I’ve got to admit, I’m drawn to train wrecks just like everyone else. So this week, when I heard national radio guy Colin Cowherd go off on the Reds, Bengals and everything else Cincinnati, I couldn’t turn it off. I knew it was exactly what Cowherd wanted me, you and everyone else to do around here, listen. And we did. And the more we listened to his incessant rants about the Reds and every other team around here being frauds, the more we fumed.
A little shop talk first. First thing you should know about all sports radio stations: they really don’t do well in the ratings. Outside of a station in New York City and a couple of stations out West, most all sports radio stations struggle to find listeners, ratings and revenue. It’s a real niche audience, narrow demographic as we say in the biz. You can make money programming all sports radio, but not as much as a total service station like, well, The Big One.
In truth, what Cowherd said about us, as a town and our teams in particular, got infinitely more exposure when his comments were excerpt by Willie on his shows this week. Thousands more heard them after that. And I’ll admit, I like listening to Cowherd. I think he’s very good at what he does and what he does best is generate listenership through opinion.
I just think his opinions about us, you, me and our teams are wrong.
And it got me wondering, why Cincinnati has such a lousy reputation nationally. Another admission: I couldn’t care less about what someone in New York, LA, Cleveland or anywhere else thinks about us. I choose to live here because I like living here and my guess is, so do you. I like the fact that we’ve got great neighborhoods, schools, restaurants as good as any in cities three times our size, college and professional and high school sports and that we don’t have a lot of traffic that we have to maneuver through to get to any of that.
But I gotta tell you, Cincinnati doesn’t enjoy a great reputation nationally.
Have you ever met a stranger lately, someone you bump into in an airport or some place of business in another town. Here’s what I get when I tell someone I’m from Cincinnati: how many Bengals were arrested last night? Or something about Pete Rose’s gambling or Marge Schott’s collection of World War Two memorabilia. If I’m with someone who’s up a notch or two on life’s food chain, Maplethorpe will invariably come into the conversation.
I guess that’s what happens when you live in a fly over town. Most people only know about Cincinnati from changing planes at CVG (although with Delta shrinking faster than a freshly washed cotton shirt, that’s not happening a lot either these days).
I think one of the reasons we may suffer from this lack of knowledge and respect is because our sports teams have been down so long. Up until three months ago, the Reds hadn’t done anything in 20 years. So when they have the kind of season they’re having now, maybe someone like Cowherd, who doesn’t know any better, views what they’re doing as fraudulent. The Bengals? They tapped into a lot of equity with all of that nonsense a few years ago. Perceptions take a long time to chance when you don’t live it and see it on a daily basis.
All I know is what I heard this week bothered me. Because when someone attacks your city and the things you like and have an interest in, they’re really attacking you.. Colin Cowherd has a national voice, with all of the muscle of a machine called ESPN behind him. What he said about us might be true. We’ll certainly find out about soon enough with the Reds, not too long after that with the Bengals.
But I know this: the only way to shut someone up, is to prove them wrong. Another admission: I don’t root for the Bengals or the Reds. I can’t, and neither can anyone else in sports journalism who wants to be taken seriously. It’s bad business when you don’t check your pom-poms at the door.
