I've told this story before so I apologize for repeating it but it seems so apt here. Tanguay and Dickerson got there start on local radio in Worcester in the mid '90s on a station that was eventually bought out by 'EEI. I was living in Worcester at the time and would listen to them occasionally. It has to have been the worst sports talk radio ever conceived and produced. Neither of them ever said an interesting thing in their entire tenure. Tanguay had the same Ted Baxter intonations he has now, and let me tell you, listening to him employ them to discuss the issues emerging from the latest Uxbridge-Oxford football clash of titans was sheer torture. Dickerson was no better. They were both colossally stupid. And they would go on and on, because for long stretches of time no one would call the station and they had to fill the air time with their inane banter.
Eventually Tanguay made it to Boston, sponsored I believe by Bob Lobell, who would throw him a bone every once in a while in the form of a turn on the weekend 5-minute sportscast. Out of such small beginnings did Tanguay build his inexplicable rise within the sports broadcasting firmament here. It does however seem as though his career is flaming out, as has happened to Butch Stearns, for example. The only thing that keeps him going is the tiny little incestuous club that is the Boston sports media scene, whose members seem always to look out for their own and can distribute a few crumbs to the likes of him and Butchy. Why Dickerson has yet to suffer the same fate is a mystery. We can all sympathize with his struggle to overcome the many ailments he has, but they have nothing to do with his abilities as a broadcaster, which are close to nonexistent. I was listening to him on the radio this morning talking about the NFL and suddenly cracked the code of what had been bothering me for so long about him: he believes he has something interesting to say and that people want to hear his opinion. He doesn't and they don't. His sole purpose should be to ask the others in the studio with him a question and then to shut up and get out of the way. Instead he waxes on to no purpose for incredible lengths of time, uttering banalities that haven't changed since his days in Worcester.
Gary and Greg, hands down the winners in this category.