Tuesday Morning Bedtime Story: “Suck my D_ck”

Ok… think back and remember more than a decade ago.. When the Miami Dolphins were in the hunt every year. When they were the “winingest team in football”. When they were a contender every year. Before 26 quarterbacks and 6 head coaches. Before they went 12 years without a playoff win. When Dan Marino was still the QB and Don Shula was still the head coach.

Remember those days? Before this year’s college freshman were even born yet.

From the day I arrived at WIOD as an intern until the day I was hired as the Rick and Suds Morning Show producer, I was involved with every single Miami Dolphins Football Broadcasts in one way or another.. First I dealt with the tailgate parties put on by WIOD (This was back in the days before the Dolphins were even involved in tailgating…so we did everything. We had Flannigans out there serving ribs and beer, we had a stage with a band playing music on it, we had booths with skills games for prizes, and face painting and all that jazz), then it was the Post Game Show producing with Kim Bokamper in a closed, locked, dark empty stadium for 4 hours after the game ended, then the pre game show. And I was one of 4 producers out at the stadium for 12 hours putting together the Dolphins Draft live broadcast.

After the game on the network, but before the local Post Game Show, was the “Locker Room Show”. And Maddog would head downstairs from the broadcast booth, leaving about 2 minutes before the game even (ever notice he was missing on air for the end of the game?) So Jim would head on down to the locker room, and the producer would listen in the headset and head Jim down there, talking and schmoozing, and on wins he;d be congratulating them and they’d be slapping him on the back. He was a really well liked guy. And Jim would say, “I’m gonna talk to Danny here in a sec, as soon as you can get to me” and the producer would flap his arms at Rick Weaver or Bill Zimphir or whomever the play by play guy was upstairs still in the booth and point to a pieces of paper he’d written “MARINO w/ MADDOG – NOW!” and Zimphir would stop citing stats of the game and say “Our own Jim Maddog Mandich is downstairs in the locker room with Dan Marino… Jim?” And Jim would interview Danny, and say “I’m gonna try and get over and talk to Bryan Cox next.. Back upstairs to you Bill” and he’d cite more stats and take a commercial break and the producer would listen in as Maddog roamed around a very crowded locker room looking for guys to talk to.

So that year was NOT going well for the Fins. They’d lost like the last 3 games in a row, and everyone was all over them about it. The Dolphin’s own flagship hometown radio station was one of the worst offenders.. You had Neil referring to Coach Shula as “The Brainstem” and just trashing the team any chance they could. In mornings, Rick and Suds were talking to the coach every Monday Morning at 7am, and it wasn’t going well. Before they’d taken over mornings, it was Uncle Mike Reineri and Sonny Hirsch talking to the coach…3 old white men talking sports. It was like 3 guys in towels at the Elk’s Club. But now those goofy, non-sports nerds young guys who made people stand in fire ants for money and destroying phones in blenders doing the interview, and every single interview could have ended with the Coach yelling at Rick and Suds to “Get off My Lawn!” The coach really doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. He seemed like a really good guy and all… but his sense of humor was more akin to Steve Allen, and Rick and Suds were like David Letterman and Paul Schaeffer. It was oil and water. It was my job to call the coach in his office at 7am.. And he’d been there since like 5. He always picked up the phone on the first ring, and was always very cordial to me…and I was VERY cordial to him. “Good morning coach. Congrats on the win. We’ll be ready in :30 seconds, please hold” and I’d put him on hold and he’d hear Rick and Suds wishing people “Buttloads” as they talked to a guy who was planning on drinking milk until he vomited… but I digress.

Now, as I’ve said, once I started working for Rick and Suds in Mornings, I wasn’t always involved with the Dolphins Games because on a Sunday night or Monday Night game, it was too late in order to get up at 3am. So I’d do pre game show stuff. And as soon as it ended, I left the stadium and did whatever; sometimes watch the games on tv, or work for the next day’s show, etc. So I didn’t hear it happen. But I helped with the aftermath.

From what I know, the beating the Dolphins were taking from the media, and us especially, was starting to weigh on the players, most specifically Bryan Cox. Every missed tackle, every failed goal line stance he’d be ridiculed on air about. So when the Dolphins finally won a game, Maddog was all smiles heading down to the locker room. And he gets in front of Bryan Cox, and asks him if he’s happy about the win.

In those days, it was a decade before Janet exposed her hooter to the entire world at the Superbowl. We ran the games LIVE on the air, no delay. Its a live event, newsworthy, and we didn’t take any calls. We wanted the TV to match the radio so people could listen to our colorful broadcasters describing the game over the boring TV guys who show video and then reiterate what you just saw.

Now, I didn’t hear it happen.

But when I got to the studio the next morning, the guy running the board overnight (I cant remember if it was Fred Sowder, or Mike Bohan or Ray Trujillo) happened to just ask me matter of factly that if I heard Bryan Cox curse on live air during the locker room show.

We tape everything from the games back then on big, hour long reel-to-reel machines. The sports guys would need to cut up certain plays or interviews for the whole week’s worth of SportTalk610 shows and the Coaches Show etc. So at 4am, I go into the sports office and grab the reels.

And there, plain as day, I hear Maddog do his lead-in, and ask Bryan Cox if he’s happy about the win.

“I’m happy. I hate WIOD. Suck my d_ck, but I’m happy”.

Bryan Cox is Happy - Neil’s Nuggets 1996 - Track 1

And Maddog ignores it because he know’s he’s live on the air, and continues the interview. I don’t know if Bryan knew we were live or not; not sure he would have cared.

So I carted it up, bleeped. From Maddog asking “Hey Bryan, are you happy? To the end of Bryan saying “…but I’m happy”. When Rick got in, he’d heard about it already and asked me if I had it and I handed him the cart. And he played that thing as part of the recap of the Fins game about every 25 minutes.

When Jorge got there, he just went ahead and carted up the “Suck my d_ck” part too. And Neil had a goddamn FIELD DAY with it. Every caller heard it as they got hung up on. “Hey Neil, your’e a douchebag!” - “Suck my d_ck” Click. Four hours of both versions being played over and over, and Neil ranting about Bryan Cox’s potty mouth and lack of respect for the Maddog and the fans and it made, what could have been the temporary end of the non stop ripping by WIOD of the team, into an even BIGGER reason to just abuse them. Neil suggested that maybe Bryan wasn’t getting any at home and that’s why he’d asked Maddog… I mean the guy’s last name IS Cox…

So after Neil is Phil Hendrie… and of course, Phil does what Phil does best by putting a very unique twist on an already twisted story. He plays the carts, and talk about it, then brings in Jim Mandich.. Well, sorta… In Hendrie style that is.. He interviews himself as Jim Mandich. And then Bryan Cox comes in (again, Phil) and he turns it into a lovers quarrel between Maddog and Bryan captured on tape front the locker room; Bryan propositioned Jim Mandich. And it was FREAKIN HI-LARIOUS. GENIUS. It’s not like Phil’s voices sounded much like either Jim or Bryan.. Hell, he did those same voices for two of his own regular characters. Phil isn’t an impressionist.

A couple of days go by and Guitar Man has a song and Boca has a song and and everyone who did parody songs had their own version about the incident.

Sometime after that, the lawsuit was filed by Bryan for defamation against Phil and Cox and WIOD. His kids were getting ridiculed at school because we were saying he was gay, and hurting his image and all this other stuff. I only know about the lawsuit by what was written in the paper; I wasn’t involved in it at all. I think the lawsuit was eventually thrown out because Bryan is a public figure and after what he’d said on live radio, everything after that was considered parody.

One line, in 2 seconds uttered decades ago, that we all remember.

My parents remember “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You”.

Their parents remember “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

And for me, I remember “Suck my d_ck”