The Best Voice in Radio You've Probably Never Heard Of

Over the last few months, ever since I got my new Elantra, which came equipped with XM Radio, Mad Dog Radio has become one of my favorite stations. While I love listening to Mad Dog, the voice I can't wait to hear every night is a man by the name of Dino Costa. He has finally started to get some recognition recently by being named the Dude of the Week in a recent New York Post. He has spent his time mostly in Denver working with Fox Sports Net Rocky Mountain before heading over to MDR where he does a phenomonal job of hosting his 8PM-1AM show. It is radio different from what you have ever heard. You are not going to hear it on ESPN because a) it would prbably get him fired and b) much of what he says is so brutally honest that a person on ESPN would probbaly receive some backlash or snubs from professsional athletes if they ever said the stuff that Dino says on air. One of his pet peeves is predictability and that's something that ESPN has that you're never going to get from him. Another thing I admire about Dino is how he cares enormously about his performance and the craft of sports broadcasting. He doesn't half-ass stuff like some of his peers do. He reads a lot before each show to try to give his audience different stories across the country in the sporting landscape. He also posts a lot of these articles, most of which are pretty interesting to his facebook page, so he really opens things up to his audience and a lot of the topics are hot-button issues that ESPN may tip-toe around. One of the more entertaining pieces of radio I've heard happened two months ago after Charlie Weis was fired. A Chicago-Sun Tribune writer, Rick Telander, wrote an article saying that ever hiring Weis was a mistake in the first place and insinuated that firing former coach Tyrone Willingham was a racist action. Telander in the following hour came on and got into a verbal spat with Costa which was definitely out of the ordinary and radio that was unprecedented to me. He also has criticized ESPN and some of the people on the station recently, by as I said claling it predictable and saying that they talk about the same thing all the time, particularly now with the Super Bowl and overanalyze it to death. In the last month, he has said Tony Kornheiser "has shit for brains", Suzy Kolber's getting old and Linda Cohn has to lose weight. As I told my friend the other day, he more or less walking a fine line between being an asshole and brutally honest, a role which I think he is totally content in. To me, he sounds like a sports version of Rush Limbaugh. He does a great job of thinking like a fan and I like how he openly shows his favorite teams and talks about how he's like teams ever since he was young and makes references to them. He can go on these legendary rants like the Rooney Rule one which makes him even better. If you ever get a chance, he is certainly worth a listen, because you never know what's going to come out of his mouth next. A lot of the things he talks about are sports and its impact on society which is a different approach that you're not going to hear about generally. The brutal honesty will make you question did he just say that but you'll soon learn of course he did. It's Dino Costa, one of my favorite voices in radio. He may be relatively unknown right now, but he may not be for long.