Thoughts & Prayers to This Radio Guy Who Quit Live on the Air Rather Than Have to Talk About the Browns

Source – John Lanigan’s long and distinguished radio career in Cleveland is apparently over. Again.

Lanigan, who retired from WMJI in 2014 after 44 years on the air on radio and television only to resurface on WTAM’s “The Spew” a year later, literally dropped the mic halfway through Wednesday’s live episode.

“Today I’m announcing: this is my last show. I won’t be doing ‘The Spew’ ever again,” Lanigan began as co-hosts Mike Snyder and Mike Trivisonno sat in stunned silence. “I’m quitting today. … Yep, that’s it, I’m done.

“This hasn’t been what I’ve found to be fun and I don’t think I’m smart enough to do it,” he continued. “I don’t really care what happens with the Browns. Politics doesn’t interest me that much anymore. There’s too divisive of an attitude in the country. So, I just don’t think I’m qualified to sit here and tell you that are listening what you should be thinking and what I believe is the way it should be. And I really found that to be a problem for me lately.

“I’m done. I’m retired. I haven’t been in Cleveland in quite a while, and I don’t plan to go back.”

Lanigan … did the “First Take”-style show remotely from his homes in Colorado and Florida.

This just goes to further prove that there is nothing on Earth so powerful – no contrivance of man, no force of nature, no majestic creature, no lengthy and distinguished career – that it cannot be utterly and irrevocably destroyed by the shittiness of the Cleveland Browns. They are a Black Hole, with a gravitational pull so strong nothing can survive it. Not light. Not the laws of physics. Not John Lanigan’s 44 year radio career.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered how media guys in terrible sports markets do it. For two years I was full time on Boston radio and it was just an embarrassment of riches. There might have been maybe five or six days in the course of a year where there isn’t much going on and you’re looking at each other saying “What are we gonna talk about?” The rest of the time I’d be like “Somewhere out there is a guy who does 20 hours a week in Salt Lake City. And once you’re done talking about the Jazz or BYU, what else have you got?” And here’s this radio lifer, sitting in Colorado or Florida who’d rather be unemployed than ruin an hour of his day talking about the futility of the Browns.

I’ve said it before and it’s never been more true than it is right now. The Browns are an abomination. Creating yet another Cleveland Browns after the legendary original franchise moved, was a violation of all ethics and an affront to God. And so has incurred His mighty wrath. And anything they touch becomes accursed. How many more good men like John Lanigan have to be destroyed before we realize that?