Home

Introduction

A Brief History Of Sports Talk Radio

All About Rome

The Importance Of Being Jim Rome

The Long History Of Sports Talk Radio In Madison

How Madison Won A Tour Stop

Now The Real Work Begins: The Setup

The Big Day: Anatomy Of A Jim Rome Tour Stop

To The Winner Goes The Spoils

Click For Pix

They came from far and wide.

They came from all over Wisconsin. They came from all over the Midwest. They even came all the way from Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Under clear, sunny skies, Jim Rome fans filled the Alliant Center Coliseum parking lot, tailgating in the best Wisconsin tradition, even though many license plates read Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. The beer flowed, grills were fired up. Many Rome fans had hit the parking lot as early as nine in the morning. Regardless of where they were from, they all had one thing in common, curiosity.

"I don't know what to expect, but I'm waiting to see," said Pat Brummond of Oconomowac, Wisconsin. "This is awesome. This is the best. This is major cool."

Kris Carter, who had come down from Minnesota, echoed this sentiment.

"I came down to watch the Gopher game last night," he said, "and then we heard about this. It's pretty cool. He has two and a half million listeners every day. The hype is the most intriguing part. No one knows what the hell is going to happen, but we all have to be here to see it."

"I'm here just to see what the hell's going on," said Bill Koenen of Peoria, Illinois.

ESPN1070 Operations Manager ran into that same sentiment as well. The Tour Stop was a curiosity, or as a co-worker had put it, "a circus."

"It's like the freak show," Scott said. "The circus is coming to town. Someone on our staff who works at another station said to me, 'can I get some tickets to see the circus? The circus is in town. I gotta go see it.' I thought to myself, that's a pretty good analogy."

Scott was amazed at the height of anticipation for the show.

"I had people call me, I'm not making this up," Scott said, "from all over the country looking for tickets. My standard response was fax me your plane ticket. Half a dozen guys did. I commented about the guy from Fayetteville, Arkansas. I met him. He flew up, he and his girlfriend. Think about that. Nobody does that. It's a sports talk show host here.

"He has star power. I've talked to so many different people who run his show. They all say the same thing. I don't get it. I don't understand it, but I don't have to. My listeners get it. Do I listen to Jim Rome religiously every day? No, but I know my listeners do.

"Before I got into talk, I used to program music and I put on a few concerts. It has the same look and feel of any concert, but it's a sports talk show host. Jim has tapped into that. I mean the show had the look, the feel, the pyros of a rock concert. You get the rowdy crowd which is like a rock concert and then you bring in their sports heroes. It doesn't get anymore guy than that.

"Will Jim Rome be doing this eight years from now, ten years from now? I don't know, but I'm lucky we got him when we did. I think we hit him at his peak."

Even before the Rome fans started assembling in the Coliseum parking lot, before the charcoal hit the grills, before the first beer was drank, Scott had already been hard at work.

"We started setting up Friday night," Scott said. "We spent all day Friday setting up the arena. Obviously the production company, they did their thing, but bannering and that kind of stuff, we did that, making sure, for example, the auction, which we oversaw, was all set up.

"Day of, basically, it was the calm before the storm. We got together as a group that morning. Everybody got their individual assignments. Some people worked backstage, some people worked the Green Room, some people worked the auction, some people worked the broadcast side of it.

"Myself and (General Manager) Jeff Tyler, we were kind of amongst everybody, made sure things went smoothly and once the doors opened, it started rolling after that. Basically, Romey arrived, the show started. We just had to make sure our guests were all comfortable, that they had all they needed from a beverage standpoint. Once the show started, Jim just did his thing. We just stood back and watched like everybody else.

"Afterwards, well, we took a big collective sigh of relief and just went about our business."

The atmosphere in the parking lot was downright serene compared to the scene inside the Coliseum. While tailgaters drank their beers and ate their brats, Rome fans filed into the arena and took their seats.

The first notation I made in my notebook after entering the arena was, "there's not enough aspirin in the bottle." Inside the arena and within the concourse surrounding the arena, the scene was an utter madhouse. It was an assault on the sense.

Scott had repeatedly stated on his show, "The Bullpen," that there'd be plenty of testosterone floating around the Coliseum and he wasn't kidding. Afterwards, I was more than happy to go out with my wife for Indian food and a chick flick.

Everywhere, it was relentlessly loud. When it wasn't loud, it was louder. An hour and a half before the show was scheduled to start and the Coliseum floor was already full, as was much of the lower section of seats. Music blared. People cheered at Badger and Packer highlights flashed on a pair of screens flanking the stage which was already set up with fencing and barbed wire in front of a backdrop of a faux urban scene, like a dilapidated junkyard, with Jungle sayings like, "Jungle Karma," "Welcome to the Jungle," "Drop the Hammer," and "Rack 'im" in stylized spraypainted graffiti on top of jagged brick. Tour Stop sponsor Auto Zone was prominently displayed.

The concourse was wall-to-wall people with long lines at the beer stands and the bathrooms. Booths for each sponsor ringed the concourse where everything was hawked from cigars to energy drinks. Marines did chin-ups at a bar set up at a recruiting booth. Various sponsors, such as Hooters, Crusin' With Chubbys, the Ultimate Salon and a biker girl calendar, supplied the requisite cheesecake.

Inside the hopelessly crowded bathrooms, the plumbing surely gasping for breath, conversations ranged from Najeh Davenport's "tail" (he had recently gotten into hot water over defecating in a college coed's dorm room closet), Donovan McNabb versus Brett Favre and Green Bay versus Philadelphia. The latter almost caused a brawl.

I noticed, not surprisingly, the crowd was the classic Jim Rome demographic, male, age 20-45, mostly male, though a few women floated around, not including the somewhat skanky looking strippers from Chubbys. Most of the women were with their boyfriends. I tried my damnedest to interview a woman who herself was a Jim Rome fan, but was unsuccessful. I guess Lisa from Green Bay, a former regular caller, was nowhere to be seen.

Inside the arena, the buzz grew as showtime approached. Packer and Badger garb was all over the place, but there was the odd Raider fan, a couple guys in black wigs and a guy in a Jason mask. In the sixth row of the center floor section, a guy held up an anti Willie in K.C. sign, referring to the hottest new caller in the Jungle, who's trademark is singing his takes to the tunes of popular classic rock songs. (A year later, Willie from K.C. would be barred from the Jungle for making a racist remark on the air.)

The moment approached. A loud buzz filled the arena when Rome highlights replace the Badger and Packer highlights on the video screen, including some "potent quotables." Warren Sapp's brought boos, the crowd's memory of Sapp's blindside block of Packer Chad Clifton fresh. Don King was shown demonstrating his creative use of the English language.

Next, Blink 182's video flashed on the screen, literally. It was the video where the band runs naked, including onto the set of Rome's previous Fox television show, "The Last Word." Rome's disgusted look as the band streaked past elicited cheers.

Scott and his former co-host of "The Bullpen" Aaron Sims ran on-stage to fire up the crowd, as if the crowd needed any further motivation.

They mentioned the previous Tour Stop in Sacramento. That drew boos. Scott offered welcome to the "flatlanders" who'd come up from Illinois. More boos.

"Just remember," Scott shouted, "we didn't charge you to drive on our interstate highway system."

Scott and Sims got the loudest applause from their shout of "Jim Rome's in the house!"

It could have been a scary experience, but Scott and Sims took it in stride. Scott had done this sort of thing before, and Sims formerly had worked as a standup comedian. The only problem was the duo encountered an unexpected surprise.

"I've got a lot of experience being on-stage," Scott said. "I guess the most nerve-wracking thing about it was that they told us they wanted us to go on-stage five minutes out just to introduce the show. They had some type of delay, so we were ready to go on-stage and they said 'can you fill?' Aaron's a standup comedian, so he's like, 'I can fill. I've got some material.' And they said, 'can you fill ten minutes?' I looked at him and he looked at me and all of a sudden, the guy says, 'come on. You guys are on.'

"We just went up. That was ad lib, off the cuff. There was no script, no rhyme or reason. That was just us rolling with it. I think if anything it was just kind of what we used to do on the air, two guys feeding off each other, feeding off the crowd a bit.

"We each had one thing or two things we knew we were going to say on-stage, but again within a five minute window, boom boom, you're done. Well when they said ten minutes, then we looked over to the side and they said keep going and we just kept working the crowd the best we could.

"It happened so fast, you don't really have time to think. You just get up there and do it. There's a pretty good rush. You get off on it. I could understand why, for a lot of people, it's addictive. You get up there and feel the energy from the crowd.

"Of course, they weren't there to see us. They were there to see Jim Rome. We were just the guys who stirred them up a bit."

Indeed, the roar from the crowd following Scott's shout of "Jim Rome is in the house!" did not compare to when a card girl sauntered on stage, holding a sign that said "5 Minutes." She was one of Chubby's strippers and wore a black negligee, mammoth black wedge sandals. Her breasts looked as if they had been inflated with a bicycle pump.

Moments later, another Chubby's identically dressed (?) stripper walked across the stage. "2 Minutes" and the crowd went wild.

Then the big moment arrived.

Slash's bouncy opening licks from Guns 'N' Rose's "Welcome to the Jungle," blared. Then the opening riff. Rome ran on-stage as flashpots belched massive flames. The crowd erupted.

Right away, Rome launched into a take about the unseasonably warm weather in Madison that day. For weeks, Rome had expressed trepidation about the potentially Arctic weather.

And right away, the crowd was treated to what makes being at a Tour Stop special. You get Rome takes, just like on his radio show, except it's unfiltered, rated R rather than PG13.

"Dude, is this Madison, or is this Florida," Rome shouted. "I should've stayed in LA." A few boos from the crowd. "No, I was saying I was one of the So-Cal pussies."

Rome talked about his previous trip to Wisconsin, five years earlier in Green Bay, where he almost froze to death in Lambeau Field during the NFC Championship game.

"The one thing that saved me," Rome said, "was the two fat asses on either side of me in the stadium. As far as I'm concerned, Madison's great. The weather's perfect and no one is fat."

Wisconsin Football Coach Barry Alvarez was led on-stage by a Chubby's stripper. A few boos were heard. Rome answered the boos.

"Barry, face to face, man to man, you're one hell of a football coach," Rome said.

"You're one hell of a sportscaster," Alvarez replied.

What followed was pretty much like a typical interview on Rome's radio show. Rome asked Alvarez about the possibility of winning a national championship.

"That's the one thing I haven't done," Alvarez said. "That's why I stayed, to try to get that done."

Another take, laced with various four-letter bombs.

Rome pointed to a sign that said, "The growler has landed," and started on Najeh Davenport.

"Girl dumps dude, dude drops dump in her closet," Rome said. "When roses and candy don't work, take a shit in her closet. The only thing missing is Johnny Cocharan saying, 'if there is no shit, you must acquit.'

"If you're soccer fan, bag it and throw it at Bears fan."

Next, Rome took on former Packers coach Mike Holmgren, demonstrating how he customizes his Tour Stop for his audience, rather than doing the same bit four times a year, every year, like some washed up stand up comedian.

He cracked on the "genius."

"Dude was acting like he was Vince Lombardi, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking all rolled into one."

Green Bay Packer and former Badger offensive tackle Mark Tauscher was the next guest. Tauscher was available for the event because he was out for the season with an injury. Tim Scott said he had to really fight for Tauscher to be an on-stage guest. The baby-faced lineman proved to be a big hit.

Rome asked Tauscher about the great Wisconsin winter pasttime of ice fishing.

"My big, fat ass ain't going on the ice," Tauscher said. "There's guys ice fishing on one side and ducks swimming on the other side.

Rome asked if Warren Sapp would be a marked man after his blindside hit of Chad Clifton that resulting in a season-ending, career-threatening injury.

"Since there's no media here," Tauscher said, "we're going to get his ass."

Tauscher left the stage and Rome took the opportunity to play on regional hatred, much to the crowd's delight.

"I've been in Wisconsin for only six hours," Rome said, "and I already hate Chicago."

Rome targeted Minnesota and Iowa next, trashing former Minnesota basketball player Voshon Leonard, who apparently didn't even know who the president was—the president of the United States. Rome wondered if Leonard knew who God was.

"At least Minnesota has paved roads," Rome said of Iowa. "Most of the traffic is horse and buggy, except the rich guys with tractors and corn cob pipes."

An uncomfortable looking Bo Ryan came next. The Badger basketball coach seemed bewildered by the whole scene. He presented Rome with a "Grateful Red" shirt, the tie-dyed garment worn throughout the student section at the Kohl Center. The gift would win Ryan "Jungle Karma" points. A few months later, the Badgers would win their second consecutive Big Ten title.

A loud chorus of boos followed Milwaukee Brewers Manager Ned Yost and Team President Ulice Payne.

"You've got to give it to these guys," Rome told the crowd, "that they had the nad to go up in front of you."

This was one of the more special moments of the Madison Tour Stop. Yost and Payne knew they would not receive a particularly warm reaction. Scott said Rome was apprehensive about how people would react. Still, Yost and Payne faced the music and Rome was supportive.

"You want to bring it back," Rome said to Payne and Yost. "You want to win their respect."

"I'm going to take twenty-five players and make them better with hard work," Yost said. And that's exactly what happened. The Brewers would win 12 more games than the previous season.

Jerry Kelly, another guest Scott had to fight for, came next. Kelly, like Tauscher, was a hit with the crowd and made a strong impression on Rome.

Rome asked Kelly why he still lives in Madison, even though living in a warmer place would allow for more off-season practice time.

"I've played against those California pussies," Kelly replied, then vowed that in the next season he'll be "Tiger hunting."

"Not to put you on the spot," Rome asked, "but Monty's (stuffy British golfer Colin Montgomerie) pretty much an asshole."

"Yes," Kelly said with a big grin.

Frank Gifford was Rome's next target. An hour had already elapsed since Rome hit the stage and pretty much no one was sitting.

"You're seventy-two years old," Rome said. "It's okay to show a few wrinkles. You know you've had too many face lifts when Jerry Jones makes fun of you."

Willie in Kansas City, the latest Jungle-Legend-to-be, was Rome's next topic.

"There are some of you who think he rules," Rome said. "There's always people representing both sides. There is one thing everybody hates, mimes. If you ignore a mime...."

Then it was on. Rome launched into his classic take about annoying mimes.

Rome saved the best guests for last. In what proved a highly crowd pleasing and emotional scene, Packer legends Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston joined Rome on the stage. Kramer looked dapper in a blazer and turtleneck. Thurston would've fit in with any of the regulars in his bar on a football Sunday in his sweatshirt and baseball cap—well, actually, Thurston usually does hang with the Packer fans at his bar on football Sundays.

While Kramer was serene and stately, Thurston was a whirling dervish, jogging around the stage, speaking through a voice box, struggling, fighting to get each word out of his throat.

Thurston, in an electrified, raspy voice led a rousing cheer of "Go, Pack, Go!" Kramer held up one of his championship rings and proudly pointed out that his Packers were the only team to ever win three consecutive NFL titles.

Rome asked Kramer how he was able to write Instant Replay. Kramer said he surreptitiously dictated entries into a tape recorder, then described a difficulty with Lombardi once the book was published.

"I called him a short, fat Italian," Kramer said. "I gave a copy to everyone but Vince. He found a copy and carried it around for a week.

"He is a man for whom all others shall be measured."

"Without him," Thurston said of his coach, "we'd be on the street selling beer."

Thurston and Kramer answered further question in frank, if not blunt terms. The crowd loved them. Rome was enchanted.

"These guys are men, men!" Rome said, as Thurston and Kramer left the stage.

The Madison Tour Stop came to a close. Jungle Producer Travis Rogers and Show Contributor Jason Stewart joined Rome on stage. Rome thanked the sponsors and Tim Scott. He started to refer to Scott as "the monkey," Rome's term for program directors, but, in a sincere gesture of respect for a job well done, he corrected himself and gave thanks to "Program Director Tim Scott."

As per Tour Stop custom, Rome let his Madison fans know how their Tour Stop stacked up against the others.

"It's time to slop Tour Stops," Rome said. "The worst was Oakland. The best include Buffalo, Sacramento, C-Town (Cleveland) and Kansas City. I already see that Madison, Wisconsin is in that group. It's like the freakin' BCS. I see someone dropping, somebody moving up.

"I've been doing this since 1987. I will always remember this weekend in Madison. It lived up to the hype. It's one of the best sports towns in the country.

"Madison, I WILL BE BACK!"

****

Apparently, Rome was sincere about this assessment of the Madison Tour Stop. Scott said that Rome told him privately after the event that it indeed was one of the best Tour Stops they'd ever done.

In his post Tour Stop press conference, Rome repeated his assessment of the Madison event.

"The first question I usually get is how was it," Rome said. "How'd it measure up? Is it what you expected? Like I said on stage, this was number twenty-nine. Since 1995, we've been to California, Texas, Ohio, Florida, all around the nation. Madison, I have to think about it on the plane back, but it's one of the top five, even better than that.

"It was a great, great day. It was great. The fans were great. I was feeling it. I thought top to bottom, the guests were as good as we've ever had at a Tour Stop. I was really moved by the Green Bay Packers coming up at the end, to see everybody love the Packers and how much love they gave Fuzzy and Jerry Kramer. It was a great day. I'm thrilled with how Madison went and I could absolutely see coming back here, but as it stands, Tour Stop twenty-nine was excellent, excellent."

Even though the Tour Stop was over, Rome treated the room full of local media to one last take. He had those cynical journalists practically rolling on the floor in laughter, when he asked why he didn't mention bowling, Wisconsin's unofficial, official sport.

"I didn't go out of my way not to mention bowling," Rome said. "I didn't think to myself, 'oh, no, we're not going to mention bowling at the Tour Stop.' If you're asking me where I come out, for some reason, you don't know where I come out on bowling, anything you get better as as you get blasted is not a sport. Anything you can do with a long neck in one hand and a non-filter in the other hand is not a sport.

"Because you have one of those fancy wrist things, do not make you an athlete, because you don't own shoes, that doesn't either. And for the last time, a memo to bowlers all over the world: just because you're good at it doesn't make it a sport.

"Everybody I know thinks that's funny except Joe Bowler who bowls twice a week in a league and he's always the first guy to get up in my grille and say, 'yeah, well, I've got a one-seventy-five average.' That's nothing to be proud of. That means you're spending too much time in a bowling alley.

"Just because you're good at it doesn't mean it is a sport. If you're one of the fellas and want to blow off a little steam in the bowling alley and have a few pops, I get that, that's fine, but being good at it is nothing to be proud of."