…or exhibit “A” in the case to abolish sports yack radio? Calling the assembled collection a rogues gallery would be a grave insult to rogues, but whether the trade publication’s criteria are artistic, commercial or some combination of the two, congratulations to Sirius/XM’s Dino Costa on cracking the list at #98. If you count the various duos and trios included on the list, this means Talkers ranks Costa as one of the nation’s top 199 or so sports radio orators, some ten places lower than that broadcasting legend, Craig Shemon of Yahoo Sports Radio, 7 spots beneath San Diego’s corpse-with-a-microphone, Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton. Or rather, some 42 places lower than WFAN’s Steve Somers who doesn’t even have a regularly scheduled program during much of the calendar year.
Still, even having scaled these industry heights, there’s no telling where Costa’s career trajectory might take him. An ingenious scheme to add 10 new bogus twitter followers for every legitimate reader he blocks has further endeared The Yonkers Cowboy to his Mad Dog Radio colleagues to the point he’s now being paid to work from a couple of time zones away. When the Sirius/XM deal wraps up in 2013, I have every confidence that either he or his Ryan Patrick alter ego has the intestinal fortitude to hold off a #100 challenge from podcasting hopefuls like Joe Morgan.