I found it so ironic that this story leaked earlier in the week, the same day WWL's Seth Dunlap was having a fit that the Bengals weren't cutting Joe Mixon over his legal troubles. His take was he was getting preferential treatment, i.e., only in football does a guy who beat up a woman get to keep his job. I wanted to call in and say, No, one of the country's top radio stations giving one of the choice jobs in the broadcast business to a guy who's never spent a day in his life in the business, basically because he's a nice guy and gave a great retirement speech? That's preferential treatment.

Radio play by play is a completely different animal from TV analyst.

You're thinking in terms of audience size. Romo's job is much smaller. I've done both. Analyst is cake compared to play by play. And radio is tougher than TV because you have to paint a picture for the audience with your words. The best TV play by play guys know when to shut up. You can't ever shut up in radio.

The broadcast business was a far different animal when Summeral came in. He also started as an analyst and graduated to play-by-play.

I think you're right; Strief will have growing pains, but he'll get better and probably do very well,eventually. I was just pointing out the irony of his future colleague's statement. Favoritism is rampant in the broadcast industry. T-Bob Hebert is another example. Nobody in this day and age walks out of college and into a job in a market the size of New Orleans. I applied for a job at WWL-TV when I had been out a little over a year (mid 80's), and it was Jim Henderson himself who politely told me I needed more experience before I should even think of trying to break in to the New Orleans market. Maybe I should have changed my name to Hebert.