BHGP Podcast: SpoCo Radio is Back in Black

Three guys from Chicago walk into a bar. But not just any old bar... an Iowa City bar. An Iowa City bar that each and every one of you reading this has ventured into during your collegiate career, as the appetizer or dessert to your football Saturday, while on a campus visit, during Homecoming, or with your sons and daughters on parents weekend. An Iowa City bar that has so much history, its stories (of which, we all have many) are those of legend (Do you guys remember the “Fake Olivia Pope Girl”?).

A bar so legendary that I once witnessed a girl catapult over a high top table in a sudden fit of rage over maybe seeing someone that spurned her at Hillcrest three years prior (Fun Fact: I ended up marrying this gazelle), just as two guys jumped through the open windows in the back, downed a pitcher of beer that was sitting on one of the stage tables before jumping back out and running away (real men of genius).

A bar so near and dear to those same three guys from Chicago heart’s, they made it a point to name their podcast after it in honor...

Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you, SpoCo Radio:

Now, for those of you I couldn’t sell with that amazing intro, let me try to earn your ear by giving you a little backstory on these three guys from Chicago.

One Monday a long, long time ago, I was on the third floor of an apartment building off of Burlington and Van Buren and could hear someone down below freaking out over what seemed to be a sporting event. I too was watching a sporting event, but I couldn’t focus because strings of profanities — of which would make Andrew Dice Clay do a double take — were reverberating off the cheap, paper thin walls. After several positive, but outrageous burst-out sessions, I finally had enough and trudged downstairs to tell him to quiet down a tad. After all, the White Sox were about to force game 163 and I wanted to remember that momentous occasion. I couldn’t let the loud mouth downstairs ruin it.

I knocked on the door viciously. The voice screamed “DOORS OPEN!”. I waited outside for a minute to see if he would eventually see who was standing at his door. Nothing. So I finally opened the door and peeked in. This stirred the beast.

“If you’re here to tell me to quiet down, I have to tell you it’s not going to happen. The White Sox just scored again on these Detroit bums and we’re one win away from the playoffs, baby!”

This is all I needed to know. One night later David Johnson (the former voice of KRUI radio who you will come to know as The People’s Champ) and I were spraying cheap champagne on each other in his kitchen after the White Sox officially made the playoffs.

Fast forward to 2010 and I’m at the Big House with the Hawks Nest and 20 lucky students watching Iowa drub Michigan. As most college kids are want to do, the 25-or-so of us spent the majority of our day leading up to the game cruising around tailgates and becoming one with the locals. Needless to say, the majority of us were famished after the game. After what seemed like an eternity on a Grey Hound bus, we eventually found ourselves at a McDonald’s just outside of Ann Arbor. After ordering, I really wanted to sit down and I noticed one of our newest additions to the group sitting down at a booth to eat. So I asked to join him and we made a little small talk about the game before each of us decided it was time to satisfy our hunger. Without hesitation, we started to down enough McNuggets to feed a decent sized army. Once we were settled, I realized I hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know Dave Creagh (who you will come to know as DC/DCIII and the host/producer extraordinaire of SpoCo Radio) all that well, so I started to pepper him with questions; turning what should’ve been a nice end cap to an Iowa victory into a job interview he didn’t really want to be a part of.

Not only did we both realize we were raised as “Husky Children”, but that we completed each other. The ying to the others yang. There hasn’t been a 24-hour stretch in which we haven’t talked since... two Honeymoons included.

What does this all have to do with Sports Column and a new Hawkeyes podcast?

It was at SpoCo where I first introduced the Dave’s to one another. It was at SpoCo where we torched some dude who was a “Miami Heat” fan during the 2011 NBA Finals and got him to never come back again. It was at SpoCo where we would have our first “Big Beer” when we came back to campus. It was at SpoCo where we decided we wanted to start a podcast in the first place.

Sports Column is where we went for FAC and victory Saturday Nights. Sports Column is where we realized there’s nothing better in this world than sports and bullshit. Sports Column is where Hawkeye fans from all over have gone weekend after weekend to rehash their favorite moments in Iowa Athletics.

And we hope to give you a little piece of that same feeling during your long work week.

So, grab a beer, grab a coffee, grab a LaCroix and hunker down... this is SpoCo Radio.

For the technologically challenged, here are direct links to The Pants’ page on the major podcast platforms.

Apple Podasts

Google Podcasts

Spotify

Stitcher

RSS Feed

Love the podcasts? Hate them? The best way to let us know is with a review on your platform or in the comments below.

We’d also love to hear your feedback! What other content are you craving? What should we be doing different? Let us know!