SUKES OF HAZZARD

Primetime With The Sukes Of Hazzard. No Isaac?

Athletes convey confidence. They ooze it.

The greater the achievement, the higher the confidence. And much more oozing.

Radio guys either bring the ooze, or they learn it well enough to fool the rest of us.

Big Suke of Portland sports talk radio seems to have done both.

From 1080 The Fan.

Monday through Friday, 3-7pm
Portland’s most popular sports talk show is Primetime with Isaac & Suke. Hosted by FAN veteran Isaac Ropp and former pro football player Jason “Big Suke” Scukanec, Primetime explores the angles behind the day’s hottest topics with big-name guests. During the last hour of the show, the guys take off their shoes, grab a beer and show why they’re the most versatile hosts in sports radio with Club 1080.  Primetime with Isaac and Suke – for a decade, Portland’s listening habit for the drive home! Email Primetime here.

Hard to top, but Big Suke did it. With Isaac gone, he hosted with big Brother Suke.

Quick history: I’ve listened to this time slot on 1080 since the big show with Mychael Thompson and Kermit Washington. Now ten years with Isaac & Suke?

If it’s another ten years with Sukes of Hazzard I won’t be shocked. What makes it work so well?

Big Suke talks good sports. His specialty comes from the Ed McMahon school of second banana: he leaves room for the other guy.

For a couple of days he’s been the other guy, the lead while Isaac’s out, and he’s that much better. Maybe it’s having his older brother on as his 2?

Their brotherly love for one another rolls out of the car speakers like a Billy Sunday sermon to the converted masses. You expect confirmation but get so much more.

The Sukes of Hazzard makes you feel like family.

They don’t ask you to understand their topics and takes. That you’re sporty enough to 1080 on the AM dial says enough.

This is Portland’s ESPN/Disney affiliate. It’s NBC/Universal. It’s Comcast/Sportsnet.

This is big time sports talk radio, brother. If you don’t like sports, play OPB.

And here come The Sukes of Hazzard, drowning out sports’ corporate structure with their brand of radio.

Since the audience expects sports talk when they tune in, they make room for non-sports talk from the two college and pro football brothers.

They may not talk sports but it’ll be a competitive topic with brotherly competition, which is even better.

The show came out of a commercial break early and Brother Suke asked Big Suke who he was texting.

He broke the radio wall the way TV and movie actors do when they talk to the camera instead of each other.

Maybe it’s the brother thing, of maybe it’s genius staging of the Sukes of Hazzard, but the most important thing right then was who the heck Big Suke was texting during a professionally produced radio show.

1080 The Fan blew up my radio.

For the next ten minutes the Sukes of Hazzard, mostly Big Suke, extolled the virtues of the crock pot and slow cooking.

Cooking? On sports talk radio? We’ve got a deal at my house: I pretend to like the Food Channel; my wife pretends to like sports talk. Now Big Suke’s talking food?

It was only the best sports talk radio segment of the week.

Instead of Wesley stays or Wesley leaves for $15 million, it was how to cook ribs in a crock pot. Will LaMarcus stay or will he go wasn’t more important than getting the right rub for a rack of ribs.

“I’ll bet there’s someone in their car right now thinking they’ll drag the crock pot out for another try after healing this.”

That’s just what I was thinking.

“Someone will stop and buy a crock pot on the way home.”

They’d better if they expect to cook the ribs Big Suke cooks.

He was texting home to make sure his kid got the crock pot set for dinner when the show came back from break early. That’s one of the lucky breaks for the rest of us.

1. Buy rack of ribs and rib rub.

2. Cut ribs to fit crock pot, rub rib rub on the ribs.

3. Set the ribs inside the crock pot and slow cook for six hours.

4. Pour off the fat and juice, roll ribs in bbq sauce.

5. Slow cook another two hours.

6. Dinner.

Thank you Sukes of Hazzard.

It was ‘must listen’ radio. Maybe it’s just me but how many married guys like cooking just to annoy their wives?

She’s got the cutting boards. You didn’t get knives for wedding gifts because she had more than one set.

When you start chopping veggies with the amazing ginsu/bread knife, she laughs.

When you switch to her knives she buys you one on your next birthday/father’s day/ Christmas. she didn’t say don’t use my knives, but her gift did.

The only time you touch her knives now is to sharpen them.

Now the Sukes of Hazzard and 1080 The Fan provides new weaponry in the kitchen.

I look forward to explaining how I discovered a new lease on the crock pot.

“See honey, the Sukes of Hazzard are two brothers on The Fan, the radio station I auditioned for.

“Big Suke’s the regular. Brother Suke is standing in and killing it.

“What? No honey, it’s not Jim Rome. Not the same station. I don’t know if Jim Rome has a brother. If he did the two of them wouldn’t be better radio time than the Sukes.

“Big Suke says he’s not a cook. Where was he supposed to learn how to become the next Wolfgang Puck? But he’s figured out slow cooking and so have I with his help. You’ll love these ribs.

“What? You’re making tuna tacos instead? You’ll be sorry.”

(a version of this posts appears on Oregon Sports News.)