Yesterday I was fortunate enough to sit down with one of my favorite ESPN personalities, Colin Cowherd from ESPN Radio’s ‘The Herd’ and ESPN 2’s ‘SportsNation.’ Cowherd is in Los Angeles for this weekend’s NBA All-Star festivities, and was gracious enough to take a seat and talk a little sports.
As many of you know, with Lakers Nation our goal is give the fans an in-depth look at the Lakers and the NBA through the eyes of writers who were also fans, and who grew up rooting for the Lakers. This is very similar to the goal of the hit show SportsNation, which polls fans on the biggest topics of the day and allows them to interact with the show’s hosts through social media and various mediums.
“The basic premise was to be more fan-relatable, and it works. It’s still us (Cowherd and co-host, Michelle Beadle) giving a lot of opinions, but I’m surprised by what the nation surrenders as an answer.”
The show has been wildly popular, and has grown in popularity seemingly exponentially since it began back in July of 2009. However, Cowherd knows that when topics of discussion are driven by fans there is always a tendency to get bizarre and often angry responses.
“Fans tend to be reactionary. They’re either too critical of their team or too willing to praise their team. My job is to sort of stay in the middle, be reasonable, have some perspective, and if you come in as a homer I’m going to slow you down and if you come in too critical I’m going to lift you up.”
Laker fans should know exactly what Cowherd is talking about with this comment, especially after the recent struggles the team has experienced.
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