By now, you’ve seen the Welcome to Your Nightmare-inspired Freddy Kruger tifo that took the Timbers Army worldwide on Sunday afternoon.
What you might not have caught, though, was a smaller banner that was unveiled in the 200-level of the Army during the second half of the Timbers’ 3-1 win over the Seattle Sounders.
The banner displayed an old quote attributed to former USL Timber – and current Sounders play-by-play commentator – Keith Costigan. It read, “I make no bones about it … that I’m a Timbers fan.”
Yikes.
Hiring Costigan, it has to be said, was a tone-deaf move by a Sounders organization that has been a dumpster fire over the last year. The announcer, who also does work for FOX Sports and Univision, has been a predictably unpopular figure in his first season with Seattle.
Not only does Costigan have a cozy past with the Timbers, but his work behind the mic hasn’t made anyone in Seattle forget about Ross Fletcher – the well-liked voice of the Sounders who was unceremoniously fired at the end of the 2015 season.
Is this starting to sound familiar? Beloved announcer is bizarrely and brazenly fired for little reason and replaced with a man who has close ties to the team’s closest rival?
Certainly, the situation with Costigan – whose response to the banner on Twitter fell somewhere short of graceful – isn’t an exact replica of the Portland Trail Blazers’ broadcasting situation right now.
The Seattle Supersonics were never to the Blazers what the Timbers have been and very much still are to the Sounders. But parallels are there.
In case you need a refresher: In mid-June, several weeks after the end of the Blazers’ season, team President and CEO Chris McGowan decided to fire TV play-by-play announcer Mike Barrett, TV analyst Mike Rice, and radio analyst Antonio Harvey.
Barrett, a native Oregonian who grew up rooting for the Blazers, had been with the team for more than a decade. So had Harvey, a former Blazers player. Rice had been with the team since 1991 after being personally selected by Bill Schonley to serve as the legendary announcer’s color man after a quarter-long tryout at Civic Stadium.
Barrett is a solid announcer, and he should have no trouble finding work. Harvey, a character through and through, will bounce back too. But for Rice, at 77 years old, this could be the end.
And that sucks. Rice is a gem, whose list of exploits with the Blazers includes becoming the first announcer to be thrown out of a game when Steve Javie took issue with his – ahem – commentary during a game in 1994.
Were they great broadcasters? Not necessarily – Rice and Harvey spent half the year making Ray Felton fat jokes – but they were ours. They loved the Blazers, and were always entertaining and good-natured.
Mike and Mike were fans’ main connection to the team – and as the Timbers and Sounders demonstrated on Sunday, broadcasters matter a great deal for exactly that reason.
This was a crazy move from McGowan and Co. – especially because it came just as it seemed like the Blazers’ from top to bottom, from the basketball side to the business side, were figuring things out in a big way.
The organization was coming off of one of its most exciting and surprisingly successful seasons since the turn of the century. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, this.
All three announcers, who were under contract for the 2016-17 season and beyond, were totally blindsided. The only survivor on the entire broadcast team was radio play-by-play voice Brian Wheeler.
To replace Barrett, McGowan tapped Kevin Calabro, most recently of ESPN Radio and the Pac-12 Network. There’s just problem. Calabro – who is hugely respected around the league – made his name Voice of the Sonics for 21 years.
To have him replace the native Oregonian Barrett just serves as a further kick in the teeth to Blazers fans.
Calabro, and whoever is tabbed to replace Rice, had better be good. If they’re not, and the new Blazers broadcast is stuffier and less personable than the old one, there could and should be hell to pay for the organization.
The Paul Allen-led Blazers never make it easy on themselves. Schonley, remember fired for reasons passing understanding after the 1997-98 season.
And that was Schonley – a man so synonymous with Trail Blazers basketball that Bill Walton said, “Bill Schonley is the most important figure in the history of Oregon sports, with all due respect to Phil Knight and Maurice Lucas. Bill Schonley is the man who convinced people that sports are worthwhile.”
The only reason the franchise didn’t burn when Schonley was let go was that Wheeler was a home-run hire. Calabro might be a good announcer, but he isn’t going to be that.
So Allen might take note of the mood around his football team’s co-tenant at CenturyLink Field. The Sounders’ primary problem this year has been that their team stinks, but their announcing situation hasn’t helped matters.
As long as the Blazers win, they’ll be fine. But if they don’t win, the aftershocks from cruelly dumping Barrett, Rice, and Harvey could be felt down the road. It wasn’t until several years after Schonley was fired that the Blazers’ attendance plummeted.
The Blazers are playing with fire here. Maybe they don’t feel comfortable going about their business any other way. But the worst of these firings may be yet to come.
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