This is the second half of a two-part ombudsman-style analysis of ESPN's Mike and Mike show. For the first half, click here.

Today was an interesting day for Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, hosts of the ESPN hit show, Mike & Mike in the Morning. It wasn't because of a breaking story or even a special guest. Rather, it was because the duo's appearance on daytime soap opera Guiding Light was airing today and they celebrated by talking about it quite a bit and even interviewing one of the co-stars on the show. What a sports talk duo has to do with daytime soaps is a different question, but their continued efforts to further reach into the mainstream hit their apex today.

And that's where we begin today's story.

>ESPN's role as pusher

With popularity comes opportunity and both Greenberg and Golic have taken advantage of their growing popularity. To an extent and to be fair, the two have been taken advantage of by their home network. As their show grew, so did the demands for them to cross over into other ESPN platforms. They become more noticeable on SportsCenter and various NFL specific shows, often causing this writer to wonder exactly how many hours they work in a day.

Then, it was announced in 2007 they would take over play-by-play announcing duties for the Arena Football League, whom ESPN has direct financial interest in. With the AFL due to return to the ESPN airwaves with a stronger marketing push, Golic and Greenberg were called into duty, no doubt trying to draw some of the duo's core audience. They didn't last too long and did approximately half of the season. Later, they were tabbed to call the 2nd half of an ESPN Monday Night Football season premiere doubleheader (with Mike Ditka) featuring Arizona vs. San Francisco. Those appearances were definitely better than other programming they've been forced to host, including the Scripps National Spelling Bee, ESPN Bowling Night and the recent announcement that this Friday's show will air live from the site of the BassMaster Fishing Classic which is...you guessed it...another ESPN production.

The duo is walking that thin line of overexposure as their fingerprints are on almost every outlet the network has. While I assume that saying 'no' is not an option, ESPN would be best served to reign back a bit on how often the public is forced to digest Greenberg and Golic. While they are a perfect fit for an audience that is not looking to be wowed, there is only so much the other portion of the group can stand before seeking other sports media options. The network should adopt the same model that Pardon The Interruption's Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon have going. The pair are available just 2:30 hours a week and have their own interests in Monday Night Football and the NBA telecasts. However, PTI has that 'quick-hit' quality and the hosts are easy to take in doses. It's interesting to note that the total airtime for Kornheiser and Wilbon's flagship program in one week is less than Greenberg and Golic's in one day.

And then, there was the roast.

>Bumble on the Boardwalk

The amount that has been written and discussed on the topic of January's Mike and Mike Roast could fill a small-town library. I won't rehash it here, but it seems odd to at least not mention a few key errors in the analysis of this disastrous event. The event was put on by ESPN as a fundraiser for the V Foundation Research for Cancer where sports and entertainment celebrities would 'roast' the duo at a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. The event was pimped on air for weeks and on the Friday before the event, the duo aired their show live from the venue and had on several guests that would appear that night. That was on January 11, 2008.

On the following Monday, all was quiet on the sports blog front. As a snowstorm engulfed the East Coast, this very site first reported on a recap of the Roast event by an obscure New Jersey online paper. The links began to spread, the stories of anchor Dana Jacobson's drunken tirade began to spread and the furor for answers among the Mike & Mike audience spread, only the duo wasn't talking. Greenberg and Golic have barely acknowledged the event other than a few short sentences here and there and thanking certain guests who appeared that night. Despite talking countless hours about a roast, the airwaves were suddenly quiet. Bob Costas even made a quip on air recently that Greenberg struggled to move past (listen here).

Both ESPN and Greenberg/Golic deserve blame for this entire scenario. Hopefully the network learned that there are some places you shouldn't tread and roasts are one of them. Even a multi-billion dollar company cannot do everything and shouldn't do everything. For Greenberg and Golic, they should have addressed the issues on air. Jacobson was suspended and subsequently embarrassed publicly for her remarks that came at their event. As the reason people showed up, Golic and Greenberg have a responsibility to take some sort of public stance on the fallout as it's entirely reasonable to expect them to talk up a storm about it if the incident with Jacobson didn't happen. To think Greenberg, Golic or ESPN is innocent and deserves a pass is just plain moronic.

>Commercialization

The Radio Shack Inbox. The Onstar Hotline. ProFlowers. Progressive. AT&T...and the list goes on...and on...and on. There is no shortage of commercial breaks within the show (reader Ralph B. said he 'loathes' the 'insanely long' breaks) and there are almost as many contained in the actual show itself. Advertisers are seemingly lined up to tag their name onto every possible segment the two can make up, creating a radio version of a minor-league baseball outfield wall.

Most recently, the two lent their names to an ESPN-sponsored MikeMan online game, sponsored by Pizza Hut (interesting because of their outside ESPN deal with Domino's Pizza). The game and sponsor is mentioned continually on the show, in addition to Golic's outside deal with Nutri-System. However, the sponsors are starting to leak their way more and more into the actual coverage itself. During the infamous Tom Brady 'Bootgate' that kicked off the first two weeks of Super Bowl coverage, Greenberg said that Brady should have called ProFlowers instead of bringing flowers to his celebrity girlfriend. Guests often are pimping various causes they are being paid to represent (Tino Martinez' interview this week while talking Briggs and Stratton comes to mind), most under the guise of being a 'charitable' cause. Uh huh.

When content is dictated by this many outside influences, it skews the coverage in a way that is uncomfortable. Greenberg's shameless shill for flowers came off as amateurish and Nutri-System's subtle plugs through ribbing about Golic's lifestyle are getting tired. There is a limit to the madness and like in most cases of overexposure, ESPN must take more of an active role in protecting their interests. Alas, it seems more and more like the Mike & Mike show is following the suit of other ESPN programming these days when it comes to selling every segment for a few bucks. Is this what a media institution is supposed to be doing? I digress.

>Guests

The fact that producer Scott Shapiro was recognized in 2007 for his immense rolodex of guests was probably long overdue. Helped by both a long-running show, prime exposure and the ESPN rub, the guest list for Mike & Mike is second-to-none. While Boiled Sports blogger J Money isn't a fan of the two, he does listen for some of the personalities he does like, specifically mentioning Peter Gammons, Tim Kurkijan, Mark Schlereth and others. Reader Ralph B. also likes the hosts and the "access" he gets by hearing "some of the most significant figures in the sports world. Hearing them and these newsmakers is very exciting."

I would tend to agree, but there are times when it seems the same personalities are on time and time again. It was refreshing to hear NBA writer Chris Broussard on recently and part of spreading the media wealth is to create more recognizable names based on the work they do with the network's various entities. The idea should always be to inform first and entertain second and the chummy relationships they share with Mike Ditka, Schlereth and Marcellus Wiley more often than not skews into fawning, a word that Ralph B. and I both independently came up with in describing what happens.

With both Ditka and Wiley, it is almost like Greenberg cannot control his emotions and feels like he must wax poetic about their abilities on almost every appearance. If this was the interview style on other ESPN entities, it would be looked down on. Here, it seems it's part of the show's sometimes offsetting culture.

Associated with this array of guests are the mostly 'softball' interviews, of which Greenberg is usually skewered for among critics. I'd be interested to ask the two if they truly consider themselves media members and then, replay tapes based on interviews they've done to see if they still believed that afterward. Coming from such a strong journalism school as Northwestern, Greenberg has the ability to ask the tough question but seemingly doesn't have the guile to cross the goal-line. This could be a product of the system in which they work, but it doesn't give for many must-hear interviews to refer to.

Blogger JMoney of Boiled Sports even has an issue with the questioning style of Greenberg, which is fairly accurate:

I have a very hard time with Greenberg's interviewing style... he's actually improved a little lately, I've noticed, but he has this irritating habit of asking a four-word question with 150 words. I've only heard one person make mention of this and it was Boomer Esiason, who once said, "Gosh, that's the longest question I've ever been asked in my life."

It'll go something like, "Good morning, Boomer and welcome to the show, and I guess the first question we should ask, among many questions, not the least of which is about the winner of the Super Bowl, is what do you think, in all fairness, Eli should say to the New York media today, a NY media which has been so critical of him at many times, and, hey, the reality of it is, some of it's been justified, but what do you think of him today and what SHOULD we think of him on this Monday after the Super Bowl?"

A side note about the Manning coverage. Over a week following the Giants' improbable Super Bowl win, Greenberg couldn't stop talking about the younger Manning brother. The weeks leading up to the Super Bowl were spent more on Manning's emergence than any credit for the Giants receivers and their assistance in helping this evolution. If there were three people that dominated the coverage in January and early-February, it was Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee and Eli Manning.

>The Intangibles

- In sports, there is often no shortage of topics to discuss. However, Mike & Mike often repeat the same topics over and over and over again, often repeating the exact same terms and descriptive language they used in one segment in a later segment. Part of this is due to the lack of viewer calls and somewhat limited email input that make up a large portion of other radio programs. The format caters more to someone that just pops in and not a full four-hour listener. Reader Mike K. doesn't even like it when they break format for non-sports items.

"They lose focus of the show. Too many times do they spend at least 10-15 minutes each hour talking about the same non-sports related subject. Today and yesterday it was: "What should Golic give up for lent?" During these times, it sounds like neither of them know what they are doing and they don't sound like they should be on ESPN."

-I'm not big fans of co-producers Joaquin Kaplan and Liam Chapman, who lead the Saturday "Best Of" radio show. For some reason, their attempts to be noticed on-screen for their off-screen work is grating and not appreciated by this writer. The show is about Greenberg and Golic, not producers. Can you imagine if we had cutaways to NFL Live producers or Rome Is Burning personnel? It's great you made up some songs, but I don't need to see you singing them.

-While I do like some of the musical bits and most of the custom video packages (the Buster Olney clip is hilarious), ESPN could really help by giving us more recent headshots of guests and providing some new video packages to air while the two are discussing a subject. I thought my eyes were going to fall out if I saw Roger Clemens throw a football to Brian McNamee one more time.

-With outside interests like the failed Greenberg-hosted game show Duel and Golic's vacation to be with his son at a college football camp, there are needs for fill-in hosts. Unlike PTI and 1st and 10, there is a very small rotation that are lucky enough to sit in the big seats. (Greenberg has even done the show solo before for a few hours, which was refreshingly good.) Of the few, Erik Kuselias has proved to be the most capable and has such a great rapport with Golic that it made this writer ponder a full-time Eric & Golic in the Morning show.

-Have you ever noticed the amount of times the words "Mike & Mike" are used in a daily show, as compared to other similar radio programs? If there was a drinking game based on this, thousands would be dead.

>Synopsis

In the past two days, I've written more on the subject of two people I've never met than I ever would have expected. Originally planned to be a single post, it's turned into a monolith (or Mikeolith?) on the subject of Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic and their efforts to provide their audience with an entertaining and informative four hours per day. While it may seem like people target the pair for undue criticism, I feel that's because we want this show to be great and expect the network to demand more of themselves and the hosts in making this happen. It's not like any sports fan ever complained about great sports talk options to have.

If I was to make a couple magic fixes, it'd be the following:

-Shorten the show to three hours per week and reduce the amount of non-show appearances they make.

-Resist the urge to send their show to whatever flash in the pan sporting event you're airing that weekend. For bigger deals like the Super Bowl, the association is natural. For the BassMaster Classic, not that much. It should be special when Greenberg and Golic come to your town, not an afterthought.

-Increase the journalism. Demand harder questions be asked. Make some interviewees sweat a bit more and strive to improve the quality of the content. It's ok to have fun, but realize why people are coming to the show.

-Finally, I'd ask Greenberg and Golic to act naturally. So much of their schtick seems forced to help support the marketing behind the show that it makes the honest back-and-forths rare. At the end of the day, these are two very likable personalities that have extensive backgrounds in sports. They have a vast array of guests to interview and topics to discuss. They have a media empire at their disposal. Could there be anything better for ESPN?

I guess it all would depend on whether a sponsor would buy it.








Josh Nason has run Small White Ball since 2007 and is the main contributor of content for the site including parts 1 and 2 of the Mike and Mike Ombudsman review. A long-time writer, his work can also be read at sites like Ropes, Ring and Cage and others. He also appears weekly on radio shows and will gladly do more. He also loves free lunches.