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Appreciating Redskins Radio’s Sonny Jurgensen and Sam Huff
By Jamie Mottram | August 24, 2007
The Redskins broadcast team of Sonny, Sam and Frank* is all I knew growing up as we’d listen to them on the radio and mute the game on TV. For Skins fans, they were just that good and biased, while the network TV guys were just that bad and impartial.
To this day, I still wonder why Fox and CBS don’t utilize team-specific duos across the league. That way, fans could hear guys familiar with their team call their team’s games, rather than suffering through more Sundays with the likes of Bill Maas saying things like, “Sean Taylor is the best tackling safety in the NFL.”
This comes to mind because Mike Wise totally redeems himself** with today’s Washington Post column about the longtime broadcast duo, and it includes a terrific story about the then 71 year-old Huff taking a swing at a drunk Bears fan two years ago. Wise’s accurate portrayal of Sonny and Sam as Grumpy Old Men is spot-on, and conjures up an anecdote of my own.
It may have been the 2000 season, I’m not sure, when the Skins were playing the Panthers and Carolina’s offense took the field. The following exchange (from memory, so it may not be 100% accurate) took place:
Sonny: The Panthers come out with Biakabutuka in the backfield and Muhammad split out on the far side …
Sam: Who’s on the near side, Kimosabi?
Ah, yes. I thought someone had let my Grandma into the booth for a minute there. Long live Sonny and Sam and the political incorrectness of old people!
* Frank Herzog was replaced by Larry Michael a few years ago. Michael is good, but I still miss Frank.
** I kind of put Wise on watch earlier this month. As I said then, I generally enjoy his work, as long as he’s not trying to write about blogs.
Update: After the jump, the brains behind DC-based Awful Announcing weighs in on Sonny and Sam …
“They’re terrible…..they don’t know any players and can barely see the field anymore. But they are hilarious. They fall into the AA “free pass” category. When anyone has been calling games that long they get a pass as long as they aren’t being racist.
I did the same as you when I was a kid with the radio. They are almost like our Harry Caray…..just ridiculous but the games wouldn’t be the same without them.”
Topics: Media Bird Doggin', Redskins | 5 Comments »
August 24th, 2007 at 11:41 AM
No Comment
August 24th, 2007 at 12:00 PM
I always figured they were as drunk as Riggo, so it made it enjoyable for me to anticipate their craziness.
As for the national thing, it would be hard for the networks to explain away the obvious homerism local tandems would bring. Gus Johnson is already bad enough.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:09 PM
SVP Style, what I’m proposing is that there are 32 TV broadcast duos or trios for NFL games, one for each team, because I can deal with homerism (and actually kind of like it) so long as it comes with familiarity with my team.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:23 PM
Man, I miss Frank too. We don’t get the Sonny and Sam broadcast where I live, so it’s either Bill Maas (and that little weasel dude he pushes around — Sam Rosen, I think) making endless jokes about Rock Cartwright’s name, or else a gloomy silence for me. I usually go for the latter.
October 23rd, 2011 at 12:20 PM
Anyone know how to get the radio broadcast of Sonny and Sam on an iPhone ? They are great and should be an institution. I miss Frank also !