

I don’t know who enjoys higher
ratings between the two morning radio shows. My guess is that Dan Patrick, who’s
been in the business for over 20 years, has a larger fan base. His show, from
6-9 A.M. on weekdays overlaps with Colin Cowherd’s, which now runs between 7-11
A.M.
Patrick seems weary of talking
about straight sports. And a bit jaded. He prefers to riff with his co-hosts and prefers general
comedy over literal sports analysis. Patrick likes to be silly and irreverent.He prefers the improvisational over the script. Often
his banter works, but sometimes it’s indulgent and tedious.
Cowherd looks for laughs also but
does a lot more sports analysis and will often lecture about a “life lesson.” Some
that I remember: Camping is stupid. Who’d want to sleep on the ground with
leaves and worms after achieving success in life? Only a small percentage of
people are really successful in life. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s
the way it will always be.
Patrick likes to perform by
bouncing back and forth with his younger co-hosts. Cowherd likes the solo act.
I find myself liking both Patrick and Cowherd but I listen more to Patrick
because in part he’s done a good job of portraying himself as the embattled
individual who left the Disney-owned ESPN. Whenever Patrick refers to his old
place of work, he pronounces it disparagingly as “EE-ES-PEE-ON” or call it, in
utter contempt and mockery, as the “Mothership.” Also it’s easier to take 3
hours of Patrick with him bouncing off his co-hosts than 4 straight hours of
Cowherd’s solo act.
They’ve got tough jobs: How do you
inject drama into sports year-round but show that you’re intelligent enough to
see that a lot of sports talk is making mountains out of molehills? The
dumbest of the sports jock shows take sports too seriously, becoming rabid, as
if their topic has the gravitas of life and death. Patrick and Cowherd are too smart
for that, so they wisely go for jokes, with Patrick devoting far more improvisational laugh material on his program than Cowherd.
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