First things first. I don’t know John Maffei. I don’t know Dan Sileo either. As for Scott Kaplan, despite our dozens of interactions over social media, I’ve actually never met him either.
As all San Diego sports media fans know… Scott Kaplan has the distinct honor of being employed by both the largest radio station, The Mighty 1090, and largest newspaper, U-T San Diego, in town. Scott will deny this on a technicality, and I quote, “I work for neither actually, I contract.” Whatever. The relationship intrigues me, especially since, for a while there, the U-T wouldn’t allow its employees to go on any AM1090 radio show, while Kaplan was working for both. That issue has since been resolved.
I know that, generally speaking, LobShots readers do not like Scott Kaplan… at all. I base that on the over 200 comments this post received when Kaplan was initially fired from XX1090 for calling a woman a “beast,” an “animal,” a “monster” and a “sasquatch of a woman.” He has since won a lawsuit, and returned to the AM1090 airwaves. Ironically, he’s come to the defense of the newest morning show host, Dan Sileo, who has been fired multiple times from other radio stations. Awful Announcing was shocked and appalled when AM1090 hired Sileo, as noted in this post, where they recapped that Sileo had been fired for calling 3 African American NFL players “monkeys.” He’d been fired for a series of sexist tweets to Erin Andrews that included him telling her to “bake me a cake.” Most recently, he’d been fired for putting a bounty on a Florida State player on his Twitter account.
Jump to present day, John Maffei posts a U-T sports media column ripping Dan Sileo’s new show. In fact, he started out the column ripping into a bunch of past radio show hosts, including the Butt Brothers (whoever they are), Jordan & Earl, and J.D. Hayworth (Hacksaw’s old co-host that sued BCA radio for his firing). I don’t have a problem ripping those guys, they deserve to be ripped because they were terrible, but then he went on to also insult Josh Rosenberg and Charod Williams, which, in my opinion, was completely unnecessary. If you’d like to know Rosenberg’s thoughts on Maffei, they are, and I quote, “Maffei has always been a talentless, biased, uninformed joke of a writer. Untimely cheap shots? Coward” – love that from Josh.
So, Kaplan gets a hold of Maffei’s U-T column, and proceeds to blast Maffei on the AM1090 airwaves. This is where it gets fun. Reminder: Maffei and Sileo are both co-workers to Kaplan. Head to the 13:30 mark (it finishes at the 17:00 minute mark) of this Scott & BR podcast from yesterday, February 19th. I’ll try to transcript a few highlights, but it’s worth the listen, regardless.
Kaplan: “In 2001… I was brand new to town, and Maffei writes a rip-job column on me. I’m telling you, I’m three weeks in, and not one word about Billy Ray, who he conveniently chose to review the show when Billy Ray wasn’t there.”
Clearly, Kaplan wasn’t a fan of Maffei before this Sileo column. Frankly, neither was I.
Kaplan:“… Maffei is a Hacksaw-lover, so no matter who took over for Hacksaw, he wasn’t going to be good enough.”
If you’ve ever been to LobShots before, you know my thoughts on Paul Mahon, or Hacksaw Hamilton, if you want to call him by his pretend made-up name.
Kaplan: “John Maffei’s sports media column in the U-T…. It’s not even giving it [Sileo’s show] a chance… but that’s okay… the part that bothers me is this. ‘Honestly, the best option for 1090 would be to put Smith and Kaplan back in the morning. Their show is as much entertainment as sports. Sileo, or Hamilton, would be a better fit in the 3-6 p.m. slot. That won’t happen, though, because Smith and Kaplan don’t like the 6-9 a.m. shift. And you can’t blame them. Getting up at 4 a.m. to go to work is a grind.‘ Hey John, we work right near by each other at the U-T. You don’t think you could get up and walk over, and ‘hey, you got two seconds? I wanna ask you about this?’ … We would go back to the mornings in a heartbeat if we weren’t KILLING IT so much in the afternoon… Being inaccurate is fine. Don’t be lazy.”
I actually agree with most of what Kaplan had to say about Maffei’s column. And honestly, I haven’t listened to Sileo, so I can’t really comment on how good he’s been here in San Diego. I would love to know what “killing it” from Scott & BR in the afternoons means… I don’t have the ratings in front of me, but I know that among lobsters, The Drive with Judson and Costa over on AM1360 has a large following as well. Back to the podcast, Scott proceeds to break down the column and how Maffei “kills Sileo.” Fascinating dynamic to criticize one co-worker to defend another.
Oh, and that above quote from Josh Rosenberg? Kaplan and Sileo both retweeted it, and Sileo had a few choice words for Maffei as well:
Dan Sileo: “glad i dont appeal to him..65 year old NOBODY and like .guy told Chris Jenkins NOT 2 do a story on me…so it means he listened to 6 shows?..WOW #tool“
I don’t fully understand that comment, but whatever. Worth noting… U-T TV just folded. I’m not sure how this will affect Kaplan’s role at the U-T, but it does make this old tweet relevant again.
“@LobShots: Hacksaw just called @UTTVSD “Cable Channel D” – how’s that make you feel @ScottKaplan?” he is jealous, but that’s ok.
— Scott Kaplan (@ScottKaplan) January 11, 2013
U-T TV gone. Mahon gone. Kaplan is the last man standing from that tweet. He stands with Sileo, and he seems to always be the last man standing. The U-T and The Mighty 1090 have both made some baffling decisions lately. Impossible to predict what mind-blowing decision will be made next. I, for one, love to sit and watch the chaos unfold.
-bp