"They've done their best to keep the sports world on its toes."
Sports talk radio tends to be a bit predictable, if you stop and listen to it. You've got some really boneheadedly-stupid callers, with some really bizarre theories about sports.
Since keeping these callers / listeners happy means ratings, the host or hosts on the show immediately agrees with the caller, because that's really why the callers called in: to hear their voice on the radio, and for someone they listen to on the radio agree with them.
Boers And Bernstein, on the Chicago radio station The Score (WSCR 670AM), is not that kind of show. At all.
Hosted the titular Dan Bernstein and Terry Boers, the show's main draw is how the hosts interact with their callers, who rarely remember that these hosts won't simply agree with whatever they say. Depending on your bent, this is the draw of the show.
Boers and Bernstein contains examples of:
- Armor-Piercing Question: Dan has a lot of these, if he disagrees with a caller's statement. For example, if a caller says that fighting in the NHL brings about Team Unity, Momentum, and inevitable victory, Dan will ask the caller how a local hockey team succeeds if they don't fight. Or he'll point out that NHL playoff games are notorious for not including fighting. Generally speaking, the caller will then swear or sputter and get kicked off the air.
- Berserk Button: Dan does not like when he asks a caller a question about their statement and does not answer it. This is generally because said question will explore just how incorrect their statement was.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Their "signature segment" is called Who You Crappin?. Callers are encouraged to find something a sports person/entity claimed, explain why they are wrong, and end the line with "(Name}, Who You Crappin?". The segment itself was coined after Terry asked Mike Ditka to respond to allegations that he didn't have 'the fire', and Ditka pointed out that Terry regularly mocked Ditka's comments on 'the fire'.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Terry loves to act like this. A few examples:
- When watching sports, he claims to argue with his furniture. Especially his Ottoman.
- After saying "In my {sport} world", he'll follow it up with "Which is a very, very odd world, indeed"...
- Making gibberish noises in general.
- Cool Old Guy: Terry Boers is an older man, having covered most of the major Chicago sports teams during his career as a journalist. He's got a story about practically everyone he's covered.
- First-Name Basis: Not a hard-and-fast rule, callers who are fans of the show will call the hosts by their first name. Like, if the first person who started this article was a fan, and all the initial tropes mention Terry and Dan. The others, well... look below.
- Hate Dom: Dan's response to someone meeting him in real life and saying that they hate the show? Thank you for listening. He doesn't buy the idea of someone who angrily calls the show to promise they'll never listen again''.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Most callers use the default moniker of {Name} from {City}. The person who most defines this trope is Gary From Evanston
- Last-Name Basis: Callers who don't like the show will tend to refer to the hosts as Boers or Bernstein. This is frequently because
Bernstein is a Jewish name. Which has been brought up by callers. - Noodle Incident: The show has gone on for so long that the hosts will occasionally make reference to things that have happened off the air, or long ago. Most of them they can't say on the radio.
- Only Knownby Their Nickname: What, you don't know who Ten Foot Midget, Black Physicist, Maddox Boy, the Blind Chauffeur, Bichiro, Unemployed Lawyer, Quit Playin, North Side Fro Dog, or Mr. Mouth are? Even real names used can stick as nicknames, with Random Guy From Rockford will still be called R-F-R even if he moves.
- Only Sane Man: Both Terry and Dan, especially if they discuss topics that inflame the stupid. Chicago sports fans can be... not-so-bright.
- Schmuck Bait: Dan (sometimes intentionally) invokes this, saying something that he knows will rile up people to call in.
- The whole show, from one perspective. Why would a sports-dumb caller call into a show knowing he'll be mocked? Because he's convinced that he'll be the one that proves Dan and Terry wrong.
- Third Ranger: Jason Goff and Matt Abbatacola, the show's producers, are not ''technically' hosts on the show, but are practically that.
- Verbal Tic: Whenever anyone says anything about facial hair (or even tangentially related to hair at all), Terry will exclaim a wheezy BY CRACKY.
