OK folks,
It’s finally time – without further ado, the top three from the 2019 TOA Podcast Awards. Or should it be the 2018 awards?
I'm never sure.
Let's just go.
Third Place – 'GM Street' (The Ringer NFL Show)
This two-man show lives within The Ringer NFL Show, a podcast feed that rotates three or four helmet football programs. 'GM Street', the program featuring longtime NFL executive Michael Lombardi alongside host Tate Frazier, is the one I look forward to all week. Lombardi powers the show with his frank, clear, and occasionally zany analysis while Frazier keeps the show on track by steering Lombardi’s football mind (and rambling analogies) to the big topics at hand during the week.
As I find is the case with most of the podcast personalities I gravitate to, Lombardi has a knack for telling the truth in clear, concise, and entertaining language. Who could ever forget his declaration years ago that Arizona was never ‘the land of the free or the home of the brave, at least in terms of winning’? Not me. We need more people like him (though perhaps in other fields) who take it personally when the public starts believing the bullshit peddled by coaches, players, and the media.
Perhaps the best testament to this show is how quickly I went out to get Lombardi’s book, Gridiron Genius, when it was released this fall. The book was a delight, written in the same voice I’ve come to enjoy on this podcast, and I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in helmet football, building organizations, or cultivating leadership.
Second Place – More Or Less
This BBC show cracks open the numbers presented by the media and digs into the underlying calculations to determine if we, the math(s)-phobic public, are being misled or outright lied to. As I noted above regarding Lombardi, More Or Less takes it personally when a media outlet deceives the public and I’ve always appreciated their simple approach to understanding the facts and figures of modern life.
One thing I realized this year about More Or Less is that its consistent omission from the annual ‘best podcast’ lists is all the proof I need of foreign bias in American media. It seems like all anyone does around here is complain about fake news and yet this show that’s been sniffing it out for years goes completely ignored when we talk about the best pods. An omission isn’t the end of the world, of course, but when the shows we end up with atop the best-of lists are all basically two or three years old and have shown no evidence of being able to serve their loyal listeners with the same decades-plus consistency of More Or Less...
But ANYWAY, I guess it’s either US-bias, or perhaps these ‘best-of’ lists reward new shows solely for being new. I can take solace knowing no one is ever going to accuse TOA of rewarding something just for being new… I hope.
2018 TOA Podcast of the Year – The Football Ramble
Yes, right on cue, longtime readers can safely go do something else before I commence with my annual love-fest for this show…
One thing I realized about the show this year is that its lack of popularity in the US – reader, I haven’t managed to get even one soccer-watching friend to listen to this show in five years – reveals the massive difference between watching the sport here and watching the sport in Europe (or at least, England). I suspect the tough part for my fellow Americans is relating to folks who openly love the game at all times. This is a big challenge in the states because there is always someone out there, usually clutching a PIGSKIN, who seems content doing a weekly Christopher Columbus impression as he or she (but almost always he) credits himself with discovering long-existing facts about something a continent away – sometimes guys flop, sometimes the score is 0-0, sometimes the games are slow, and so on.
I think being surrounded by all this negativity makes it difficult to relate to a show where four guys turn on the mikes twice a week and have themselves a fantastic time – episodes often contain important moments like singing and chanting about a recent England draw, dissecting the ridiculous team names in Scotland’s national cup tournament, or reading out puns teams where everyone’s name is altered slightly to make a reference to something ridiculous (like an egg). American soccer fans are trained to be defensive about their sport of choice and the sheer enthusiasm on display during episodes of The Football Ramble probably does feel foreign to those who try listening to this show. It’s a shame, I think, because to me the best parts of soccer go much deeper than the games from the top club leagues or the quadrennial drama from the World Cup – it’s the stories that spring up from the grassroots all around the world that make the sport and these guys have a knack for digging up all the joy and absurdity that comes with those stories.
Or maybe people move on from this show because they don't understand the accents… who knows?
In any event, congratulations to The Football Ramble for topping the list and taking home its most useless prize yet, The TOA Podcast of the Year Award. Keep up the good work!
