That San Diego tomorrow will have a third all-sports radio station, one led by the enigmatic Lee Hamilton, brings a story of great irony.
Just a few short years ago, Clear Channel ended the sports format on what was known as XTRA Sports 690, meaning that San Diego had no sports radio at all, and Hamilton was relegated to a radio station in Los Angeles. A few months later, John Lynch, the founder of the station years earlier, rode to the rescue with what is now XX Sports 1090, bringing with him a number of former 690 employees, but not Hamilton.
As I was still operating the Sandiegosportstown.com site at the time, I was pretty close to the people who were involved in the sports radio comings and goings. They were not only thrilled at the rescue, but immensely pleased that Hamilton was frozen out of the picture. Now that they were free of Lee, they could go do sports radio the way it should be done. The smug anti-Hamilton jokes flowed freely.
Fast-forward to 2007, and look at who is getting the last laugh. Lee Hamilton.
Lynch's rescue quickly soured, in large part due to a lack of direction at the staff level. I've heard that many on the staff were far more concerned with the next chance to party instead of the next chance to actually work. On-air hosts were rarely at games. The best people they had, Matt Vasgersian, John Fricke and Alan Horton, bailed out as fast as they could. The station is now an unlistenable mess outside of Padres game broadcasts.
Hamilton, meanwhile, stayed the course with Clear Channel, eventually shifted to KOGO to file morning and afternoon sports reports and put himself in position to work on San Diego State football broadcasts. Monday he will be the prime talk show host on the new sports radio station. He has ingratiated himself with Aztecs fans by posting regularly on the Aztectalk.com site, is the top sports voice for a radio outfit that carries Chargers games -- which would have been unheard-of years ago -- and made up with Ted Leitner after a long-running feud. Leitner, who spent several years at 1090, is obviously aware of how things are.
Hamilton also made national news and gained well-deserved empathy with his daring and close escape from the Witch Creek Fire, which damaged his Rancho Bernardo home.
Not long ago, Hamilton was the butt of jokes. Now he's back where he belongs, hosting a sports show in San Diego and giving us the "best damn 15 minutes of radio there is."
How long the man remains on top is up to him, and his managers. Many of the anti-Hamilton sentiments had an element of truth. I made some comments about the way Hamilton did business myself, and I hope he's changed his ways.
Many of those items listed in his infamous show-opening 15 minutes were old enough to be in the morning newspaper, and in the Internet age, are certainly too stale to be given to a modern audience. Same with his "high-speed sports wire," which gave "news" that was hours old. His pitiful begging for telephone callers and haranging of local sports fans was often pathetic -- a display that he'd lost his audience, not that there was something wrong with that audience.
He also frequently presented taped interviews as if they were live. One time, there was an event at San Diego State that many reporters -- myself included -- covered. Hamilton was there. I knew what was said and by whom. To hear it played on the radio THREE WEEKS later was a shock, even by Lee Hamilton standards.
Let's hope those days are over. The show-opening headlines and the high-speed sports wire have to be fresh. He has to respect his audience, which is far more in-touch and sophisticated than when he started doing radio. And if he tapes an interview -- which is often because his show airs when most teams practice -- just say he taped it earlier in the day. People are okay with it, just be honest.
Everyone is on Lee Hamilton's side now, so let's hope he's worthy. As much as the pendulum has come back his way now, it could easily drop away again.
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San Diego State's struggles in football over the years have included a heavy dose of bad karma to go along with the poor play, ineffective coaching and bad recruiting decisions. So often SDSU came into a season with high hopes, only to have a returning starter at QB go down to injury in the first game or two. Or one of Ted Tollner's last years, when some favored SDSU to win the Mountain West, but nearly every offensive lineman was hurt a month into the season.
Or, looming large in the minds of fans Saturday night, the bizarre 44-42 nightmare loss at UNLV in 1996, which cost the Aztecs a bowl game. The Aztecs entered that game with eight wins and had just beaten a ranked and unbeaten Wyoming team. UNLV was winless and terrible. And SDSU, a reasonable defensive team, could not stop the Rebels that day in a contest that resembled a bunch of buddies slinging the ball around at the neighborhood park. Peter Holt, a reliable placekicker, missed a last-second field goal that would have saved the season.
So maybe Saturday night's 38-30 win over UNLV is a sign of changing fortunes. After State took a quick 21-0 lead over a dispirited and disorganized Rebels' squad, Bad Karma raised its ugly head and tried everything possible to sandbag the Aztecs chances of victory.
A short-but-strong running back the Aztecs held in check in the first half suddenly started bouncing off defenders like a pachinko ball on his way to long gains. The secondary gave up a long touchdown pass on 3rd and 22. The offense that sparkled in the first 30 minutes went three-and-out on the first two possessions and QB Kevin O'Connell threw an interception on the third -- a pass that bounced off the intended receiver's hands. UNLV closed to within 21-17.
Previous Aztecs teams would have, at worst, collapsed like a house of cards or, at best, might have prevailed in a shootout.
Instead, this happened. Mekell Wesley ran back a kickoff 88 yards for a TD and a 28-17 lead. UNLV scored again to cut their deficit, but inexplicably went for two-point and had the ball swatted away by an Aztec defensive back. Note that it was a UNLV coach making a bonehead call and an Aztec defender making a positive play.
The offense then got in gear and drove for a field goal. UNLV was held to three-and-out their next possession and, while State had a poor offensive possession that only took a minute off the clock, Martell Fantroy picked off a pass and broke several tackles while running it back 55 yards for the clinching score at 38-23. UNLV added its final points on a Hail Mary pass with 7 seconds left.
San Diego State still displays a lot of youthful inexperience, from letting down after taking the big lead to allowing that last Rebels TD.
But they didn't let Bad Karma kill them this time, like previous teams. This was not a good UNLV team, and it should not have beaten SDSU. And they didn't.
Maybe we really are entering a new era of Aztecs football. Fans have been tired not just of losing to teams better than ours, but losing in weird ways to teams that we should have taken care of. The win in Las Vegas might be a sign that things are getting better.
Now it's on to Air Force, a team that has eight wins under new coach Troy Calhoun including Saturday's 17-point victory over Notre Dame in South Bend, an impressive feat despite the Irish' 1-9 record. We can take our chances on talent. Nice to know that Bad Karma might be out of the way.
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