Sports radio: feeding the obsession

So, when I get excited about something, I reaaallly get excited. Let's just use the word "obsess" and get it out there in the open. When I get excited about something, I obsess about it. I want to talk about it, listen about it, learn about it, read about it. I eat, sleep, and breathe it. Sports are no exception. Let's use the New York Giants as an example. When they made it to the playoffs, I watched every game. The day following every game, I read every article and column about it in Newsday, the Post, and the Daily News. Sometimes the New York Times. And on MSNBC and Sports Illustrated.com. I like to get the other (losing) perspective, too, so then I would check out the Websites for Dallas newspapers or Green Bay newspapers or New England newspapers and read those articles too. Post-game analysis, pre-game analysis, recaps, everything, I devour it all. Sports-wise I'd only ever really done that with the Yankees, so it was interesting to see that the obsession is all-encompassing. You'd think I didn't have a job or friends to take up any of my time.

Anyway, turns out that wasn't enough. Which was how I discovered sports talk radio.

In recent years, I had discovered sports radio out of necessity. Maybe I was on an assignment for work, maybe I was meeting a friend or going shopping or whatever, but I wasn't at home in front of my tv. Or maybe I was at home but I was on the computer in my bedroom, not in a room with a tv. In those scenarios, radio broadcasts were a way I could follow these games. My dad might have been the one who turned me on to them. He's always extolling the virtues of radio commentary over tv commentary, which might be true - radio commentary actually has to be descriptive and make a person "see" the action. Tv commentary has to fill in time between the action. Tv commentators usually make me want to become violent with my television set with the inane drivel that spills from their lips at times.

So I knew about sports radio. I always had an aversion to talk radio due to the dull talk shows my dad would make us listen to when we depended on him to drive us around (sorry, Dad!), but during the Giants playoff run I discovered that while I might finish reading all there was to read about the topic in an hour or two, I could listen to talk radio shows about the games and the team: on the ride to work, on the ride home from work, during my lunch break, while I was checking my e-mail at home, for hours and hours all day and all night because apparently, these guys can obsess about sports with the best of them. It's impressive. It's taken that whenever I'm driving, I don't even listen to music anymore. I turn immediately to 660 AM WFAN. After years of making fun of my father, I may have become him.