The Kirk & Callahan show is motoring on, finishing up its sixth ratings book this past winter. It was a different winter than the last -- rotating co-hosts have come and gone, but laugh out loud show moments were always present.
For the first time since doing these lists, there was no unanimous, no-brainer number one moment, which leaves the list up to much interpretation. Any of the top five could conceivably be the top K&C moment of the winter book.
So have at it. Let the debate rage on. Here's the top K&C moments from the winter book.
No. 10 - Bracket of the Brainless
The very best of Chris Curtis and Mike Mutnansky isolated in a bracket-style elimination tournament.
The cafeteria, Lou, is open. Pleasure to be here with you Richard, thank you for having me. We’re talking PA-TRIOTS!
lev-er-age noun: the power to influence a person or situation to achieve a particular outcome
Seems simple, but apparently not to Mut, who had no idea how to define leverage when discussing his role at the station in the wake of longtime afternoon host Michael Holley moving on to NBC Sports Boston in a fulltime capacity.
Mut felt he deserved a raise but couldn’t exactly explain why when pressed by Gerry and Kirk.
Minihane: Were you raised by human beings? What were you taught about negotiations? You have to get going here.
Mut finally admitted he would do mornings full-time with no raise. Solid negotiating tactics from the Mut Man.
Former WEEI morning host John Dennis joined Minihane and Mutnansky for the first time on the air in over a year in a highly anticipated moment that left much to be desired. There is no love lost between Dennis and Minihane, after the two co-hosts feuded for much of the remainder of Dennis's tenure at EEI.
But that didn't translate to the crossover, where Dino and Kirk were more than civil discussing their past and Dennis's life away from the airwaves. The conversation was just over 20 minutes where neither really even raised their voice. Maybe Dino found peace in Sarasota, Florida.
We're still awaiting Dino's appearance on Enough About Me. Whether or not he'll hop aboard remains to be seen.
No. 7 - War Correspondent 'Trenni'
We haven't heard much from Trenni Kusnierek this winter. Her NBC Sports Boston duties sent her to Pyeongchang, South Korea during the Winter Olympics and migraines have kept her away from the Casting Couch. With gun shots going off in the background, Trenni was nice enough to give the guys an update on her trip from the Demilitarized Zone.
"Things are about to take a dark turn here," 'she' reported. "You can smell the anger from all over. What's that? I hear gun fire. It's a pretty scary time right now. I just want to leave one message to the love of my life Gary Tanguay: I'll give birth before I get killed. I'm going to make sure the baby gets in your hands!"
The best part of the whole segment was after the report, when Callahan was losing his mind thinking Laird didn't play gun fire in the background because of the remote broadcast in Fort Myers. No, Ken was not asleep at the wheel.
No. 6 - Glenn Ordway: Football Guy
There is no doubting that Glenn Ordway knows his pigskin. He and Fred Smerlas have been diagnosing Xs and Os since the mid-1980s and have seen thousands of games, pouring through hours and hours of film.
“This defense is gon’ be real good,” Ordway said of the Jaguars’ defense ahead of the AFC Championship Game. “This is gon’ be real different from them now.”
Days before Super Bowl LII, Tom Brady gave one of his 50 press conferences that week in which he told an old story about a time he was bit by a dog during practice. Globe reporter Nora Princiotti was the lone scribe to tweet out the tidbit, writing “Tom Brady has a scar on his quad from being bitten by a dog after practice. Some military members were using Patriots practice facilities and Brady happened to raise his arms above his head which cued one of their dogs to go at him. The handler grabbed the dog but it still got his leg.”
The tweet made it sound like the incident had happened the day she reported it, and after it went viral, she clarified to say it was an old story Brady was sharing. But that was at 6:34 – 28 minutes after Mut’s trending on Mut at Night.
Journalism 101: always double check information from your sources. In this instance, longtime Boston Herald columnist Ron Borges did not. In fact, he didn't even make sure he was speaking to the right person.
Borges’s column has been suspended since the story ran on February 9.
No. 2 - Kirk & Curtis Show feat. Producer Mut
“We’ve always said he’s the associate producer of the show,” Laird said. “Now he really is.”
Kirk and Ken were quick to kick Mut to the curb in favor of Curtis, who was forced to fetch waters for the guys while being compared to a mini-Jet Striar.
“I could see Mut getting a fill-in shot eventually,” Minihane said.
No, it was not Kirk Minihane, Gerry Callahan nor Chris Curtis who pushed John Dennis over the edge during his vacation visit to WEEI. Instead, it was John Tomase, the champion of the 2017 NCAA-Hole Bracket, who forced Dino to grab his scarf and head for the hills.
To say the two don’t see eye-to-eye politically is an understatement. Tomase, a staunch liberal, went back-and-forth with Dennis, a conservative, on Trump and politics all morning before Dino had enough of Tomase talking over him and pulled a Gary Tanguay.
“I’m done with this,” he said while throwing on his coat and scarf. “They told me you were an a**hole, I didn’t believe them.”
Dino surprisingly came back and finished out the week, doing a pair of shows with Jerry Thornton and Curt Schilling and then joined Trenni Kusnierek and Alex Reimer.
Honorable Mention
Tough to omit any Minihane rants, and this was an impassioned one. Kirk was upset that EEI afternoon co-host Dale Arnold criticized shows for not talking more hockey on-the-air, and said it was a big reason that EEI lost listeners to the competition during the Bruins' Stanley Cup run in 2011.
"Leave our show alone. We'll leave yours alone. Talk all the hockey you want. Talk it for 20 hours a week, knock yourself out," Kirk said. "I'm not going to do it. I didn't do it last year, or the year before, or the year before and we've been number one. If the Bruins make the playoffs, great. If they go on a great long run, I'm rooting for them. God bless them, Mazeltov, whatever you want! But leave me alone, OK?"
This essentially comes down to the fundamental disagreement the two have had over the years about how to run a radio show. As the station has shown over the last two years, there is no right or wrong way to do a radio show.
Sporty R. McKenzie has a friend in the Boston sports radio world in his sports update guy, Champ O'Toole - essentially the up-and-coming Jon Meterparel.
Hailing from central Connecticut and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, the three-minute update featured the Celtics, Bruins, Boston College and a rundown of the mid-major scores from the college basketball world, including Wofford's huge win over the then-defending champion North Carolina Tar Heels, Geno Auriemma's 1000th win and a weather forecast.