About the show
Where it all started
XTRA Sports 690 needed a morning host. Half the show was already in the building.
It’s Super Bowl week, January 2000. Scott Kaplan is driving to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa for the New York Giants Media Day.
The phone rings. On the other end is radio consultant Rick Scott, calling from Seattle. He tells Kaplan that XTRA Sports 690 is looking for a morning host, and Rick is recommending Scott for the job.
One half of the show is already in place: former San Diego Charger linebacker Billy Ray Smith.
Kaplan and Smith had met briefly in 1993, when Scott was an aspiring free agent kicker in Chargers training camp and Billy Ray was at the beginning of his post-football television career. It was hardly a memorable get-together. Kaplan was going to be cut before long, and BR didn’t talk to kickers — especially soon-to-be-released free agent kickers.
After considering a move from New York City to San Diego, Kaplan called then-Chargers kicker John Carney.
“I asked John, knowing me and Billy Ray, did he think it was a relationship that could work? John told me that Billy Ray and myself were polar opposites, but we would be great together, so I pursued it.”
“We went to New York with the expectation that we would eventually replace Howard as the CBS Radio morning show, but it all fell apart because of a lot of ego and personal issues around us.”
“I remember them telling me they were thinking of hiring a kicker, and I thought, well you’ll get the real athlete perspective, and the kicker perspective.”
Kaplan was available because his nationally syndicated show had been moved inside the CBS family from Miami to New York, and then, through a series of events he rarely discusses, started falling apart.
Billy Ray was already at work at XTRA. He had replaced Sean Salisbury, who left to become an NFL analyst for ESPN. A full-time partner had yet to be named.
Kaplan flew out for a one-week audition. On Wednesday, off the air, he asked Smith if he wanted to cover the Daytona 500. Neither of them had any real interest in the race, so the coverage was BR on guitar and Scott impersonating Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.
It was a brutal rendition. At that moment, everyone knew a hit show was born.