You shouldn't be sorry. You should be ashamed.
2025-2026 Leafs Season
- Thread starter glamphotographer
- Start date
Sportsnet fired him for something that happened in Las Vegas a few years back. He now has a podcast called The Sheet
I know he was the king of sports radio in Toronto for a bunch of years, but I didn't like him at all - I found he treated his staff like trash and his ego was ridiculous. He rarely remembered names and was ill prepared, but always got by because he was the best in sports talk at winging it. His producer was a MVP - got killer guests all the time and somehow dealt with that ego for over a decade.
I didn't like him either, especially when he did radio after his T.V. show.
He just became a caricature of himself.
His conversations and ramblings became heavily weighted on the business side of sports and sports gambling, way to cynical.
He became obsolete way before his days were over.
I'd argue he was ahead of his time on sports gambling when you consider how proliferated it has become. Where he always lost me? He was so arrogant that he thought listeners, especially at the end of his tenure, were interested in things like boxing and golf on a network that had juwt won the NHL deal. Why? Because that's what HE wanted to talk about, current sports events be damned. That all said, he consistently had the best ratings of any AM station during key prime hours. It gave him incredible leverage to keep doing whatever the hell he wanted.
The problem was his compensation. He was the highest paid personality at Rogers and that bothered some people high up - when Scott Moore left Rogers, McCown lost his bodyguard. As soon as McCown's numbers started to dip (with Overdrive taking some of the listeners) they couldn't have been happier to get rid of him.
Man just once I'd have like to see the guy thank his producers once. Man was he a prick.
Definitely ahead of the curve on sports gambling, but his whole approach to sports became cynical because of it.
Some TV/radio personalities are quirky as fuck but they can draw you into their world because they're so interesting and likeable.
McCowan was neither IMO, for all the reasons you mentioned.
I will give him props for being a pioneer though.
