SEC Nation has built a cult-like following of southern football fans. You can add 92.9 The Game midday host Steak Shapiro to the list of those who admire the program.

While speaking with SEC Nation host Laura Rutledge Friday, Shapiro likened the Saturday morning pregame show to a morning radio show.

“The thing about SEC Nation — and having been on radio and programming stations for years — it’s the closest thing to a great morning radio show. It’s great chemistry. It’s the chemistry,” said Steak Shapiro. “Maybe ESPN, they won’t let you be quite as loose as how you built that thing, but like there’s an element of morning radio, like just a team that’s out there having fun every day.”

Rutledge shared her appreciation for the remarks from Shapiro. She admitted the SEC Network program brings some levity to her work, and she enjoys the cast of the program, which includes Paul Fimebaum, Jordan Rodgers, Roman Harper, Tim Tebow, and Marty Smith, among others.

“It’s so much fun to cover the SEC…that’s really where my career kind of started at ESPN and it’s something that you know means a lot to me,” Rutledge said. “It’s always going to feel like home to me. It’s always going to be my family, my SEC family. They’re a hoot and a half.

“The SEC Nation crew is hilarious. We have so much fun. And I was actually talking to Marty Smith about this last night. You know, one of the things that we’re really thankful for is we all kind of go our separate ways during the week, and we all have different roles and different jobs and different things going on in life. But then we come together on the weekend, and it’s just a blast, and we enjoy each other. I think that comes through on air, but it’s so authentic and it truly is kind of how we feel.”

Merrill Reese has been calling games for the Philadelphia Eagles since 1977, and he is in the midst of chronicling what could end up becoming a storybook season for the team. The Eagles are off to a 10-1 start, and many experts around the league surmise that the team could be a favorite to qualify, and ultimately win, Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.

He recently participated in an interview with Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, during which the venerated radio play-by-play voice was asked if he feels he can still improve as a broadcaster.

Within his answer, he described a book he read about former New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio, which divulged that “The Yankee Clipper” would feel as nervous before every game as he did during his rookie season in 1936. He can relate to the mindset approaching every game as he prepares to take the air. In fact, he views the weekly matchup as the most important game he has ever done in his career.

“I feel that way about a preseason game or a Super Bowl,” Reese said. “During the summer, I will go through three or four games and jot down notes how I used this word too often or I didn’t pick something up the way I wanted to. I don’t think my voice has changed. My eyesight is very good. I feel great. I’m doing what I’d rather do than anything else in the world.”

Although he had several opportunities to take his talents to the national level, Merrill Reese conveyed that he feels he has been fairly compensated enough not to leave the locale. At the same time, he also understands the unique facets of a radio broadcast that render it compatible with and enjoyable to the listeners.

“I love the fact that radio broadcasting is painting a picture,” Merrill Reese said. “I think the television guys do a great job, but it’s a little bit of a different job where you are captioning the picture. As a radio broadcaster, you call almost every step and every yard line.”

KNBR in San Francisco recently engaged in a round of layoffs that has affected the on-air lineup. Various on-air hosts from competitor 95.7 The Game addressed the staff cuts both during their programs and in social media posts. Damon Bruce formerly worked for the outlet and was let go as part of a lineup change earlier in the year. Since then, he has hosted his own independent programming distributed via digital platforms and took time to comment on what took place at KNBR, a station he used to work for as a producer.

“I don’t know if there’s a good time to lay anyone off, but just about to get into the month of December in-between the holidays is the biggest dickhead move any corporation can make,” Bruce said, “and you can see that these radio stations are owned by dickhead corporations.”

Bruce listed the employees and areas of the radio station that were affected by the move, including a producer and the outlet’s digital department. In fact, he chided the outlet for eliminating this facet of their coverage, referring to them as “morons” amid an era where digital content has been substantiated and inculcated within various sectors of the industry. For Brian Murphy, in particular, he just lost his morning partner of 18 years, something Bruce affirmed McCaffrey should be saluted for.

“Now I can speak from experience as someone who’s been laid off by a terrible corporation that I guarantee you what happened to Paul McCaffrey is the same thing that happened to me,” Bruce said. “A person who’s never listened to a show – not for a single day in their life – some accountant in another city somewhere just saw a number that they drew a red line through. Goodbye, Paul McCaffrey.”

Since the layoffs were announced, Bruce has reached out to McCaffrey and Santangelo and stated that he planned to put a call into Hammer. Moreover, he spoke with Murphy, who he surmises is going to take a few days to cool down before returning to the station.

A part of the layoffs that particularly bothered Bruce was the end of the 6 to 10 PM timeslot, which he used to host while at the outlet. Within his commentary, he conveyed that if KNBR had found a way to fairly compensate him, he would have remained in the timeslot for 35 to 40 years and been content with his role.

“I love an evening of taking calls and talking to fans and doing interviews and having an entire day of sports to look back on and an entire day of sports to preview,” Bruce said. “I love that timeslot, and it’s gone.”

Bruce is disappointed in the ramifications these layoffs have for the industry as a whole and expressed his concerns over finding the next generation of talent. He did acknowledge, however, that there are a variety of prospective talent hosting programming in the evenings and working to prove themselves. His concern in all of this is where young broadcasters will be able to broadcast on the air due to the elimination of evening and weekend programming.

“If all you’ve got on a radio dial is morning, middays and afternoon drive, those are usually always occupied by experienced people,” Bruce said. “How do you get experience? So we now live in a world where YouTube is going to matter more than ever before to not just up-and-coming broadcasters, but broadcasters that have been disregarded; broadcasters that have been laid off and people who want to do this.”

Within his YouTube segment, Bruce spoke directly to hosts in the San Francisco market from his experience and explained how a round of layoffs from five to eight years ago that let well-compensated professionals let go caused them to be replaced by young, inexperienced decision-makers. Because of the lack of experience and proficiency in the craft, he affirms that the new people in charge do not know what they are doing because they have not done it long enough and are simply focused on profitability and the bottom line.

“Radio’s over; it’s dead,” Bruce said. “And if anyone at 95.7 The Game is listening to me right now, if any remaining host at KNBR is listening to me right now, if any actual radio host is listening to me right now, I’m telling you you get your backup plan ready because that red line is coming for you. And it’s coming for you because there is middle-management corporate bloat that is part of the reason why these stations can’t figure it out.”