Back when he was doing his blowhard jock routine for channel 8 in Portland I remember thinking, "This asshole is on the career track leading eventually to right wing bully talk radio." Congratulations, Colin. You're almost there. Soon, you'll be able to take your tongue out of Lars Larsen's ass.

A "giant vat of cinnamon pudding"? Honestly King, you slay me.

If Howard Stern is the undisputed leader of the medium, why expect professionalism from Coward?

Hmmmm... maybe ESPN will change their soft stance when The Big Lead sues them. Denial of Service Attacks are illegal, and rarely can you find it so easily to trace the source.

Basically Cowherd used the airwaves for an illegal act. Maybe the FCC should look into that.

Everyone once in a while I'll get in the car and NPR will have something boring on and I'm too lazy to hook up the ipod for the short trip home and I will begin to listen to Cowherd. After all, my commute's only 9 minute, you think you could stand anything for 9 minutes. I never make it.

He literally says the same thing, in the same words, a dozen times in a row. My three year old would lose patience with that rhetorical strategy and say 'papa, I understand. you told me already' after the third or fourth time.

Oh, and then there was the time he was belittling Italian soccer by saying the only decent thing to ever come out of Italy was Picasso! It comforted me at least to know that maybe there was an employment future for all my C students after all.

I agreee with the other letter writers who say that Cowherd's unlistenable. Unfortunately, here in Portland if you listen to the sports station you also have promos for his show to avoid.

I don't understand why people would listen to someone whose persona is "I'm a bigger doofus than you are."

Jim Rome is often unlistenable, too, but at least he'll have the occasional good interview, and he was spot-on about the Pat Tillman a couple of weeks ago.

I've listened to Cowherd, never really thought he was that bad, but maybe I haven't listened to him enough. I do agree that he has a tendency to latch on to one idea and ride it into the ground, but then, on talk radio, who doesn't?

On the other hand, fighting with bloggers is colossally stupid. It is like taunting a mound of fire ants. Sure, you can crush one or two of them with your superior size and strength, but don't think the ants won't get the best of you. People have died stumbling into anthills. Ants may be small but they still outnumber you 10 million to one.

To Cowherd I say, good luck, sucker. You'll need it.

Yeah, I remember him from Portland, too...couldn't stand him then, can't stand him now. I'm glad to see his idiocy is being noticed by people who see through his act. Hopefully, ESPN Radio will be able to regain three hours of programming for someone more mature.

As for ESPN's response, it reminds me of an old Robin Williams joke about London Bobbies not carrying guns: "Stop! Or I'll say stop again!"

- PonB

King, I think that you miss one importrant thing that has changed in sports talk radio in the past 30 years - media consolidation. In the 80's when I listened to sports talk radio frequently, all of the shows were local. The shows were done by local guys and they focussed on local teams. Maybe I was just blessed to be in a good market, but it didn't seem like syndicated shows had much support, at least for sports.

Since ownership rules were loosened up in the 90s, syndicated shows have exploded, as has ESPN Radio. It is a lot cheaper for the big companies to use syndicated content, but it is also a lot less interesting. In many markets, local shows are hard to come by and the syndicated radio shows are just doing less expensive versions of what is already on ESPN TV.

Sports blogs do seem to be a natural reaction to nationalized sports talk radio. With blogs you can usually find someone discussing the teams that you care about.

Not only Denial of Service, mentioned by another reader, but tortious interference with a business interest.

The program bosses at ESPN will almost assuredly re-think this dolt's behavior, their response to it and his future with the company once their lawyers explain to them how much the suit filed by The Big Lead's lawyers is going to cost, not just in damages (which might not be high) but in legal defense fees. I'm guessing ESPN's lawyers don't work cheap.

Having been driven away from sports radio long ago, the first I'd heard of Cowherd was last week when he insulted the city of Cincinnati for producing what he thinks is a disproportionate number of idiots, and it made the papers here. Even if that didn't happen to be the town I live in, it would still be an amazingly stupid thing to say on the air. (As though Cincinnati isn't a market for his show? As though Connecticut, where he lives, is any different?) And now he's attacking blogs. What a moron. And what a pathetic look at what's become of talk radio.

King, I am really shocked by your ignorance as to how sports talk radio has evolved. Why, a few years back, when I was living in L.A., one sports talk radio station put up huge billboards with scantily-clad models holding baseball bats and balls. Get it? A phallus shaped object and round orbs? Hee-larious! For a moment that made me forget how unpleasantly loud and asinine that station's hosts were and, instead, think about the station's crass, sexist and idiotic marketing campaign.

People still listen to radio?

huh.

how 'bout that.

Check out the "Fire Joe Morgan" site for a detailing of some of Cowherd's idiocies. I really didn't know much about the guy, but this site has a detailing of a 12 minute section of a broadcast on the Hall of Fame and the positions he's taking are simply jawdroppingly dumb. Just a taste? That Jose Canseco belongs in the Hall not because of his baseball accomplishments, but because he's...well, famous, and it is the Hall of "Fame" after all. And that's one of the more coherent things this clown says. He also displays an appalling antipathy towards sabremetrics (which is why he's being ridiculed in the "Fire Joe..." site in the first place) that shows all the reasoning power and common sense of Ann Coulter trying to mount her latest anti-whatever diatribe. I know Sports Radio generally constitutes a cacophony of blowhards and self-righteous dipwads (Jim Rose anyone?), but even by those thin standards, Cowherd seems appallingly stupid.