The Josh Innes Show - No One Watches Games For The Announcers

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Tom Brady's agent says that Brady is committed 9 more years of broadcasting the NFL on Fox. Who is actually tuning in to these games because of Tom Brady? No one. I don't understand why these guys get paid so much. There is only one announcer who makes me turn a game off.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was reading a story today. It's on ESPN, so it's a big deal. On ESPN about how Tom Brady's agent says that he's in it for the long haul as an announcer. He's got a 10-year deal apparently does this tom brady and uh apparently he's gonna play out his contract they say the actual story let's see here sbj football brady's in for the long haul at fox agent says. All right, let's read this story. Don Yee is the agent for Tom Brady. Tom Brady has nine seasons left on his contract with Fox Sports and he isn't going anywhere,

his agent told SBJ exclusively today. Tom has had a tremendous amount of fun working with Fox this year and he's really excited about the future with Fox and the growth of their team. And this year was the first year of a long relationship. Does that mean he intends to fulfill the terms of his contract? The agent says, yes.

So, of course, part of the conversation surrounding this is that Tom Brady has a limited partner role in the ownership of the Raiders. And some people have been critical of the fact that a guy who owns part of a team should not be an announcer. And maybe I'm old school about things, but I feel that anytime there's someone who has any affiliation with a team where they are being paid by said team, I don't give a shit about their opinion of anything because they're clearly biased, right? I don't know that Brady calling a Raiders game would really matter all that much. Like we're aware that he roots for them. Just like if you're, I would assume Troy

Aikman still kind of roots for the Cowboys. Cause that's the only team Troy Aikman played for. And he's probably got a good relationship with a lot of people. So like, it doesn't really bother me where I get more annoyed is when you get dudes who are talk show hosts where you're in the opinion giving business right so your job is to go on the radio every day for an hour two hours three hours four hours and give opinions on the team that you were employed by that is where I have no interest and you can fuck off and that goes for people like one of my favorite people in the world Mark Vandermeer who is the voice of the Texans. When Mark wasn't employed by the team, I think technically he was paid by CBS at the time, he was the morning guy on 610. And he's an amazing

broadcaster and a great radio host and a fantastic play-by-play guy and an all-around fucking stud of a human. I will not say anything bad about the man because he's fucking incredible and I love him. But I don't know how you could tune into the radio every morning and hear a guy who calls the team's games, is on the team plane, and is employed by the team offer his opinions and think, oh, these are valid. I think he's being legitimately honest about everything he sees. And we could try to spin that as much as we could. And we kind of had fun with it.

No, there's Mark. He's the homer and blah, blah, blah. And we would do all the bits and it was fun. Ha, ha, ha. But there's only so much you can do before people are kind of like, okay, we've had enough. Especially if the team isn't very good. Now, if you're in the midst of calling games for a team that's won like three Super Bowls in a row, most of your fans don't see anything wrong with the team. So you can say all the positive shit you want about the team and they won't care because there's not a

negative to be had. There are radio hosts in the country who do that, that latch on and just don't say anything negative. And the fans are cool because the fans' expectation is the team rules anyway. Problem we had is the Texans weren't very good and they were finding incredible ways to lose games. Therefore, it made it difficult to take Mark seriously in those spots. That's the issue that we ran into there. But Mark is obviously amazing. He's a great play-by-play guy and a great friend and a wonderful person. So I would never say anything bad about him, but it was a weird spot. You know, when you are employed by someone, it is impossible to give impartial criticism of that. And I, it's funny. I learned that when I was doing play by play, it happened to me twice because when you're like 14, 15, 16, you don't know any of this shit. You're just out there

giving opinions, right? You're some, you know, hotshot wannabe Jack Buck, Mike Shannon, uh, you know, uh, uh, I don't know, Howard Cosell. Like that's how you were set up. You're like, this is what I'm here to do, baby. Let's fucking go. And, uh, when I was a kid, actually, here's how it worked. It's actually very similar. So I was allowed to do play-by-play stuff for the hockey team. I've told you guys this many times when I was like 15 years old. But I was also doing like a daily talk show thing or I filled in on a talk show or something in Baton Rouge. If this was 2002 or 2003, I was 16 or 17 and I was a fill-in on these shows, I guess, you know. And I got on the air one day and there's a new owner of the hockey team and his plan

was to take out the lower bowl seating in the arena and put in like tables and shit which obviously sounds like a stupid fucking plan but you know whatever so again i'm not i'm an employee of that team i it is my job to call the games of that team on the radio. So I get on the radio, and I start saying how stupid it was. Like, this new owner of the Kingfish, this Scotty Bolduck here was his name, this fucking guy, what is he doing? What does this guy think he's going to accomplish by doing this? What are we talking about here, man?

You're nuts. So I'm doing this. My dad calls me. He was listening. He goes, Josh, what the fuck do you think you're doing? That's the guy that owns the team. Like you work for him. Like I love my dad.

He'll go, what color is the sky in your world? I'm like, I don't know. I was just giving opinions. My dad goes, shut the fuck up. That was one of the times that that happened to me. Then there was another similar time. Let me tell you about that one after some commercials. All right. If you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out pick six from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition,

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Bonus award. It is non-withdrawable pick six credits that expire in 14 days. Limited time offer. See terms at picksix.draftk kings dot com slash promos all right the uh the other one that a time that i got myself in trouble now granted i've gotten myself in trouble a lot working for teams uh flagship stations but i don't work for those fucking teams so it shouldn't be my problem to have to sit there and prop up your shitty basketball team or your shitty

football team i don't work for you but i did did work for the minor league baseball team in Baton Rouge. They were actually an independent league team, the Baton Rouge Riverbats. You know this. I've said this a thousand times. But one of the guys who was kind of the benefactor for the team that kind of helped keep them afloat. Mind you, this league had like six teams. I think one of the teams folded in the middle of the season,

and then two of them like consolidated and became a traveling team so this was a dinky little league that had a handful of teams in it right I'm trying to think of all the teams there was Baton Rouge there was the Montgomery somethings there was the Pensacola Pelicans there was there I want to say there was a team in Arkansas at one point. Like, there weren't a lot of teams. Point being in all of this, there were not a lot of teams in this league. It was called the Southeastern League of Professional Baseball. And I don't even know that there's even a, I don't know that there is a Wikipedia.

Now I'm curious. Baton Rouge Riverbats. a uh a wikipedia now i'm curious baton rouge river bats let's see if the baton rouge river bats have a wikipedia no shit they do they were in the let's see they were an independent team in the southeastern league now let's see where these teams were trying to remember them i remember a handful of them there really weren't more than a handful, though. The Southeastern League. That seems like it. Well, I guess it was part of this league that folded in 2003.

The third and most recent incarnation was an independent league that operated for two seasons in 2002 and 2003. That is correct. Let's see. Cities represented. Baton Rouge had the, okay. Houma. The Macon Peaches yeah dude the ballpark i went to in macon was fantastic an old classic ballpark that was a fucking fun time actually

the montgomery wings the pensacola pelicans and the selma alabama cloverleafs those were the teams that played so there was like six teams I thought the Homa team had folded but whatever so in all of that there were like six teams and Baton Rouge was one of them and there was like no money coming into this nobody came to these games

they tried but they were this old little ballpark really not I mean just cute little ballpark but it was what it was horrible part of town not that there's a lot of great parts of town in baton rouge but uh this was a whore like bordering on like the worst part of fucking town in north baton rouge so um a guy named john henry williams was kind of the the money bags the benefactor and he had a lot of money why did john henry williams have a lot of money john henry williams had a lot of money. Why did John Henry Williams have a lot of money? John Henry Williams had a lot of money because his dad was Ted Williams, the splendid splinter,

as it were, Ted Williams. And at the time, this was in early, what, 2003? At the time, John Henry Williams was about 31, 32 years old. He and his sister were the ones that were kind of involved with the decision to freeze their dad He and his sister were the ones that were kind of involved with the decision to freeze their dad's head. Like, they were the really young children of Ted Williams, and they were the ones, I think, that chose to freeze his head, right? So he was kind of a controversial figure in the news. Had his dad sign a bunch of fucking shit before he died.

Ross. Hold on. Ross, I'm coming coming who are you barking at all right everybody hold on i'll continue this story ross has spoken all right so um i'm back uh turns out ross who watches out the window had had seen some birds, and those birds really got his dander up. They really drew the ire of Ross, and Ross had to run out into the yard and try to take them down. So Ross has chased off the birds.

We are safe. I don't want anybody to worry. We're cool. So anyway, John Henry Williams was the guy's name, and he was the son of Ted Williams. He's one of the guys that chose to freeze his dad's head, and people thought he was exploitive because he had his dad sign a bunch of shit when he was dead. Not when he was dead. That'd be impressive.

He signed a bunch of shit towards the end of his life, so he made a lot of money off him. In fact, I think if you see, one of the last times you see Ted Williams is when he was at the 1999 All-Star Game in Boston. And I want to say John Henry is there with him. Now, apparently they didn't have a great relationship, and Ted was kind of out of his life for most of his existence. So, whatever. But I don't know how they got hooked up, but John Henry Williams has all this money, and he's kind of footing the bill for a lot of this baseball team.

And I didn't know this at the time. All I know is that I wanted to be the play-by-play announcer, and John Henry Williams knew some guy that could get us up and online calling our games on the internet on a website called sportsjuice.com, which was a website where a lot of minor league teams would host their broadcasts. And he knew a guy in Florida that would, if I called him on a landline and plugged the landline into a mixer, I mean, it was very, it was a lot of shit that you can just do now live from your phone. Like now, you could literally do this

with a push of the button on your phone. 20 years ago, like I had to pick up a phone, I had a landline that had an input and output in on it. I would run my mixer into the phone, then send the feedback to him on a phone line that he would upload on the internet. Like it was a clusterfuck, but that's how we did it. And so John knew him, John Henry knew him. And that's how we got hooked up with him. so john's a nice guy like i would travel like we would uh when the team would travel i would usually just drive my truck behind the bus i think occasionally i would ride the bus but i would take my truck you know and i would go have dinner you

know i would have dinner with him and have conversations mind you i'm 16 years old at this time 16 17 years old i don't know a fucking thing. Oh, Ross has found a, uh, Ross. Hey pal. Pal, everything fine, Ross. Are you good in there, buddy? I guess we've seen more birds. Ross is going to go handle the birds, guys. Don't worry. Everything is fine. Oh, there he goes. Oh, we're barking outside.

He's going to take down the birds now. All right, so anyway, as a kid, I'm 17 years old. I'm having dinners with this guy and learning about shit. Nice guy. They also let him play. It was kind of part of his rock and roll fantasy, I guess, to kind of like, Hey, I'm Ted Williams kid. I want to try to play baseball. And he was not good. He just wasn't good at it, but they let him do it. You know, that kind of shows what this league is. It's like, Hey,

let him play. And there were a couple of moments. He had a couple of nice moments, you know, a couple of base knocks, whatever. And one day I'm on a broadcast and I start talking about how John Henry Williams is struggling to hit curve balls. So I'm like, I don't know, man, John Henry up there with that curve ball. I don't think he can hit a curve ball. Like as if I know a fucking thing, I'm 17 years old. So I'm in the locker room at one point. God, I can still smell that locker room. Didn't smell good, but I can smell it. And I'm walking around. I walk up to him and go, hey, you know, J.H. They called him J.H., like J.H. Hey, J.H., what's up? He goes, I can't hit a curveball, huh? And I'm like, shit, pissed him off. I pissed off the money guy. I can't hit a curveball, huh? Oh, they also gave

me like a per diem when I was on that team. Like when I would go on the road with them, they'd give me like 50 bucks or something to eat. I'm like, fucking A, right? I'm in the show. It's also where I saw that dude's dick that one time, that baseball player knocked on my hotel room door. I've told that story too, but like they just won the championship or whatever. We're in the hotel. These are adjoining doors, you know, like a La Quinta or something.

I opened the door. Dude's naked. Okay, and he just goes, hey, radio, want a beer? And I probably should have said yes, but 17-year-old me was like, oh, no, I can't do that. I'm a bit of a square. I'm trying to advance in the world, but it was, hey, radio, want a beer? That's what he told me. I was like, boy, I'm one of the boys. I'm doing some fucking living, man, doing some living. But anyway, all that to tell you this. It's to tell you that actually no one tunes into football games for the broadcasters anyway. People listen to the

Milwaukee Brewers on the radio because they like to hear Bob Uecker. Nobody was watching. If you're a fan of a football team, you're not watching that football team or not watching it because Tom Brady is on the call of that game. That's why it fascinates me that they think it's such a big deal that Brady's on the call and they put him in all the promos like, oh my God, you got to hear Tom Brady or Joe Buck. I'm not not going to watch my team play football because of those guys. There is one broadcaster on the planet on television who when I hear their voice, I will turn off a game. There is no one who I tune in to hear, right? Like that was a guy like Hawk Harrelson for the White Sox. I would tune into

those games because I loved hearing him tell stories. There's no one that does that anymore. It's lame and outdated. Nobody does that shit anymore, right? It's very tired, very boring. There is one human on the planet who is a tune-out. No one's a tune-in for television broadcast. There is one human who is an instant tune-out if I hear the voice. And that person is Beth Mowens, who sounds like Reba if you ran Reba through a blender. She's terrible. And she's got that kind of voice. blah blah blah voice and she's i i despise beth moans and that is the one i don't care that she's a woman i don't hate all women broadcasters at all i like doris burke there's a lot of these chicks that i like the analyst play by play it doesn't matter i don't care if you're a man or a woman does not impact my life there's a lot of broadcasters i think are bad like i don't

like kenny albert i think his voice his voice greats because I hear it every week on the Saints because the Saints end up with goddamn Jonathan Vilma and got and and Kenny Albert I hate Kenny Albert but I'm not going to not watch the Saints because Kenny Albert's on but if Beth Mullins were calling a Saints game I may turn it off and it's funny it's instant the second I turn on look because she does a lot of NBA now two free SPN so I'll flip on a game it's a Friday it's instant. The second I turn on, because she does a lot of NBA now, two free ESPN. So I'll flip on a game. It's a Friday night. I'll be like, what is this NBA game? Why it's both Mullins. And I'm like, no, fuck it is. I'm out guys. See you later. Not interested. But the idea that they're paying Tom Brady millions of dollars and like thinking that

that's going to impact people tuning in. If the game is interesting, people will watch. If the game sucks, they won't watch. He is not doing anything overly interesting. That's going to impact people tuning in. If the game is interesting, people will watch if the game sucks, they won't watch. He is not doing anything overly interesting. That's going to keep people watching. It's not like we're in a scenario where it's like Howard Cosell, that people were glued to the TV to hear it's fucking Tom Brady's boring. He's not interesting. Uh, but anyway, he's going to be around for nine more years, allegedly. So there you go. All right. More to come.