Basketball Podcast, Gone but not Forgotten: The Basketball Jones
Hosts: Tas Melas, J.E. Skeets, Leigh Ellis and Trey Kirby
Found On: Score.com
Basketball Podcast: The Lowe Post
Hosts: Zach Lowe and Guest
Found On: Grantland
Currently, the only basketball podcast I listen to is Zach Lowe's incredible detailed look at the NBA with various guests. Some guests come on more often than others (Amin Elhassan, Kevin Pelton, Tom Haberstroh), but all of those represent the new type of NBA media coverage. Lowe himself is adequate at 'fancy stats' but mind-blowingly brilliant when it comes to breaking down what actually happens in the game. Lowe himself also chooses not to hold the listeners hand at all. It is at times hard to really follow what he and the host are talking about, but that type of immersion into NBA-speak is incredibly educational. Lowe also gets really big-time guests, and doesn't approach interviewing them with too much reverence. A classic example was his podcast with Steve Kerr the week after the Warriors won the title. Lowe commands a lot of respect from these successful inside-NBA types, which makes for some fascinating conversations. There's more Grantland to come, but Lowe's podcast really is about as good as the one-host podcast gets today in Sports Media.
Football Podcast, Gone but not Forgotten: Check it to Pancakes
Hosts: Greg Cowan and Rohan Bhasin / Laura Calloway / Kyle Rodriguez
Found On: Colts Authority
Look, no one listened to this podcast - well, except for Colts fans. I won't get into the weird StampedeBlue (the Colts SB Nation site) coup that preceded its creation, but that led to this weird gem of a podcast. I know some of these guys, so I'm extremely biased, but I really found their podcast amazingly entertaining. In its hey-day, it used to go for 3 hours. It touched on the Colts to a fair amount of detail, but would also cover everything... and I mean everything. Cowan lives in Canada so there was puck talk. There was also baseball talk. There was also random talk, like the time when for two months straight on the weekly show they used to profile a Colts cheerleader and the ridiculous answers they provided to their profile pages ("What three things would you bring to a deserted island?"). The other hosts all played well with the crazy Greg Cowan, and it was a fascinating Colts-slanted weekly view of the NFL. An awesome podcast that remained quite re-listenable (yes, I have re-listened to three-hour long Colts podcast from the 2011 season). It transitioned in somewhat the same form to the Colts site those hosts ran, Colts Authority, but it lost the earnestness, rawness and humor of the original show.
Football Podcast: The Grantland NFL Podcast
Hosts: Bill Barnwell and Robert Mays
Found On: Grantland
Podcasts usually don't get better over time; they get worse or stay consistent, but I actually think the Grantland NFL Podcast has really gotten better in their three years of doing the show. I'm a little more luke-warm on Bill Barnwell than many, but think he has great chemistry with Robert Mays. There's better examples of this coming up, but I really think chemistry is so much more important than actual comedic ability. Neither of these two are independently that funny (especially Barnwell), but together they are great. I love Mays's weird fixation over lineman, both offensive and defensive, a really refreshing take when most football podcasts fixate a lot on skill-position guys. I also like their ability to evaluate games really well - maybe not to the depth of Zach Lowe, but these two will do really great deep-dives on games that most pass over any given week. Also, in a sport where so many are quick to jump on trends and story-lines, these two stay really close to doing straight analysis without generalizations. They eschew all the normal trappings of sports podcasts (power rankings, picks, etc.) and just talk football two to three times a week with clarity and insight.
Baseball Podcast, Gone but not Forgotten: Baseball Today
Hosts: Erik Karabell and Keith Law or Mark Simon
Found on: ESPN
This podcast ended at the end of the 2012 season, for no real reason, but hardcore baseball fans died a little bit that day. This was nerd baseball heaven, the audio version of the early-aught's Baseball Tonight Show. Erik Karaball hosted the show every day, with Keith Law on Tuesday through Thursday, and Mark Simon on Monday and Friday. Both combinations worked equally well. Erik Karabell is solid, but the real stars were those other two. Law is incredibly bright and insightful and talks with clear logic that is a bit more direct than most, and he has just the right amount of douchiness. Simon, on the other hand, was like a kid in a candy store, with a high voice to boot. He would answer ridiculous questions like "What is the best team you can make with only players named Mike?" with incredible depth of thought and research. He was a younger, more listenable version of Jayson Stark with the random stuff he would talk about - but he wasn't above going into details with 'fancy stats' either. It was a shorter show than most on this list (30-40 minutes), but an incredibly good listen five days a week.
Baseball Podcast: Effectively Wild
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
Found on: Baseball Prospectus
Just like Baseball Today, this show is excessively nerdy, even the voices of the two hosts, especially Ben Lindbergh and his odd stilt, scream nerdiness - but also scream a love of all things baseball. It's a daily podcast (more or less) and a really refreshing take of the game. Like some of the previous podcasts, there is no set formula. There are no power rankings, or daily run-downs, or analysis of all news. It is basically just a random talk about whatever they find interesting. I love the little segment of the show in the beginning where they 'banter' about 3-4 little things for a few minutes each. The only recurring segment is their 'Play Index' segment, where they walk you through some random factoid or streak using baseball-reference's play index. The show may not be as funny as some of the others here, but being a daily show and packed with so much great random nonsense still makes it a really good listen. Also one advantage of not speaking directly to current news, it is something that is easy to listen after the fact or catch up weeks at a time - something that is so needed for Comedy podcasts but hard to do for Sports.
Hockey Podcast: Marek vs. Wyshynski
Hosts: Greg Wyshynski and Jeff Marek
Found On: Rogers Sportsnet / Yahoo!
I don't have a favorite past hockey podcast, just a favorite past, present and future. Marek vs. Wyshynski may be, at least to me, the best sports podcast that focuses on any one sport. I don't know if I've heard a podcast that does the following so well: talk to topical news without feeling like 'news', have interesting guests that provide both current, future and past analysis and talk, and work so well together to elevate each other. You get the feeling listening to Jeff Marek, who is now a reasonably big hockey media-head in Canada, and Greg Wyshynski, the famed 'Puck Daddy' editor of the Puck Daddy Yahoo! hockey blog, are really good friends. They also touch upon their personal lives to a level that is enough to stay humorous and not obtrusive. At the end though, they both love, love, love hockey. It is a weird dynamic where Jeff Marek definitely knows more about hockey history and hockey future (he's a wizard at Canada's Junior Hockey circuit) but they both know about hockey present. Also, I don't know a podcast that has done a better job of interacting with fans, whether it is Game Show Friday (a quick hockey trivia game with a call-in fan), or 'Going Postal', a weekly mailbag segment, or the laundry list of recurring jokes that have sprung up through the shows run. With Marek's rising star the show's schedule has become a little more spotty than the daily occurrence in its heyday, but it is still an exceedingly good 50-75 minutes of puck talk through the year; touching on all topics whether it is contractual or even CBA intricacies, or player movement, or player development. Just an awesome show.
General Sports Podcast: The Poscast with Joe Posnanski
Hosts: Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur
Found On: NBC Sports (previously Sport-on-Earth and SI.com)
For a podcast that's been going on for 4 years now, there's only about ~20 episodes of these two. It's not so much a podcast anymore than a quarterly appearance, but when it does come out, there is nothing in the podcast space that I anticipate listening to more. It's actually had three different iterations. The first two were more or less the same, from mid-2011 through late-2012, that followed Posnanski from SI to Sports-on-Earth. The latest iteration has been through NBC Sports, from late-2013 to today (14 episodes in that period). The differences are slight. The earlier two versions used to be longer (routinely around 100 minutes) and used to have a long period of rambling through various topics on various sports (Tennis, Basketball, Golf and a lot of Baseball) followed with a draft where Posnanski and Schur ran through 5-picks each on a various topic. The early version used to mainly be sports based topics. The latest version of the podcast is shorter, with less intro and the same draft - though that draft has now veered more and more away from sports. What has remained, though, is Posnanski and Schur's incredible partnering as a comedy force. I don't know if I've laughed more at a sports podcast than with them; what makes it better is they laugh so much as well. It isn't surprising to see Posnanski laugh at his co-host so much - Michael Schur is, after all, the brain behind Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine; but Posnanski surprisingly holds his own as well. It is a rare gem of a podcast, but it plays so well whenever it is on, whatever the topic. Sure, I would love them to stick more to sports drafts (early version of 'Favorite Sports Equipment' or 'Best Player Season') than what it has become ('Favorite Fruit', 'Best Emotion'), but even as it gets more esoteric, it remains as good.
Found On: Score.com
Let's start off with a Podcast that hasn't been since 2013. The basic show has been transformed into a weekly TV show on the NBA Network, but it isn't the same as the free-flowing podcast that touched a lot on basketball, but also a lot on just four people making fun of each other and everything. I don't know if I've ever heard a podcast that was so consistently funny. It honestly toned down a bit in its later years, and I don't know what the expiration date was in that format, but for when it was on, The Basketball Jones was probably the best podcast to feature more than 3 people; it split airtime really well and they all had their own take, whether it is being more statistically inclined or more inclined to rant on random things. The shows were never that long, but packed with information and jokes. Just a great 15-30 minute listen, consistently for six years.
Basketball Podcast: The Lowe Post
Hosts: Zach Lowe and Guest
Found On: Grantland
Currently, the only basketball podcast I listen to is Zach Lowe's incredible detailed look at the NBA with various guests. Some guests come on more often than others (Amin Elhassan, Kevin Pelton, Tom Haberstroh), but all of those represent the new type of NBA media coverage. Lowe himself is adequate at 'fancy stats' but mind-blowingly brilliant when it comes to breaking down what actually happens in the game. Lowe himself also chooses not to hold the listeners hand at all. It is at times hard to really follow what he and the host are talking about, but that type of immersion into NBA-speak is incredibly educational. Lowe also gets really big-time guests, and doesn't approach interviewing them with too much reverence. A classic example was his podcast with Steve Kerr the week after the Warriors won the title. Lowe commands a lot of respect from these successful inside-NBA types, which makes for some fascinating conversations. There's more Grantland to come, but Lowe's podcast really is about as good as the one-host podcast gets today in Sports Media.
Football Podcast, Gone but not Forgotten: Check it to Pancakes
Hosts: Greg Cowan and Rohan Bhasin / Laura Calloway / Kyle Rodriguez
Found On: Colts Authority
Look, no one listened to this podcast - well, except for Colts fans. I won't get into the weird StampedeBlue (the Colts SB Nation site) coup that preceded its creation, but that led to this weird gem of a podcast. I know some of these guys, so I'm extremely biased, but I really found their podcast amazingly entertaining. In its hey-day, it used to go for 3 hours. It touched on the Colts to a fair amount of detail, but would also cover everything... and I mean everything. Cowan lives in Canada so there was puck talk. There was also baseball talk. There was also random talk, like the time when for two months straight on the weekly show they used to profile a Colts cheerleader and the ridiculous answers they provided to their profile pages ("What three things would you bring to a deserted island?"). The other hosts all played well with the crazy Greg Cowan, and it was a fascinating Colts-slanted weekly view of the NFL. An awesome podcast that remained quite re-listenable (yes, I have re-listened to three-hour long Colts podcast from the 2011 season). It transitioned in somewhat the same form to the Colts site those hosts ran, Colts Authority, but it lost the earnestness, rawness and humor of the original show.
Football Podcast: The Grantland NFL Podcast
Hosts: Bill Barnwell and Robert Mays
Found On: Grantland
Podcasts usually don't get better over time; they get worse or stay consistent, but I actually think the Grantland NFL Podcast has really gotten better in their three years of doing the show. I'm a little more luke-warm on Bill Barnwell than many, but think he has great chemistry with Robert Mays. There's better examples of this coming up, but I really think chemistry is so much more important than actual comedic ability. Neither of these two are independently that funny (especially Barnwell), but together they are great. I love Mays's weird fixation over lineman, both offensive and defensive, a really refreshing take when most football podcasts fixate a lot on skill-position guys. I also like their ability to evaluate games really well - maybe not to the depth of Zach Lowe, but these two will do really great deep-dives on games that most pass over any given week. Also, in a sport where so many are quick to jump on trends and story-lines, these two stay really close to doing straight analysis without generalizations. They eschew all the normal trappings of sports podcasts (power rankings, picks, etc.) and just talk football two to three times a week with clarity and insight.
Baseball Podcast, Gone but not Forgotten: Baseball Today
Hosts: Erik Karabell and Keith Law or Mark Simon
Found on: ESPN
This podcast ended at the end of the 2012 season, for no real reason, but hardcore baseball fans died a little bit that day. This was nerd baseball heaven, the audio version of the early-aught's Baseball Tonight Show. Erik Karaball hosted the show every day, with Keith Law on Tuesday through Thursday, and Mark Simon on Monday and Friday. Both combinations worked equally well. Erik Karabell is solid, but the real stars were those other two. Law is incredibly bright and insightful and talks with clear logic that is a bit more direct than most, and he has just the right amount of douchiness. Simon, on the other hand, was like a kid in a candy store, with a high voice to boot. He would answer ridiculous questions like "What is the best team you can make with only players named Mike?" with incredible depth of thought and research. He was a younger, more listenable version of Jayson Stark with the random stuff he would talk about - but he wasn't above going into details with 'fancy stats' either. It was a shorter show than most on this list (30-40 minutes), but an incredibly good listen five days a week.
Baseball Podcast: Effectively Wild
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
Found on: Baseball Prospectus
Just like Baseball Today, this show is excessively nerdy, even the voices of the two hosts, especially Ben Lindbergh and his odd stilt, scream nerdiness - but also scream a love of all things baseball. It's a daily podcast (more or less) and a really refreshing take of the game. Like some of the previous podcasts, there is no set formula. There are no power rankings, or daily run-downs, or analysis of all news. It is basically just a random talk about whatever they find interesting. I love the little segment of the show in the beginning where they 'banter' about 3-4 little things for a few minutes each. The only recurring segment is their 'Play Index' segment, where they walk you through some random factoid or streak using baseball-reference's play index. The show may not be as funny as some of the others here, but being a daily show and packed with so much great random nonsense still makes it a really good listen. Also one advantage of not speaking directly to current news, it is something that is easy to listen after the fact or catch up weeks at a time - something that is so needed for Comedy podcasts but hard to do for Sports.
Hockey Podcast: Marek vs. Wyshynski
Hosts: Greg Wyshynski and Jeff Marek
Found On: Rogers Sportsnet / Yahoo!
I don't have a favorite past hockey podcast, just a favorite past, present and future. Marek vs. Wyshynski may be, at least to me, the best sports podcast that focuses on any one sport. I don't know if I've heard a podcast that does the following so well: talk to topical news without feeling like 'news', have interesting guests that provide both current, future and past analysis and talk, and work so well together to elevate each other. You get the feeling listening to Jeff Marek, who is now a reasonably big hockey media-head in Canada, and Greg Wyshynski, the famed 'Puck Daddy' editor of the Puck Daddy Yahoo! hockey blog, are really good friends. They also touch upon their personal lives to a level that is enough to stay humorous and not obtrusive. At the end though, they both love, love, love hockey. It is a weird dynamic where Jeff Marek definitely knows more about hockey history and hockey future (he's a wizard at Canada's Junior Hockey circuit) but they both know about hockey present. Also, I don't know a podcast that has done a better job of interacting with fans, whether it is Game Show Friday (a quick hockey trivia game with a call-in fan), or 'Going Postal', a weekly mailbag segment, or the laundry list of recurring jokes that have sprung up through the shows run. With Marek's rising star the show's schedule has become a little more spotty than the daily occurrence in its heyday, but it is still an exceedingly good 50-75 minutes of puck talk through the year; touching on all topics whether it is contractual or even CBA intricacies, or player movement, or player development. Just an awesome show.
General Sports Podcast: The Poscast with Joe Posnanski
Hosts: Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur
Found On: NBC Sports (previously Sport-on-Earth and SI.com)
For a podcast that's been going on for 4 years now, there's only about ~20 episodes of these two. It's not so much a podcast anymore than a quarterly appearance, but when it does come out, there is nothing in the podcast space that I anticipate listening to more. It's actually had three different iterations. The first two were more or less the same, from mid-2011 through late-2012, that followed Posnanski from SI to Sports-on-Earth. The latest iteration has been through NBC Sports, from late-2013 to today (14 episodes in that period). The differences are slight. The earlier two versions used to be longer (routinely around 100 minutes) and used to have a long period of rambling through various topics on various sports (Tennis, Basketball, Golf and a lot of Baseball) followed with a draft where Posnanski and Schur ran through 5-picks each on a various topic. The early version used to mainly be sports based topics. The latest version of the podcast is shorter, with less intro and the same draft - though that draft has now veered more and more away from sports. What has remained, though, is Posnanski and Schur's incredible partnering as a comedy force. I don't know if I've laughed more at a sports podcast than with them; what makes it better is they laugh so much as well. It isn't surprising to see Posnanski laugh at his co-host so much - Michael Schur is, after all, the brain behind Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine; but Posnanski surprisingly holds his own as well. It is a rare gem of a podcast, but it plays so well whenever it is on, whatever the topic. Sure, I would love them to stick more to sports drafts (early version of 'Favorite Sports Equipment' or 'Best Player Season') than what it has become ('Favorite Fruit', 'Best Emotion'), but even as it gets more esoteric, it remains as good.
