourselves awake. I'm not going to name names, but one of the people in the SUV works in the local sports media so he had all sorts of fun stories to tell about our local "celebrities". Suffice to say, he had very few positive things to say about WEEI. For those of you who do not live in the Boston area, WEEI is the top sports radio station in the area. They also carry the Celtics games, Boston College basketball and football and the occasional Red Sox game during the season.

When i was young, I enjoyed WEEI immensely. The station carried to the Red Sox games and if I'm not mistaken, they carried the Bruins as well. The shows were entertaining and the hosts had the ability to talk about sports in general. At some point, while I was in college, this changed.

When I graduated from PC, WEEI suddenly lost the ability to discuss the Bruins and Celtics. Of course, both of those teams were horrible so this kind of made sense. Unfortunately, this became a permanent feature of the station. The next thing to go was college sports. The station carries - and continues to carry - live broadcasts of college athletics, but don't even try to discuss those sports on the air. This ability apparently ended when Ted Serandis was booted from the 7PM to midnight shift. Ted wasn't popular guy on the station but at least he gave college athletics a fair shake. He lost points by being a shill for BC basketball and being good pals with Tim Welsh (for some reason) but he could at least discuss them.

But the real problem with WEEI is politics. I have no idea why WEEI decided that they had to emulate WRKO, their sister station. WRKO is one of those useless right wing talk stations that actually managed to find an equally moronic and unlistenable left wing host to "anchor" their morning shift. Add in the completely irrelevant Rush Limbaugh and the agonizing repetitive shtick of Howie Carr and you have Jon kryptonite. Well apparently, WEEI decided that this crap was such ratings gold that they exported it to WEEI. Now, while we're hearing about Spring Training and Kevin Garnett and the weekly interview with Tom Brady, we're also deluged by lame right wing ranting. Great.

The callers actually seem to be getting worse. First off, they seem unable to call BS on any of the silly political/sports crap they hosts are spewing. Secondly, the cult of the "signature caller" has resulted in an influx of nimrods who get on the air every day and add NOTHING to the conversation. And last of all, I point to the existence of "the whiner line". Ugh.

So let's recap: no hockey, politics, and a sea of jackanapes waiting on hold. Gee, sign me up. The fact that this crap was unlistenable during the Red Sox run to the World Series AND the Patriots abortive run at a perfect season AND the Celtic's new found competence is absolutely tragic.

Here are my alternatives to irritating sports talk radio:

-NPR: Yes, I am a public radio geek. I draw the line at "Prairie Home Companion", but I love "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," "Car Talk," "Sez You," and whatever jazz or blues program they have at night. I can't stand the endless pledge drives, but that's a small price to pay. And I'll argue against NPR being a haven for left wing propaganda until the day I die.

-WFAN: For some reason, while Boston sports radio irritates me, I'm amused by New York sports radio. At any given point in New York/New Jersey, there will be about 5-7 miserable fanbases. Yes, Giants fans are very happy and Mets fans aren't far behind, but what about the Knicks? See, endless fun. Plus, Mike and the Mad Dog haven't annoyed me yet. And Steve Sommers is the greatest radio host ever.

-WFNX: I'm not a huge fan of the "new" alternative scene, but I'm starting to like "The Sandbox."

-WBCN: Ah, my dark secret. I like "Opie and Anthony" better than any other morning radio show. The musical selection throughout the day is just okay. But I am endlessly drawn despite common sense and my own snobbish good taste to the goofy mess that is the "Toucher and Rich" show. And I hope that one day in my travels throughout Boston, I will be able to donate a couple of million eights to the Chili Guy who is, after all, a state police officer in days and years.

As I promised, tomorrow I'll compare the Beanpot teams to the GLI teams as I attempt to bridge the East coast/ West coast bias and make fun of Harvard in the bargain!

Sports 1, Jon nil; the mission statement

So, why am blogging here now? I know, you weren't actually asking that. You were wondering why this page came up and not pornography. I can't help you there.
About 9 years ago, I decided that the Providence College men's ice hockey team wasn't getting the support they needed on the internet so I started this page: http://www.geocities.com/boompc99/he.html and christened it the Coffin Online. Asside from random BU bashing and some sick jokes at everyone's expense, all was right in the world. But for some reason, the page was missing something. It was missing a definitive part of my personality: grumpiness. So I decided to dedicate a special part of my page to kvetching, complaining, whining and generally ranting as only a privileged white male in this society can. I called it the "Weekly Rant" page. The problem was it wasn't weekly. The college hockey season begins in early October and ends in early April. That's about six months of hockey, which would translate into about 24-30 rants per year. I was luck to get to 10. Last year, when PC was absolutely horrendous, I got to ONE rant. Well, the Coffin Online is back and updated. Only this year, I'm going to try blogging on this site.
So for those of you who aren't familiar with me, you can expect a lot of snarky humor, the random comment about fine literature and almost inevitably, a few dozen typos. The typos I can fix, but I'm stuck with the snarky humor. Sorry. I'll dedicate one post every week to Friar hockey, but the rest of time, I'll tackle to the quagmire that is New England sports. Fair warning: I don't like the Globe, the Herald, or WEEI. So you can pretty much figure how this is going to go.