20 Questions with @SalSports

 

Another week, another Buffalo media member to learn more about! This week, we’re chatting with Sal Capaccio, the Bills sideline reporter and WGR host extraordinaire. For me, this one was a cool opportunity because my first interactions with Sal were on the Billszone.com message boards, where he would leave links for his Justin.tv Bills Now! Show. Take a look below and read up on one of the good guys in sports media.

Yes. Huge. It’s true when I say I can tell you the last 35 Heisman Trophy winners, Super Bowl winners, NCAA basketball champs, and most of the World Series and Stanley Cup winners in that time. But all I know about a car is where to stick the key. That’s because that’s all I did when I was a kid. Watch and talk about sports while some of my friends were doing the other things. I was a huge Bills and Sabres fan growing up. Was a Syracuse basketball fan even before I went to school there.  Have always been a big Yankees fan, and I’m a Lakers fan because they were always on TV when I was a kid and I gravitated to them during the Showtime years.

When I was about 10 years old. My brother had a friend who said he was going to college for it, and I didn’t even know you could do that. Then I said ‘that’s what I want to do, too.’

Yes, I tend to overly defend them too much.  Guilty. Ha ha. I loved my time there. People don’t realize when I was there in the early 90s we were really, really good in football, even went to major bowl games often. But we weren’t very good in basketball.  I was heavily involved in the university’s radio station – Z89 (WJPZ) – on both the sports side and the music side. I was a DJ at a bar on campus, Maggie’s on the Hill. Honestly, those were some awesome, awesome years. My GPA suffered, But I had a lot of fun…… And a lot of student loans to show for it.

Really, Z89 prepared me for a lot of what I would need to know in the real radio world. The people there running the station were incredible. And all students. It’s been voted the top college station in the country several times for a reason. It was the greatest radio classroom I could ever have imagined or had and I still use many of those experiences today, like relationship building and understanding the industry from both an on air and business side.

Not sure either would qualify as “crazy,” but I have two I think readers would find interesting.  First, I was bartending in Florida for several years before moving back to Buffalo. There was a woman who came in who was drunk and became belligerent at the bar. I stopped serving her. She was so mad she chucked an ashtray at me. This was a cop bar because the owners were former NYPD, so the local cops looked out for us when needed. She wouldn’t leave so I called the police. They came and she gave them a ton of resistance. They actually hog-tied her in the back of the cruiser in the parking lot. It was crazy.

Second.  This was a sports bar. All the patrons knew I was a big Bills fan.  Right after the Flutie/Johnson debate the Bills (with Johnson starting) played the Chargers, and Flutie was starting against Buffalo.  I taped the words”Flutie sucks” on the back of my jersey. Of course he scored the winning touchdown with about a minute left to beat the Bills and the entire night I did not stop hearing it from every single person in that place. It was brutal.

If you’re around my age and especially if you went to Syracuse, Bob Costas was a big influence back then. Of course I loved the Buffalo play-by-play guys, Van Miller and Rick Jeanneret, as well as Ted Darling.  John Murphy had his own talk show on radio when I was in junior high/early high school.  I really enjoyed listening to him. I still do.

A friend of mine from high school had a cousin who was the manager of a small station. I sent him some stuff as I did other people, and he told me I could have a small on air job with them if I also accepted doing sales. So, I jumped at the chance to start my career.

The town I was living in was very old, as far as age. There weren’t a lot of things to do for people in their early 20s. I helped out coaching Little League while I was in high school in Buffalo, so I wanted to do that again to fill time and have fun. I coached both Little League baseball and Pop Warner football for a few years before being asked to join the local high school staff because the head coach saw I was doing things the right way and there for the right reasons.  My influences were always the people who coached me in high school football at Cleveland Hill. Mainly, Dennis Mason, Carl Kuras, and Glenn Graham. I learned so much from those men about football and life. I still cherish the relationships I have with each one of them. They are like fathers to me.  The head coach of the school that hired me was an awesome coach and teacher, as well. Mike Messina.  I learned a ton from him.  We are still very good friends.  I attended a lot of college coaching camps and clinics, and worked with some of the best in the business and their staffs.  Coaches like Urban Meyer, George O’Leary, Lou Holtz, Butch Davis, Steve Spurrier.  I could go on.  But I’ve sat with all of them and some of their staffs, talked football with them, both Xs and Os and philosophies.  Drew plays and concepts on boards and even got to help out in some positional drills during spring practices.  So, I always tried to take a little bit from each one that I could apply to what I was coaching or teaching and mesh it with my own personality and philosophies.

First, I want to say it’s funny because some people think I just turned on a computer one day and started talking about the Bills and football and suddenly I was hired by WGR. Not the case at all (although that makes for a good story). This has been my career for 25 years now. I just took a detour for several of them. Even while I was teaching full-time for 10 years, I was still doing some things in Sarasota on both TV and radio part-time.

Message boards – I had no idea what they were until one day in like 2001 or so I wrote a story about the Bills for a website I was writing for on the side. At the bottom it said “talk about this story here.” So I clicked it and it went to a message board where I created an account and started posting.

I started podcasting not long after that, after I learned a little bit about it. Podcasts were in their infancy then. My main objective was to continue to talk about the Bills because I still had it in my heart that I wanted to get back to Buffalo some day and work in sports media.  And that was the outlet I had to do it to get my name to Bills fans. And because of my message board following, I gained a pretty good following there, as well, and it continued to grow.  I never realized until then how many Bills fans there are around the world! Many are always looking for content from different places and I was providing them some.

I applied for a hosting job at WGR in 2007. I didn’t get it, but the program director at the time told me he liked me a lot and I should continue to get more reps and not stop doing this. So, by then, technology had grown even further, and I figured out how to do a live web show as if it were just a radio show broadcast on the Internet. That’s where the Justin TV and UStream stuff started.

Then I got a tip from someone about Terrell Owens signing in Buffalo. I took a leap of faith and put it out there. I was right and that was my big break. People really started to follow what I was doing then.

No, I enjoy callers. Of course, some can be tough to deal with or frustrating. But, the same can be said for having sports debates with some of your friends at times, too. There are certainly times where I would prefer not taking very many and just talking about topics at hand and giving my opinions. But, other times, callers can almost carry a show for me and can lead me in other directions I didn’t even think about that particular day. That’s why radio is so organic and awesome.

I was terrified. Really. WGR told me if I ever wanted to move to Buffalo on my own they would give me a part-time job, but had nothing full-time for me. I was teaching full-time. My wife was working in her career full-time. We had no kids. We were making good money. I had my summers off and was playing golf 2-3 times a week. Yet, here we were, about to move to Buffalo, New York, and even take major major pay cuts just so I could restart my radio career at the age of 37. I still can’t believe we did it.  But we did, and it was the best decision I/we ever made in life.  It’s really worked out better than I ever hoped. But I always say, ‘if you work really hard for something and have confidence in yourself and treat people the right way, in the end, things will always work out.’  They certainly did here.

I’m not naïve to the fact that some fans and even several of my colleagues call me a “homer.” Fine. Everyone is from somewhere. I’m from Buffalo. I had Bills season tickets when I was younger. That’s a part of my DNA and it will always be. I’m not going to pretend it’s not or hide from it. However, I believe I am professional enough and ethical enough to cover the team the right way and fairly. I certainly do not go out of my way to take cheap shots.  If that makes me a homer, then I guess I’m guilty.  I agree it’s easier to be critical and even at times more balanced when you have no allegiance to a team. However, in this medium of radio, where you have to be, I believe, passionate about what you’re talking about, I embrace that I am from here and see this team the way so many fans do.  Many fans see me as an extension of them to the team. I’ve embraced that role.  That doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t criticize when I feel it’s warranted. I do. But, sometimes, I’m simply trying to explain to people what the team’s position might be, or what the coach or GM was thinking.  And people seem to take that as a defense of it. It’s not. I’m just doing my best to explain so they have a better understanding. Heck, what can I say? I was a teacher, ya know?

I was more on the other coast, but I’m obviously familiar with that area, as well. So I’ll answer that from a general view of the entire state. They just care about sports differently than we do here.  For us, it’s our livelihood. Fans have their entire week ruined by a Bills loss.  There, a loss on Sunday? “That stinks.  Oh well, I’m going fishing on Monday.” I think our media is sad when the season ends here. We want to cover playoff games and championships, because that’s what sports are about. (But also because we haven’t been able to in so long, I’m sure).  I didn’t get that same sense from some of the media I read, watched, or listened to there. Also, we care about our professional teams a ton, our college teams pretty well (mostly when they are good), and don’t give enough coverage to our high school teams. There, they focus a lot on their high school and college teams, often much more than their own professional teams.

Well, it definitely scratches a bit of the itch. I mean, being on an NFL sideline every Sunday is amazing. It’s really in my blood and I love every second of it. I miss coaching a lot. I miss competing a lot. I miss hanging out with the other coaches a lot. I miss teaching the game to young men a lot. I miss Friday nights and playing games a ton, but the more I get away from it, I miss practices more and more, too. The interaction and teaching.  But, my career is very important and has a long way to go still. So sadly I don’t have time to do that.  But some day, I’d love to go to some small high school somewhere and run the offense.  And, yes, I’ll run the Wing-T 🙂 – I have no interest in being a head coach just running an offense. I don’t want to deal with parents, ha ha….and then I can have an influence on young lives once again. It’s extremely rewarding.

Oh, sure, but I think many already knew me – not just because of breaking the TO story or doing the podcast or web stream stuff, but even because I had already reached out to people in the media here a few times for feedback and to get to know them.  I try to get along with everybody. I know that’s impossible, But I really do try to make friends and build relationships. We may all be competitors in a sense but we’re all a fraternity, as well.  I think there were some who resented me, and maybe still do, for the path I took. But, in general, those people – like I said before – don’t realize that I’ve actually been doing this for 25 years of my life. I worked really hard to get to this spot.  Especially because it was harder after I left doing it full-time for so many years.  I had to take a lot of chances on my own, without the backing of a radio station or newspaper. My name was the only thing I had to build from…..and risk.  I hope they respect that even if they don’t like me or my work.

I just make sure I always make time for my son before anything else. Do what he wants. Watch what he wants. I can always catch up on sports news after we watch Peppa Pig or listen to “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.”  But I’m really lucky. He loves sports already. He loves going to Bisons games and Sabres games, and playing hockey and baseball and football and soccer.  He’s 2 1/2 years old and wants to watch the Yankees when he wakes up in the morning. He takes my phone and opens the Bills and Sabres apps all the time to watch videos. So, it’s pretty cool and fun.

Good, knowledgeable guests help a lot. I often get feedback on social media when people enjoy a guest I have on who gives great insight into something. I think the time slot you are on matters. Waking people up in the morning is different than being with them on their drive home later in the day. Being on on a Saturdayearly afternoon is different than in the evening after dinner on a weekday.  I think it’s important to be entertaining above anything else. That can call for being serious, funny, mad, sad, analytical, philosophical, whatever. My job is to keep you tuned in and engaged. I feel it’s very important for me to connect with my audience on a personal level. Share stories they can relate to and feel like they know me just like they do any other of their friends or family members.  For them, it’s listening to me. For me, it’s interaction through phone calls, social media, etc..  If we are going to spend hours together, we need to get to know one another. You may not like or agree with everything I say, but that’s part of a healthy relationship.  Through the course of one show, I would love for any listener to feel as many different emotions as possible about the topics we are discussing or my opinions of them.  So in order to do all that I have to be as prepared as possible.  Know the things my audience wants to talk about.  It’s my job to set the direction of the show and have interesting and/or entertaining topics to discuss.  I take notes throughout the week when I see a story that falls into those areas.  Then I refer back to it when I’m on the air to discuss it or create a new, interesting angle.  So, the preparation never stops, really.  You’re always preparing for your next show when you’re a talk show host.

That’s a good question and one I can’t really answer definitively. I’m happy where I am right now. I think about the future sometimes and sometimes I’m still right where I am while others I am somewhere else, or here doing something else.  I’m always striving to better myself. If that means someday I move on to a different market, something regional or even national, then that’s what happens. If it means I stay where I am and continue to grow in my role for many years, then that’s what happens. I’m honestly just focused on doing the best job I can right now and for the foreseeable future. I enjoy where I work and what I do. And I of course love living in Buffalo.

Do everything. Talk, write, edit, shoot video, it’s all extremely important. Gone are the days where TV or radio stations or newspapers hire people to do one job and someone else to do another. Now, they want people who do everything. Be versatile and willing.  Also, be willing to move around, especially when you are younger and trying to find your way.  You might someday make it back to where you want to be or love being, like I did, but you may also find a spot somewhere else you never dreamed of and love it and make a family there and live a wonderful life.  Also, don’t burn bridges.  You’re not always going to be happy with everyone, or feel you’ve been treated poorly.  But you never know when that relationship may matter again in the future.

 Oooh man. I’m not going to say Derek Jeter, because he’s too easy and also because by the end of dinner he’d probably have me convinced to allow him to take my wife home.  I might say Rickey Henderson. He was only a Yankee for about 4 years, but I loved watching him and he could tell me so many awesome stories.  About himself, of course.  But probably Yogi Berra. I mean, come on, he’d have me laughing so hard and thinking so much about what he said I’d be in tears, and I wouldn’t know if that was because I was laughing or too confused.