October 8, 2025 • 19 mins
Mo starts the show by discussing the latest news regarding Tony Pike.
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Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.
Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.
Listen Live: ESPN1530.com/listen
Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger
Follow on X: @MoEgger
Instagram too: @MoEgger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up, Hi, It's five minutes, five minutes after three o'clock.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Thank you for listening, Hope for having a delightful Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
God we are here. Let's see really quick.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Joe Flacco's not going to talk today, which is a
bummer because I'd love to hear from him. I guess
instead he's gonna talk on Friday, so we don't have
a three point fifteen Bengals quarterback press conference for you. Obviously,
Joe Burrow's not going to talk today, and Jake Browning's
not going to talk today, and neither is Joe Flacco.
But I guess we're gonna hear from him on Friday,
(00:40):
and I know I can't wait. Yeah, you heard Zach
Taylor a little bit earlier. We'll spend a little bit
of time on that coming up here in just a bit.
I'm I'm gonna start the show though, by talking about
Tony Pike and uh and Taren. I'll just tell you now,
we're probably gonna hit the brake a little bit late,
and I know that's gonna make him at me. So
(01:02):
you heard Austin throughout the afternoon and by the way.
Just an absolute game and professional effort by Austin both
yesterday and today, because I know firsthand how not easy
that is when your on air partner has been taken
away and yesterday with very little notice, and then having
to do the show and you know this change has happened,
(01:22):
but you can't talk about it, and then you can
talk about it, and it's not easy to do. And
so Austin handled yesterday and today like a total pro,
which you knew he would. Tony put on social media
something that we found out about yesterday, which is he's
no longer employed here, and boy, you think about it.
Last week Tony commemorated eight years as one of the
(01:46):
hosts of Sincy three sixty and to celebrate that occasion,
iHeart let him go. So that's that's just boy. Congrats, buddy,
here's your walking papers. I cannot tell you how crushed
I am. And I've heard from a lot of folks.
I've neglected to get back to most, but I am.
(02:09):
I'm crushed for what Tony's departure means for us. And
when I say for us, our show, Tony's show, the
staff here, he is beloved in this building, I'm crushed
for what it means for our audience, for you, because
this was a guy who was a success as an
(02:31):
on air host and terrific at what he did. And
I know what it's like when you're listening to somebody
every day and suddenly they're.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Gone, like it. It sucks.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
One of the worst things that this industry does. This
is not just about where I work. One of the
worst things we do is we just take people the
way and poof, they're gone. And there is reasons for that,
I guess, but it's always so unfair to the audience.
Here's this host that you listen to every single day,
and then they're not there anymore. It's just and I'm
(03:05):
crushed for Tony for all the obvious reasons, because he's awesome.
And when I say awesome, I mean in every professional
and personal sense. So indulge me here for just a
few minutes. I promise you we'll talk more about Joe Flacco.
(03:25):
I've been an admirer of Tony since he was a
player at UC and yeah, yeah, because of the fact
that he was UC's quarterback when they finally achieved national prominence.
That was great, but above and beyond that he was
an awesome story, waited for years to get his shot,
had setbacks, had setbacks that I'm sure he would tell
you were self inflicted. But when he finally got the chance,
(03:47):
when he finally got the chance to be UC's quarterback,
Remember it happened because Dustin Grutze got hurt against Oklahoma,
Tony got his shot, and then the program took off
and they got to back to back BCS Bowls and
play in the sort of games that you never thought
UC football was going to play in. And that's awesome
on its own merit, but then you add to it,
like the quarterback is a local guy who had been
(04:09):
with the program forever. He was just an easy story
to root for, an easy guy to root for. I
sold in September of two thousand and nine. I sold
Pike for Heisman T shirts. And I had never actually
met Tony when I decided to sell Pike for Heisman
T shirts, but I had heard his family. I heard
that they thought that that was awesome. And then I
(04:30):
was told that those T shirts may make him ineligible,
and so then I was told his family suddenly didn't
think that my T shirts were all that awesome. But
he was just such a cool story as a player.
And then a few years after he was finished playing,
I remember there was a UC football broadcast and I
think this is like twooy thirteen or fourteen. I guess
(04:52):
I could look it up. There was a UC football
broadcast in Hartford, the most miserable stadium in the United
States of America by the way, Wrenschler Field. So it's like, cool, Tony,
You're joining us in Hartford. That'd be fun. And we
needed a sideline reporter and at the time, Tom Galander,
who's now obviously the voice of FC Cincinnati, was our
(05:13):
sideline reporter. And the way it would work back then,
I think Dan Horde had to miss a broadcast.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I think I have this right.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Dan had to miss a broadcast for whatever reason, and
so Tommy would do the play by play. And then
that left a hole on the sideline, and so we
had to find somebody to be the sideline reporter. And
the folks that you see suggested we use Tony Pike,
and so awesome, right, like we know who he is,
is he going to be any good? And so I'm
(05:39):
wondering is he going to be good on the sideline?
But like what's this guy gonna be like, right, big
shot quarterback?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is he a good dude? Is he fun to hang
out with?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Is he gonna like care enough to like prepare to
do the sideline work? And what I remember is we
go on this road trip and I reminded him that
I was the guy that had sold the pike for
Heisman teacher. I was also the guy that had referred
to Tony on the air after the Orange Bowl as
Tony Pick.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And I don't know if he knew these things.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
What I remember instantly thinking, though, is this guy is
awesome to hang out with. And like my filter is,
especially if you have achieved a level of fame or notoriety,
like can we make fun of you? You and I
both know there's a lot of folks who like they've
(06:28):
made it in sports. They're famous, they're stars, they're worshiped,
and you can't make fun of them. It's why the
SPS is the hardest gig in show business, because you're
making fun of people who are not used to being
made fun of, and so the host always bombs. Shane
Gillis did this year. What I remember being impressed by
when it came to Tony was we can needle this dude.
(06:49):
I remember, he's doing his game, he's getting set to
do his first game on the sideline, and this is
before he was on the air every day, and he's
standing on the sideline and I said something to him
along the lines of like, is this it's the same
view you had when you never played for Carolina or
something like that, and he laughed and he pushed back,
and he told jokes. And you and I both know
a lot of folks who have achieved Tony's success. They're
(07:12):
full of themselves and they take themselves too seriously and
you can't make fun of them. And Tony was the
exact opposite. And then the broadcast started. He had never
done games on the sideline before, and he was awesome,
like their's sideline reporter.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And there's a bunch of good ones.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Tommy G was a good one, Scott Springer before him
was a good one, but Tony was like a sideline analyst,
and with no training, having never done it before, it
was like, Okay, that guy's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And so ultimately he took that job over.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think in twenty fifteen, Tommy G left to go
start his own company and now obviously the voice of
FC Cincinnati, and so Tony became the full time sideline
reporter for UC football, and I mean it was abundantly clear, dude,
like he was a natural. It's not like there's a
sideline reporter's course you take. You just you go down there,
(08:06):
you see, you pass along what you're seeing, and you
either have it or you don't. And from moment number one,
he had it.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
And so.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That was pretty cool. Twenty fifteen. Now, I'm going to
backtrack just a bit here right around twenty eleven, and
some will take credit for this. I take credit for
very few things. But I had an idea in twenty eleven.
My idea was I wanted our Monday show to not
be a traditional talk show. I wanted a former NFL
player to be with me to get their perspective, maybe
(08:39):
for an hour, maybe for the entire show.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And so if you've listened to this radio station for.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
This long amount of time, it was Artrell Hawkins right
Mohawk Mondays. And it went from a thing we did.
I think we did three to four with each other
to eventually I conned him into doing three to six
and Artreill did that show with me. For a couple
of years, and then he went on to go do
other things Fox Sports Radio, and then we brought in
Rocky Boyman and I was asked, well, what about Rocky Boyman.
I had seen Rocky do some stuff on TV. I
(09:06):
didn't sign off, I didn't hire Rocky, but I'm like, yeah,
let's do it. And so for a couple of years
it was the Rock and Mo Football Show on Mondays,
and not that dissimilar from what would become the Tony
and Mo Football Show. We were not out at a
bar or anything, but Rocky and I would do a
show on Mondays and it was all about the Bengals
in the NFL. We did some college football and it
was terrific. And then Rocky moved on to go do
(09:29):
at the time, the night show on seven hundred WLW,
and so I needed someone on Mondays and I was
asked like, what do you think, and I said, well,
I'm going to be with Tony Pike this weekend. We
were going to go on a UC road trip. I
think to BYU, I said, let me just see if
he'll do it. And I remember I think we were
walking on the plane to fly to Provo and I
(09:50):
said like, what are you doing on Monday?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And nothing, I was.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I want you to, you know, do the Toni and
the Rock and Mo Football Show with me and do
that for a week.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And I remember he was on with me.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I have no recollection who the Bengals had played the
day before, but he's doing the show with me. We're
talking about the Bengals. And it instantly worked. Instantly, it
worked the best chemistry I've ever had with anyone on
the air. And it became like abundantly clear to me,
like this thing on Mondays with Tony needs to be
(10:25):
a thing, not just the rest of the year, but
like we got to make this an every year thing,
a recurring thing. Unfortunately, the folks we work for recognize
the same thing. And so there's Tony and I every
Monday starting in twenty fifteen, and it's my favorite show
to be a part of because I learned something and
he brings great preparation and insight and perspective, but more
(10:48):
than anything, he makes it fun. And like this is
supposed to be fun, Like this job is supposed to
be fun. Sports are supposed to be fun. And I
had no interest And I would say this about Rocky
and our trail before him, but specifically, Tony had no
interest in, Hey, we're we're really gonna seriously talk about
(11:10):
these football games like I want your insight, I want
your analysis. But this is this is the toy department here.
The ethos of this show has always been sports are fun,
and Tony fit in in that regard almost instantly. So
then in twenty eighteen, you know, we had started Sincy
three sixty, right. I know, I'm telling a long story here,
(11:31):
You'll just have to put up with it. Twenty seventeen,
we started Sincy three sixty. James Rapine was hosting that
show at the time, and then he moved on and
went to go do some things, and you may have
noticed things have worked out well for him. But we
needed a host for Sincey three to sixty. And at
the time it was a one hour show, and Tony
was offered the shot to do the show pretty much
(11:53):
by himself, and he taught himself how to become an everyday,
full time host host and that's not easy to do.
And then the show became two hours, and then it
became three hours, and then Austin came aboard as the
producer and eventually co host right, and it's been awesome.
(12:17):
It's been awesome from my perspective having a local lead
in because for years I did this show and we
were the only local show, and you feel like you're
on an island and you don't feel like you're much
a part of a team. And what's happened over the
last few years is we've had three hours on before
us and it's felt like a real radio station where
there's like six hours of programming and the best part
(12:40):
of my day, the single best part of my day
for years now has been two forty five when I
get a chance to sit in with Tony and Austin
and just goof off and sometimes argue about stuff, but
just have fun together. It's the best. And not only
doing that, but like watching Tony specifically grow into the
(13:01):
role and watching that show become something, watching that show
become I think, a really important part of sports in
this town, a big part of this company, big part
of this radio station, and watching him evolve and grow
and watching him in Austin develop and on air chemistry together,
which I think has been awesome, has been just it's
(13:24):
been fun. It's been a blast, and the best part
has been with Tony, in particular being his teammate, and
he's an unbelievable teammate. And what I hate about this
is now he's not, and that sucks so hard. I
can't even begin to impress to express it. I've been
(13:50):
I've been in this business for a long time, man.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And I've I've watched I've watched a lot of.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
We're calling him restructures, restructures, reorganizations, reshuffling, I don't know,
and and they're they're never easy. They're never easy because
the people affected don't deserve it. And for the most part,
when they're told that their time is up, it's not
because of anything they did. And so you know, something
(14:20):
like this will happen, and Tony is told to leave,
and and folks will ask why, and and there's there's
no good reason. There's no good reason. And by the way,
Tony wasn't the only person here let go. Other people
left here yesterday, good people, people who make up the
foundation of a place like this, and people who make
(14:40):
this a fun place to come to work every day.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
People who understand the realities.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Of this industry, which you know aren't great, and they
still bring passion for what they do, man like that's
that's hard and it's rare, and Tony was one of them.
And yet he's not here anymore. And it's obviously not
because he performed poorly or did anything wrong or didn't
have a connection to his audience, or because he had
(15:07):
a poor relationship with advertisers or folks at the radio station.
Has nothing to do with any of that, nothing to
do with any of that. Somebody sees a number on
a spreadsheet, that number doesn't work, and so off they go,
and like, that's hard, right, Because on one hand, you know,
you could take comfort in knowing that nobody's questioning your performance,
(15:30):
nobody's doubting your talent. On the other hand, you feel
kind of helpless because at the end of the day,
it feels like it doesn't matter how good you are,
what you bring to the table, or how much you
mean to the radio station, or most importantly, how much
you mean to the audience. But I'll go ahead and
say it, Tony is amazing, and he's meant a lot
(15:52):
to a lot of people here. He's meant a lot
to this place. And our stations, and our station in
particular this one, are not as good today as they
were on Monday, and coming to work today and not
seeing him in this studio makes today exponentially less fun
(16:17):
than it's been for a very long time. I have
absolutely no doubt that Tony is going to be okay.
I don't think there's any limit to what he could
do in broadcasting if he chooses to. If you have
listened to even a few minutes of the last two
UC football games where he has slid in nicely in
(16:38):
the analyst chair spelling Jim Kelly, you've heard somebody who
could do that at the highest level. I'm not the
only person to say that, by the way, all right,
you have heard an analyst who I thought to myself
on Saturday when he was calling with Dan Horde the
(16:59):
UCI was game like, we're only going to have him
for a fall a short while, because he's gonna go
do this for for someone, someone higher profile, someone nationally,
and if if that's what he wants to do, he'll
get that chance. And if he wants to find platforms
that will allow him to keep doing what he was
doing every day here, then he'll find them and he'll
(17:19):
be a success.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Very quickly, A word about Austin so that's been his
show for a number of years now, and I have
no doubt in my mind that he will take that
show and do awesome things with it. Watching Austin, you know,
I have a little bit of a kinship with Austin
because we've we've both kind of done it the traditional way,
(17:44):
but the hard way. Right We start, you know, looking
for an entry level gig at the radio station, and
we kind of try to work our way up and
watching him evolve on the air has been so much fun.
And it's gonna be really hard for me to imagine
the show before us without the two of them. But
(18:05):
as far as I know, that show is Austin's vehicle,
and I am really excited to see and hear what
he does with it. And I hope that if you
loved Tony and Austin together, then you'll at the very
least give Austin a chance flying solo, because he has
earned it, and because I know he's going to take
(18:28):
advantage of it, and I'm excited to.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
See what he does.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Tony Pike put this announcement out there on social media
that he has left the company a little bit before
noon today. I know he would love it if you
reached out to him, many of you already have. Obviously
you should follow his next steps. I am excited to
see what he does next. I'm grateful that I can
still call him a friend. I am heartbroken that I
(18:56):
can no longer, at least for now, call him a colleague.
And I wish nothing more than then to today. I
would have walked in this studio and he'd be sitting here,
and it's going to take some time for me to
get used to that not being the case. So I
(19:18):
don't know if Tony's listening. If I was him, I
wouldn't be listening to this. But if you are, I
can't tell you how much you're missed and how much
you've meant and how much we love you. It is
twenty four minutes after three o'clock. Now, let's talk sports
on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station
What's up, Hi, It's five minutes, five minutes after three o'clock.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Thank you for listening, Hope for having a delightful Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
God we are here. Let's see really quick.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Joe Flacco's not going to talk today, which is a
bummer because I'd love to hear from him. I guess
instead he's gonna talk on Friday, so we don't have
a three point fifteen Bengals quarterback press conference for you. Obviously,
Joe Burrow's not going to talk today, and Jake Browning's
not going to talk today, and neither is Joe Flacco.
But I guess we're gonna hear from him on Friday,
(00:40):
and I know I can't wait. Yeah, you heard Zach
Taylor a little bit earlier. We'll spend a little bit
of time on that coming up here in just a bit.
I'm I'm gonna start the show though, by talking about
Tony Pike and uh and Taren. I'll just tell you now,
we're probably gonna hit the brake a little bit late,
and I know that's gonna make him at me. So
(01:02):
you heard Austin throughout the afternoon and by the way.
Just an absolute game and professional effort by Austin both
yesterday and today, because I know firsthand how not easy
that is when your on air partner has been taken
away and yesterday with very little notice, and then having
to do the show and you know this change has happened,
(01:22):
but you can't talk about it, and then you can
talk about it, and it's not easy to do. And
so Austin handled yesterday and today like a total pro,
which you knew he would. Tony put on social media
something that we found out about yesterday, which is he's
no longer employed here, and boy, you think about it.
Last week Tony commemorated eight years as one of the
(01:46):
hosts of Sincy three sixty and to celebrate that occasion,
iHeart let him go. So that's that's just boy. Congrats, buddy,
here's your walking papers. I cannot tell you how crushed
I am. And I've heard from a lot of folks.
I've neglected to get back to most, but I am.
(02:09):
I'm crushed for what Tony's departure means for us. And
when I say for us, our show, Tony's show, the
staff here, he is beloved in this building, I'm crushed
for what it means for our audience, for you, because
this was a guy who was a success as an
(02:31):
on air host and terrific at what he did. And
I know what it's like when you're listening to somebody
every day and suddenly they're.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Gone, like it. It sucks.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
One of the worst things that this industry does. This
is not just about where I work. One of the
worst things we do is we just take people the
way and poof, they're gone. And there is reasons for that,
I guess, but it's always so unfair to the audience.
Here's this host that you listen to every single day,
and then they're not there anymore. It's just and I'm
(03:05):
crushed for Tony for all the obvious reasons, because he's awesome.
And when I say awesome, I mean in every professional
and personal sense. So indulge me here for just a
few minutes. I promise you we'll talk more about Joe Flacco.
(03:25):
I've been an admirer of Tony since he was a
player at UC and yeah, yeah, because of the fact
that he was UC's quarterback when they finally achieved national prominence.
That was great, but above and beyond that he was
an awesome story, waited for years to get his shot,
had setbacks, had setbacks that I'm sure he would tell
you were self inflicted. But when he finally got the chance,
(03:47):
when he finally got the chance to be UC's quarterback,
Remember it happened because Dustin Grutze got hurt against Oklahoma,
Tony got his shot, and then the program took off
and they got to back to back BCS Bowls and
play in the sort of games that you never thought
UC football was going to play in. And that's awesome
on its own merit, but then you add to it,
like the quarterback is a local guy who had been
(04:09):
with the program forever. He was just an easy story
to root for, an easy guy to root for. I
sold in September of two thousand and nine. I sold
Pike for Heisman T shirts. And I had never actually
met Tony when I decided to sell Pike for Heisman
T shirts, but I had heard his family. I heard
that they thought that that was awesome. And then I
(04:30):
was told that those T shirts may make him ineligible,
and so then I was told his family suddenly didn't
think that my T shirts were all that awesome. But
he was just such a cool story as a player.
And then a few years after he was finished playing,
I remember there was a UC football broadcast and I
think this is like twooy thirteen or fourteen. I guess
(04:52):
I could look it up. There was a UC football
broadcast in Hartford, the most miserable stadium in the United
States of America by the way, Wrenschler Field. So it's like, cool, Tony,
You're joining us in Hartford. That'd be fun. And we
needed a sideline reporter and at the time, Tom Galander,
who's now obviously the voice of FC Cincinnati, was our
(05:13):
sideline reporter. And the way it would work back then,
I think Dan Horde had to miss a broadcast.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I think I have this right.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Dan had to miss a broadcast for whatever reason, and
so Tommy would do the play by play. And then
that left a hole on the sideline, and so we
had to find somebody to be the sideline reporter. And
the folks that you see suggested we use Tony Pike,
and so awesome, right, like we know who he is,
is he going to be any good? And so I'm
(05:39):
wondering is he going to be good on the sideline?
But like what's this guy gonna be like, right, big
shot quarterback?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is he a good dude? Is he fun to hang
out with?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Is he gonna like care enough to like prepare to
do the sideline work? And what I remember is we
go on this road trip and I reminded him that
I was the guy that had sold the pike for
Heisman teacher. I was also the guy that had referred
to Tony on the air after the Orange Bowl as
Tony Pick.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And I don't know if he knew these things.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
What I remember instantly thinking, though, is this guy is
awesome to hang out with. And like my filter is,
especially if you have achieved a level of fame or notoriety,
like can we make fun of you? You and I
both know there's a lot of folks who like they've
(06:28):
made it in sports. They're famous, they're stars, they're worshiped,
and you can't make fun of them. It's why the
SPS is the hardest gig in show business, because you're
making fun of people who are not used to being
made fun of, and so the host always bombs. Shane
Gillis did this year. What I remember being impressed by
when it came to Tony was we can needle this dude.
(06:49):
I remember, he's doing his game, he's getting set to
do his first game on the sideline, and this is
before he was on the air every day, and he's
standing on the sideline and I said something to him
along the lines of like, is this it's the same
view you had when you never played for Carolina or
something like that, and he laughed and he pushed back,
and he told jokes. And you and I both know
a lot of folks who have achieved Tony's success. They're
(07:12):
full of themselves and they take themselves too seriously and
you can't make fun of them. And Tony was the
exact opposite. And then the broadcast started. He had never
done games on the sideline before, and he was awesome,
like their's sideline reporter.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And there's a bunch of good ones.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Tommy G was a good one, Scott Springer before him
was a good one, but Tony was like a sideline analyst,
and with no training, having never done it before, it
was like, Okay, that guy's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And so ultimately he took that job over.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think in twenty fifteen, Tommy G left to go
start his own company and now obviously the voice of
FC Cincinnati, and so Tony became the full time sideline
reporter for UC football, and I mean it was abundantly clear, dude,
like he was a natural. It's not like there's a
sideline reporter's course you take. You just you go down there,
(08:06):
you see, you pass along what you're seeing, and you
either have it or you don't. And from moment number one,
he had it.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
And so.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That was pretty cool. Twenty fifteen. Now, I'm going to
backtrack just a bit here right around twenty eleven, and
some will take credit for this. I take credit for
very few things. But I had an idea in twenty eleven.
My idea was I wanted our Monday show to not
be a traditional talk show. I wanted a former NFL
player to be with me to get their perspective, maybe
(08:39):
for an hour, maybe for the entire show.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And so if you've listened to this radio station for.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
This long amount of time, it was Artrell Hawkins right
Mohawk Mondays. And it went from a thing we did.
I think we did three to four with each other
to eventually I conned him into doing three to six
and Artreill did that show with me. For a couple
of years, and then he went on to go do
other things Fox Sports Radio, and then we brought in
Rocky Boyman and I was asked, well, what about Rocky Boyman.
I had seen Rocky do some stuff on TV. I
(09:06):
didn't sign off, I didn't hire Rocky, but I'm like, yeah,
let's do it. And so for a couple of years
it was the Rock and Mo Football Show on Mondays,
and not that dissimilar from what would become the Tony
and Mo Football Show. We were not out at a
bar or anything, but Rocky and I would do a
show on Mondays and it was all about the Bengals
in the NFL. We did some college football and it
was terrific. And then Rocky moved on to go do
(09:29):
at the time, the night show on seven hundred WLW,
and so I needed someone on Mondays and I was
asked like, what do you think, and I said, well,
I'm going to be with Tony Pike this weekend. We
were going to go on a UC road trip. I
think to BYU, I said, let me just see if
he'll do it. And I remember I think we were
walking on the plane to fly to Provo and I
(09:50):
said like, what are you doing on Monday?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And nothing, I was.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I want you to, you know, do the Toni and
the Rock and Mo Football Show with me and do
that for a week.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And I remember he was on with me.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I have no recollection who the Bengals had played the
day before, but he's doing the show with me. We're
talking about the Bengals. And it instantly worked. Instantly, it
worked the best chemistry I've ever had with anyone on
the air. And it became like abundantly clear to me,
like this thing on Mondays with Tony needs to be
(10:25):
a thing, not just the rest of the year, but
like we got to make this an every year thing,
a recurring thing. Unfortunately, the folks we work for recognize
the same thing. And so there's Tony and I every
Monday starting in twenty fifteen, and it's my favorite show
to be a part of because I learned something and
he brings great preparation and insight and perspective, but more
(10:48):
than anything, he makes it fun. And like this is
supposed to be fun, Like this job is supposed to
be fun. Sports are supposed to be fun. And I
had no interest And I would say this about Rocky
and our trail before him, but specifically, Tony had no
interest in, Hey, we're we're really gonna seriously talk about
(11:10):
these football games like I want your insight, I want
your analysis. But this is this is the toy department here.
The ethos of this show has always been sports are fun,
and Tony fit in in that regard almost instantly. So
then in twenty eighteen, you know, we had started Sincy
three sixty, right. I know, I'm telling a long story here,
(11:31):
You'll just have to put up with it. Twenty seventeen,
we started Sincy three sixty. James Rapine was hosting that
show at the time, and then he moved on and
went to go do some things, and you may have
noticed things have worked out well for him. But we
needed a host for Sincey three to sixty. And at
the time it was a one hour show, and Tony
was offered the shot to do the show pretty much
(11:53):
by himself, and he taught himself how to become an everyday,
full time host host and that's not easy to do.
And then the show became two hours, and then it
became three hours, and then Austin came aboard as the
producer and eventually co host right, and it's been awesome.
(12:17):
It's been awesome from my perspective having a local lead
in because for years I did this show and we
were the only local show, and you feel like you're
on an island and you don't feel like you're much
a part of a team. And what's happened over the
last few years is we've had three hours on before
us and it's felt like a real radio station where
there's like six hours of programming and the best part
(12:40):
of my day, the single best part of my day
for years now has been two forty five when I
get a chance to sit in with Tony and Austin
and just goof off and sometimes argue about stuff, but
just have fun together. It's the best. And not only
doing that, but like watching Tony specifically grow into the
(13:01):
role and watching that show become something, watching that show
become I think, a really important part of sports in
this town, a big part of this company, big part
of this radio station, and watching him evolve and grow
and watching him in Austin develop and on air chemistry together,
which I think has been awesome, has been just it's
(13:24):
been fun. It's been a blast, and the best part
has been with Tony, in particular being his teammate, and
he's an unbelievable teammate. And what I hate about this
is now he's not, and that sucks so hard. I
can't even begin to impress to express it. I've been
(13:50):
I've been in this business for a long time, man.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And I've I've watched I've watched a lot of.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
We're calling him restructures, restructures, reorganizations, reshuffling, I don't know,
and and they're they're never easy. They're never easy because
the people affected don't deserve it. And for the most part,
when they're told that their time is up, it's not
because of anything they did. And so you know, something
(14:20):
like this will happen, and Tony is told to leave,
and and folks will ask why, and and there's there's
no good reason. There's no good reason. And by the way,
Tony wasn't the only person here let go. Other people
left here yesterday, good people, people who make up the
foundation of a place like this, and people who make
(14:40):
this a fun place to come to work every day.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
People who understand the realities.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Of this industry, which you know aren't great, and they
still bring passion for what they do, man like that's
that's hard and it's rare, and Tony was one of them.
And yet he's not here anymore. And it's obviously not
because he performed poorly or did anything wrong or didn't
have a connection to his audience, or because he had
(15:07):
a poor relationship with advertisers or folks at the radio station.
Has nothing to do with any of that, nothing to
do with any of that. Somebody sees a number on
a spreadsheet, that number doesn't work, and so off they go,
and like, that's hard, right, Because on one hand, you know,
you could take comfort in knowing that nobody's questioning your performance,
(15:30):
nobody's doubting your talent. On the other hand, you feel
kind of helpless because at the end of the day,
it feels like it doesn't matter how good you are,
what you bring to the table, or how much you
mean to the radio station, or most importantly, how much
you mean to the audience. But I'll go ahead and
say it, Tony is amazing, and he's meant a lot
(15:52):
to a lot of people here. He's meant a lot
to this place. And our stations, and our station in
particular this one, are not as good today as they
were on Monday, and coming to work today and not
seeing him in this studio makes today exponentially less fun
(16:17):
than it's been for a very long time. I have
absolutely no doubt that Tony is going to be okay.
I don't think there's any limit to what he could
do in broadcasting if he chooses to. If you have
listened to even a few minutes of the last two
UC football games where he has slid in nicely in
(16:38):
the analyst chair spelling Jim Kelly, you've heard somebody who
could do that at the highest level. I'm not the
only person to say that, by the way, all right,
you have heard an analyst who I thought to myself
on Saturday when he was calling with Dan Horde the
(16:59):
UCI was game like, we're only going to have him
for a fall a short while, because he's gonna go
do this for for someone, someone higher profile, someone nationally,
and if if that's what he wants to do, he'll
get that chance. And if he wants to find platforms
that will allow him to keep doing what he was
doing every day here, then he'll find them and he'll
(17:19):
be a success.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Very quickly, A word about Austin so that's been his
show for a number of years now, and I have
no doubt in my mind that he will take that
show and do awesome things with it. Watching Austin, you know,
I have a little bit of a kinship with Austin
because we've we've both kind of done it the traditional way,
(17:44):
but the hard way. Right We start, you know, looking
for an entry level gig at the radio station, and
we kind of try to work our way up and
watching him evolve on the air has been so much fun.
And it's gonna be really hard for me to imagine
the show before us without the two of them. But
(18:05):
as far as I know, that show is Austin's vehicle,
and I am really excited to see and hear what
he does with it. And I hope that if you
loved Tony and Austin together, then you'll at the very
least give Austin a chance flying solo, because he has
earned it, and because I know he's going to take
(18:28):
advantage of it, and I'm excited to.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
See what he does.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Tony Pike put this announcement out there on social media
that he has left the company a little bit before
noon today. I know he would love it if you
reached out to him, many of you already have. Obviously
you should follow his next steps. I am excited to
see what he does next. I'm grateful that I can
still call him a friend. I am heartbroken that I
(18:56):
can no longer, at least for now, call him a colleague.
And I wish nothing more than then to today. I
would have walked in this studio and he'd be sitting here,
and it's going to take some time for me to
get used to that not being the case. So I
(19:18):
don't know if Tony's listening. If I was him, I
wouldn't be listening to this. But if you are, I
can't tell you how much you're missed and how much
you've meant and how much we love you. It is
twenty four minutes after three o'clock. Now, let's talk sports
on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station
Mo Egger News
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