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Lining Up 10 Possible Replacements After Matt Cord Retires from Sixers Public Address Job
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Matt Cord announced this week that he’ll be retiring from his Sixers public address job at the end of the season. That follows 28 courtside years, minus the weird episode in 2012 when Tom Lamaine took over for a little bit before Cord won his job back following an open contest for the role. Super weird.
He’s currently hosting middays at 93.3 WMMR, taking over for the late Pierre Robert, who passed in October.
So who replaces Cord as the Sixers PA announcer? We’ve lined up 10 possible candidates.
1) Rob Strauss
Strauss is the Blue Coats’ PA announcer and back-up guy at Xfinity Mobile Arena. He’s filled in for Cord and does a good job. If you’re going the internal promotion route, Strauss would be candidate #1. Continuity and familiarity and all of that, right?
2) somebody from 97.5 the Fanatic
There’s a natural overlap between public address work and radio anchoring. Cord has been doing both for decades now at WMGK and WMMR.
If the Sixers want to go down this road again, they can look to their radio partner at 97.5 the Fanatic. Sean Brace has in-arena hosting experience with the Wings. Ray Dunne I think does Temple women’s basketball. They’ve got a lot of guys over there who know how to yap into a microphone and they would be good candidates for the job. Hell, I’d ring former 97.5 host Devon Givens and give him a tryout. Who says no?
3) David Dodge
He’s always been your next PA announcer, you just didn’t know it yet. The only problem is that he might fall asleep on the job, which would be problematic. Sixers brass would have to sit down and discuss the feasibility of hiring someone with narcolepsy, and if they don’t, isn’t that discrimination?
4) urologist Richard Harkaway
If the Sixers need a medical professional to flip the double birds at Russell Westbrook, look no further than urologist Richard Harkaway, who went viral for giving Russ the business a few years back. Harkaway told John Clark back then that he lost it after Westbrook made a weight comment about either himself or his wife.
By the way, you used to see the image of the double bird-flipping when you Googled Harkaway’s practice, but now it’s only normal photos. The good thing is that his Google rating has improved from 4.0 to 4.4:
5) Tom McGinnis
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Tom would be great for the job. He has energy, enthusiasm, and basketball knowledge. The only problem is that he’s great on the radio, so you’d be losing him there. Maybe there’s a way to clone Tom and have him do both jobs at once. Kind of like Dolly the sheep, but for basketball.
6) some fucking dork who loved The Process
“ACTUALLY – Robert Covington is the greatest 3 and D wing of all time. That’s according to Cleaning the Glass.”
This individual went to all of the Ricky Sanchez live events and knows everything about basketball. He can tell you T.J. McConnell’s 2016 assist-to-turnover ratio and name Hollis Thompson’s five best Sixers games. He wears his Embiid jersey over a white or gray sweatshirt, has a one-inch vertical, and can’t touch the rim if you put a ladder in front of it.
7) the guy who told Isaiah Thomas he just wanted a free Frosty
“When I missed the first free throw, and made the second, I’m running back, and a fan has both of us middle fingers up, and said (fuck you) three times. So then the time out (is called) and I go in the stands to confront him. I say ‘don’t be disrespectful, I’m a man before anything, and be a fan.’ And his response was, ‘sorry I just wanted a Frosty.’ Because if you miss two free throws, I guess the fans get a Frosty.”
8) Shawny Hill
Looking back at this now, does it feel like Spectacor did him dirty? The guy apologized. He even went up to the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown, which was ridiculous. But he lost his Wings job in 2019 and then departed the Flyers a few months later. Back then, he tweeted that “When the appropriate time comes, I can correct some misinformation and share my journey from this past season,” though I’m not sure that ever happened. I’ll take a look through the archives and see if we wrote a follow-up story.
Shawny is in Vancouver now and shared this on Wednesday:
note: I was gonna do this “Shawnee” Hill joke at the time, but decided not to. Not sure why. I thought it was a good one. Get it? “Shawnee” Hill? Maybe I felt bad for the guy because he made one insensitive comment in a fast-paced, live setting and got raked over the coals for it. “Cancel culture” was a bigger thing back then than it is now.
9) Tom Kline
He’s at every game to begin with, sitting in the front row. Why not just move him over a few seats and give him the microphone? He spends enough money on those tickets anyway; he deserves whatever perks he can get. Has anybody spent more on Sixers tickets over the years than this guy? He also has great hair:
10) Jose from Norristown
What up Embiid? What up Maxey? What up Edgecombes? What up Podcast P?
“We’ve got basketball action yo”
I’d go to every game if Jose was on the mic.
honorable mentions: Anna Horford, Dwayne from Swedesboro, Joe Cordell (of Cordell and Cordell), the “Unlike Agholor” guy, Barbara Bottini, Johnny Doc, Hunter Biden
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com