Insider Sports Stories from Behind the Mic

By Eli Gold

The third caller. “Coach, great win. Nice blocking on that punt return. But what about this Nike deal?”

You could see the coach stiffen up.

The caller continued. “What bothers me is that Alabama has never had to wear a logo on our jerseys, with the exception of maybe a bowl game. Alabama doesn’t wear logos on our jerseys! We’ve got classy crimson-and-white jerseys, and I think it’s terrible that we’re going to have a Nike logo …”

Well, by now the coach had had enough. He didn’t want to answer the question again. “Look,” he said, “the bottom line is for the amount of money we’re being paid… Then he started gesturing to the Nike logo on his shirt, but since we were on radio, only the folks in the restaurant could see him. “Look, for this amount of money, if we have to wear… this swastika on our jerseys, then we’ll do it!”

Time to go to commercial. My engineer said into my ear, “Did he just say what I think he said?”

He did. So during the break I leaned over to Coach Stallings and said, “By the way, Coach, the Nike logo is called a swoosh… it’s a swoosh.”

In his grumbly voice he said, “What’d I say?”

I said, “What if I told you we had no Jewish listeners left?”

It dawned on him what he had said, “Aw, heck!” he said. “They know I didn’t mean nothing by that.”

And like good radio people do, we just kept going.

(Gold and Roberts 2009, 246)

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References

Gold, Eli, and Mary B. Roberts. 2009. From Peanuts to the Pressbox: Insider Sports Stories from a Life Behind the Mic. N.p.: Thomas Nelson.

ISBN 978-1-4016-0436-3