This guy writes locally here in town, as well as doing sports-talk radio shows. Personally, I like his style, and have actually traded e-mails with him about opinions of college football... This is a pretty funny article, and worth the time to read it... Enjoy. ...
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September 25, 2008
A face for radio
By Paul Daugherty
[email="pdaugherty@enquirer.com"]pdaugherty@enquirer.com[/email]


Paul Daugherty got an extreme makeover for losing a bet to Carson Palmer. Photo courtesy of C. Trent Rosecrans.

SHAMELESSVILLE, Ohio - A good thing about writing for a newspaper is you don't have to paint your face. This wasn't about the newspaper. It was about radio, which is studio wrestling with a whip and a chair. There is no dignity in radio. Edward R. Murrow is dead. Howard Stern is not. You feel me?

This explains why I attended Carson Palmer's weakly, er weekly, news conference on Wednesday with my face looking like a rare tropical disease. "Your face looks like a rare tropical disease," Palmer said, or maybe he didn't. I was so humiliated, I could only hear my own shame drop.

A couple pieces of advice, kids:

Don't make bets that involve making you look dumb.

Don't bet on the Ohio State Buckeyes football team.

The Buckeyes are lumbering, dim-witted, slow-footed oxen. Their conference, the Big Fat Ten, is full of teams just like they are. Hitch them all to a wagon and send them to the Back Forty. "Send the Buckeyes back to Buckeyeville," as Palmer said.

I made the bet with the Bengals QB and Southern Cal alum in a moment of radio insanity. These happen occasionally, such as whenever the commercials aren't on. Over the summer, Palmer stepped out of his usual Diplomat Man mode to trash the Bucks on an L.A. radio program hosted by a friend and former teammate.

"I cannot stand the Buckeyes and having to live in Ohio and hear those people talk about their team drives me absolutely nuts," Palmer allowed. "I just can't wait for this game to get here, so they can come to the Coliseum, experience L.A. and get an old fashioned, Pac-10 butt-whipping."

That prompted an exchange between Palmer and me on the radio show I do on WLW-AM (700). (6-9 p.m. weeknights, quality programming, hot babes.) The wager was simple: After the Buckeyes went to Dudeville and smoked the hedonistic, Me-worshipping, godless Boys of Troy, Palmer would wear to his news conference an XXL Jim Tressel sweater vest.

If that somehow didn't happen, I'd paint my face in USC colors. Later, because he is a devious guy with a twisted sense of humor, Palmer tried to change the bet, to get me to paint my face Bengals colors. I'd rather have Bobbie Williams sit on me. No dice, dude.

You know the rest.

(At this point, I have to point out Carson refused to give me any points, even as the spread grew to double digits. Beneath that polite, Dude-Next-Door exterior lurks a no-account sharpie. I mean, the man sells suits from the trunk of his Mercedes 500 SL.)

I couldn't attend last Wednesday's press party. I had a medical procedure done that begins with "C" and ends with "get that thing away from back there." I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Or even on Carson Palmer. What was it? Can't say. Except it was something the Cincinnati Bengals have needed for 18 years.

My absence sparked much scorn from the QB. When your team is 0-2 and your passer rating is lower than Barry White's bedroom voice, you have to vent your frustrations somehow.

(Sorry, Carson. That was for giving Mike Vrabel points.)

Because I am a stand-up guy, because I have honor (can you have honor while losing all shame?) I went to the Halloween store and bought the requisite paint. I had my buddy C. Trent Rosecrans do a quick smear job. He's good at that. Then I crawled into Palmer's press deal like a baboon begging for a banana.

It was pitiful, it was pathetic, it took 30 years of carefully constructed dignity and flushed it. OK, so it was just pitiful and pathetic.

"This is great," the quarterback determined.

I'm paid up. Palmer has the pictures to prove it. My face is red. Permanently, I think.

At least C.P. has one win this year.