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10 Questions with ... Brian Murphy
November 13, 2007
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NAME:Brian MurphyTITLE:Morning Show Host, "Murph and Mac"STATION:KNBRMARKET:San FranciscoCOMPANY: CumulusBORN:Sept. 5, 1967RAISED:I was raised in the idyllic town of Mill Valley, California, at the foot of Mount Tamalpais and a stone's throw from the big city of San Francisco.
BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
I spent the first 15 years of my post-college (UCLA) life as a sportswriter, starting out covering high schools for the LA Times, then the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, before my first pro sports beat came along in 1994, covering the eventual Super Bowl champion 49ers. That lasted until 1999, when the SF Examiner offered me the Oakland A's beat. Looking to jump to the bigger paper, I took it. I covered the A's for two years, and the Raiders for one, and when the Ex and Chron merged in November 2000, they created the "National Golf Writer" job for me, which was an excuse to follow Tiger Woods to Augusta, Ga. and Scotland. In 2004, KNBR offered the Morning Show.
1. You were a well-known sportswriter before you became a host on KNBR. How did you make the transition into radio?
That's a darn good question! Believe it or not, I had zero radio aspirations or dreams. My whole life I dreamt of writing for Sports Illustrated. That said, I was always a natural born bullslinger, and loved talking sports with my co-workers or compadres until the cows came home, or until they shut down the bars, whichever came first. KNBR has often used SF Chronicle sportswriters in guest-host slots, and Ralph Barbieri, the legendary afternoon drive-time host at KNBR, asked me to co-host with him when his co-host, Tom Tolbert, was away doing basketball games for ESPN and ABC.
Talking was fun, and sort of natural. Ralph asked me back a few more times, and when KNBR had an opening for its Morning Show in the fall of 2004, the GM, Tony Salvadore, told me he thought I'd be a good fit and offered the gig.
Wild, wild stuff. Never saw it coming.
2. About what are you most passionate these days?
It's a time-sensitive question: my wife, Candace, is due with our first child on Nov. 29. Baby prep, baby thinking, baby stuff is easily No. 1 on our personal BCS rankings right now! Other than that, I find myself more and more into my alma mater's football and basketball programs (UCLA), which I've decided is really a cover to stay in touch with close friends who are now scattered across this great land of ours.
3. Compare writing about sports with talking on the radio about sports: what about doing the radio show do you prefer over, say, covering the golf beat or covering a team as a daily beat writer, and do you miss about writing?
Wow, now that question could take up lots of cyberspace. I will try to keep it brief:
WHY SPORTS TALK RADIO BEATS WRITING ABOUT SPORTS: You can be a fan again. You can let your passions flow and not mute them for the sake of 'objectivity'.
You can try and use your sense of humor more, and create a silly 'bit' or riff about a sports happening that wouldn't have a place in beat writing. You can comment on loads of sports events, and not be restricted to one 'beat'. If A-Rod opts out, USC football loses and the Red Sox win the Series all in one weekend, it's all fair game on Monday morning. The variety is invigorating.
WHY WRITING ABOUT SPORTS BEATS SPORTS TALK RADIO: You miss the up-close-and-personal feel of covering a team on a daily basis, and learning the intricate human dramas that make up a team or an event. You're more connected to the event. You get to write, which is an intellectual endeavor sometimes more rewarding because of its permanence vs. the ephemeral nature of radio. Plus, on a 'beat', you travel more and see the world, and go to great places -- the Super Bowl, the Masters, etc. -- and see them for yourself.
4. What's the best and worst thing about working with your on-air partner?
I love my guy Paul (Paulie Mac) McCaffrey. He's funny, he's fresh, he's talented, he's creative. If I have a whiff of an idea for a bit, he coaxes it out of me, and has the production ability to turn it around and get it on the air, pronto. He can talk "Godfather," the 1988 Niners and Mark Messier all in one segment, and nail every nuance of each. Plus, he's a hell of a musician, which is good for those wacky Morning Show parody songs.
The worst thing? Geez, I can't think of any. Just to keep it 'real', I'll say this: When he did a cover of the Beatles' 'Help' in a song about the woeful 49ers' offense, he did not hit a couple of those high notes. Lennon and McCartney had some range, it turns out.
5. You've made some risky career choices before, but a striking one involved heading from a major newspaper job to work in Ireland. How did that come about, and what did you learn from the experience?
I was 24 years old and feeling my oats. I'd always been passionate about my Irish-Italian ancestral heritage, perhaps too much so, and had a notion all through college that one day I'd return to the 'homeland' and live as a fisherman on the Aran Islands, wearing sweaters and sipping Guinness by the fire. Or something like that.
The next best thing was to take advice from my Dad, who told me when he heard of my idea: "You're young. Do something exciting with your life." I loved being at the LA Times, but it was time to take a chance, so I quit, took $2,000 and flew to Ireland with only a friend of a friend of a friend as a contact upon arrival. I took a job at a pub, got paid nothing, didn't have money for food, lost 30 pounds due to starvation, and made some of the best friends I'll ever make in my life, friends I have to this day, all while learning a different culture, a different history and, in the process, re-learning about my own culture and history as an American. Nothing makes you prouder of your country than to live somewhere else. And, on a personal note, nothing makes you appreciate the Bay Area's perfect climate more than the low, gray, drizzly skies of Ireland!
I learned that you never regret adventure, that the world is a big and varied place worth seeing, and that Guinness poured in Ireland tastes so darn good and creamy it's ridiculous. On a scale of 1 to 10, assessing that career move, I give myself a 17.
6. The Giants and A's had a lousy year. The Niners and Raiders are no good. The Warriors celebrated last season's surprise success with a losing streak to start this season. Cal's been a disappointment, Stanford worse. When all the local teams are below average, how do you approach it? What do you talk about? Do you go into non-stop Philadelphia-style complaint mode, do you talk about something else, do you just focus on Barry Bonds' whereabouts?
Barry who?
You are treading on some touchy ground here: when the local teams lose for a while, it's fun to complain and point out all that's wrong with them. When they lose and they lose and they lose and they lose ... well, it sorta stops being fun. The challenge is to keep it from being tedious, and to definitely use a sense of humor about it all. After all, we're not curing a disease. We're talking about sports. I heard Peter Jacobsen once say: "The only thing worse than losing your golf ball is losing your perspective." He's right. We have fun with it, make comedy bits out of our woes, and always look to the future: What game is next? What trade is next? What's the best move in the upcoming draft?
Plus, the sports world constantly reinvents itself. The Niners play on Monday nite, the Warriors play on Wednesday... anything can happen in those two games that can provide any number of angles and fodder.
7. Of what are you most proud?
I'm proud of the friends I have. They're loyal and have been by my side forever. I'm proud of my wife. She's beautiful and tough and is going to be an awesome Mommy. I'm proud of my family background, how my Mom and Dad raised me. And I'm very provincial in that I'm very proud of the San Francisco Bay Area: despite our real estate prices, I'm always proud to travel anywhere in the world and say I grew up here and live here. There's a natural beauty to this place that creates a soul and a light that I've never found anywhere else -- even in the best pub in Ireland, and that's saying something!
8. What do you do for fun?
I do very much like to play golf, though I'm terrible. I like going to Giants games very much. I love to take road trips to UCLA football or basketball games to see friends. I like to read many sports pages, Sports Illustrated, the occasional sports book, and web sites like Deadspin and espn.com. I love seeing a Friday matinee with my wife, then getting a pint afterwards (although the pint part has ceased during her pregnancy!). I like to watch certain TV shows, like "Friday Night Lights", "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The Office". I like to sleep in on weekends, too.
9. Fill in the blank: I can't make it through the day without ___________.
...I'd love to give you some sort of deep, philosophical answer, but with my hours, I can't make it through the day without a) coffee in the early a.m., and b) a good, 55-minute nap sometime between 12 pm and 1 pm. That's the ticket, right there.
10. What's the best advice you've ever gotten? The worst?
My Dad gave me all the best advice I ever needed. Among the nuggets he's laid out through the years:
a) Always give a firm handshake. Nothing worse than the Dead Fish Handshake.
b) Never make another man's bet. He cited the line from "Guys and Dolls" that if a man bets you he can make the jack of spades jump out of a deck of cards and spit apple juice in your ear... you'll wind up with an earful of apple juice.
c) Never follow a motorcyle through a tollbooth.
d) You're young... do something exciting with your life.As for the worst? Can't think of any. Oh, wait. There was the time that a financial advisor in 1998 suggested we put all our money in the dot-com boom, because there was NO WAY it was going anywhere but up. Uh, yeah. That was bad advice. Glad we didn't take it!
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