Podcast: In celebration of our 10th anniversary

By Jessica Roberts on April 30, 2022

Back in August, 2011 three chuckleheads moved onto the fourth floor of Gannon Hall at Washington State University’s Pullman campus. Those three chuckle heads liked sports, arguing with each other, drinking, and playing Halo. Within the first two weeks at school, I made my way up to KUGR’s studios and happen to run into the at the time program’s director and talked myself into the training that he was just about to start.

I wrapped up our first broadcast season on the internet station in May, 2012.

It’s been a decade since our last 8 AM broadcast on KUGR radio — that start time was a mistake only a college freshmen would make. We broadcast 100 episodes from the studio on the third floor of Murrow Hall and won a whole heap of awards in our final year. This blog exist because of a desire to promote the radio show as well as provide links and information to back up our takes.

In fact, the blog’s first purpose was to update my friends and family on the fact that I was struggling to get access to the studio due to KUGR’s antiquated card swiping setup. Eventually I was able to work with the engineers to get a code which allowed us to get into the studio for our first broadcast.

The sports landscape in Seattle, and Pullman, was so insanely different at that time. Paul Wulff was in his make it, or break it, year on the Palouse; the Mariners were relying on Dustin Ackley, Kyle Seager, and the three headed monster of Cerberus down in Tacoma for their future; it seemed highly unlikely that Pete Carroll’s second stint in the NFL would find consistent success — the playoff run that led to BeastQuake seemed like a fluke; the Sounders were still insanely new; and the Storm “only” had two championships.

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While Ackley flamed out, both James Paxton and Taijuan Walker have had success in the majors; Seager recently retired after an 11 year career spent in the Emerald City. The Storm have won two more titles (2018 and 2020) while the Sounders have picked up a pair of their own as well. Carroll took the Hawks to back-to-back Super Bowls, winning the first and we’d prefer not to dwell on the second one.

As for the Cougs, Wulff was fired and Leach was hired. Which led to the longest string of bowl games in program history, despite a historically bad decade in the Apple Cup. Both Washington State basketball teams are poised or greatness, the soccer program has a real shot at ending the school’s national title drought, and baseball is trying to dig it’s way out of the hole that Donnie Marbut’s final three seasons dug it into.

And throughout all of this, we’ve been along for the ride over here at Sports with Neil and friends.

Since we’ve graduated from college, we’ve gone off in different directions. Victor works for a TV Station in the Tri-Cities. Gibby lives in the Tel Aviv, and I am a utility worker out of Lynnwood. I’ve had to come to terms with my sexuality (bisexual) and my gender identity (transgender woman) while at the same time battling a pretty intense health scare that played a major part in the lack of content in 2019 and 2020. Life has thrown challenges in my direction, well everyone’s really….with the pandemic.

But we all came together to celebrate our 10th anniversary and reminisce about our time in on the radio…along with some college adventures that our parents probably would rather never have heard about.

Gibby isn’t the only one who’s making their reappearance on the show. We also brought back Matthew Zimmer, Brett Gleason, Jessamyn McIntyre, Brian Floyd, and Jeff Nusser to celebrate the the anniversary. These five are a small sample of guest we’ve had in our ten years of broadcasting and we’re grateful to those who came on for the anniversary podcast; along with those who have come on in the show’s history.

In celebration of our 10th anniversary – Sports with Neil and friends

It's hard to believe it, but were celebrating our the 10th anniversary. What started as a college radio talk show has turned into a podcast and blog that you are enjoying today. To celebrate our anniversary we recoreded interviews with Matthew Zimmer, Brett Gleason, Jessamyn McIntyre, Brian Floyd, and Jeff Nusser. These five are just a small sample of the incredible guest we've had on over the years and we're incredibly grateful to each and every one of them.