Here’s the thing with Howard Eskin: when you mention his name, a lot of local folks will say something like “yeah but we heard he’s actually a good guy in-person.”

Maybe he is. Eskin is one of the few people in this racket I haven’t met or interacted with in some way. Some people who know him claim that he’s good-hearted. Fair enough. But others in the space think he’s an egomaniac dope who lambastes teams and players without seeking out all the facts and then shows up a day later and disingenuously tries to be buddy-buddy with them because he gets off on attention from famous people.

Ultimately, that’s Howard’s shtick: Be a douche publicly, but privately try to claim it’s all in good fun.

Happy to weigh in on the public part.

Here’s Howard on the radio on… checks calendar… early on Saturday morning, responding to a caller who brought up Kevin’s piece on sports talk radio callers:


“I don’t read the website All they do is put stuff up there to try to get people stirred up… when they put my name up there it’s just so they can get clicks.”

”The website of Crossing Broad is so insignificant in our world. Totally insignificant.”

Howard Eskin saying we write things to get clicks is like a urinal cake telling a fire hydrant he smells like piss. Howard has been the greatest sports talk radio troll for decades. Of course we write things for clicks (though I’ll note our business model is no longer predicated on this as we don’t rely on programmatic ads), much the same way Eskin has been throwing out half-assed, ill-informed hot takes for years. The problem is, Eskin never reinvented himself, and eventually more informed sports discourse exposed him for the clown that he is. Angelo Cataldi does the same thing, but the difference is Cataldi is actually entertaining.

And that brings us to point number two, which is insignifcance.

It was apparently without irony that Eskin uttered this somewhere between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, during that coveted time slot he has at the station where his son is the program director. I couldn’t imagine being that significant!

Eskin is often credited with working hard. Fair. I respect that he’s at virtually every Philly sporting event, even if he has no actual need to be there because, you know, he barely has an outlet, much less one that requires his presence. But he likes to see and be seen and then leave sometime during the game, unless it’s a situation where he can grill a GM or owner when the cameras are on. Or if he’s on the cross-field NFL on FOX shot with his colored Beats.

Eskin really isn’t relevant enough to get worked up about, but you know, I like the clicks.