A Tribute to Terry Boers

A Tribute to a man who opened doors for the odds balls of the world like me.

Photo by Frolicsome Fairy on Unsplash

Friday night I was out watching my child’s final basketball game of the season, cheering on the local middle school teams. Afterward we grabbed dinner with my daughter and her cheer team friends at Chick-fil-A, then headed home like normal — ready to feed the dogs and settle in for some light NFL reading before my Mad Dog Sports Radio Saturday show.

Once home, I started scrolling headlines when I saw the news: Chicago sports media legend Terry Boers had passed away at 75.

Boers was a long-time writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, but the reason I loved him was for his work on 670 The Score. That may not be a household name outside Chicago, but to me the man was everything.

I met him exactly once. He and his then-radio partner Dan Bernstein were doing a live remote from the Cubby Bear — circa 2003 — before a summer Cubs game. During a commercial break they came down to greet fans and sign promotional photos. I still have mine. I remember what Terry said and how he signed both pictures. Mine read: “Who Ya Crappin’” — a nod to one of the show’s most beloved segments. But the best was my buddy Bobby’s: “My Back Hurts, Terry Boers.”

That’s the Terry Boers I’ll always picture.

Terry Boers taught me it was okay to be weird.

Young me really needed that. I was hyper, weird, and obsessively locked into all things Chicago sports. I needed an outlet. I found one in Boers and Bernstein. To this day, I believe that show is the greatest piece of sports radio art ever broadcast. It was funny, it was witty — simply brilliant. Their staple segments like “High Noon” and “Friday Fung” were comedy disguised as sports talk. I came for the games, but I stayed to laugh.

That was Terry — a brilliant, lovable weirdo who could talk sports in a way that was as entertaining as it was insightful. I craved every second hearing him ramble, rant, laugh, and paint pictures with words about Chicago sports.

Terry Boers didn’t know me — and probably never heard my name — but he may be the single most formative man in my life outside my own family. For someone I met only once, he led me down the path that became my profession.

Terry Boers was my hero. I can’t be clearer. His show captured my imagination like nothing before. I would not be a sports talk radio host if Terry Boers didn’t exist. He was my inspiration. My motivation. He taught me there was a place in the world for people like me — people who were strange and loud and deeply obsessed with sports. He showed me weird could be cool. Weird could even be loved.

I am one eccentric son of a bitch. I blurt out weird stuff constantly. I can’t sit still. My humor is bizarre and often misunderstood. But any time I listened to Terry it felt like permission. Like it was okay to be a weird dude who saw the games in unorthodox ways. A guy who could make you spit out your drink at lunch and also deliver insight that stuck with you forever.

I started pursuing broadcasting at 11 in the Chicagoland area. I did a sports segment on my school’s public access TV show, then joined Libertyville High School Television, serving as a club officer and football and basketball announcer for our Jones Intercable broadcasts. I’m 5-foot-8, chubby, and slow. I loved sports, but playing them at a high level wasn’t in the cards. Broadcasting was my entry point. I knew that as early as sixth grade.

On the field I was destined to be Rudy — hanging around, maybe getting a fleeting moment of glory. But behind a mic? That was the magic. Broadcasting is the art of communicating through the air — the theater of the mind — a medium with a history that still feels mystical to me.

I found Terry Boers in high school. I’m a Scorehead through and through. 670 The Score — the greatest radio station on the planet — is what lit that fire. Terry was there almost from the beginning, one of the original hosts when The Score launched in January 1992, helping shape its identity for a quarter century. His partnership with Bernstein, beginning in 1999, became one of the longest-running, most beloved programs in Chicago radio history.

And that voice. That laugh. That irreverent, unapologetic, wonderfully strange approach to sports talk. It changed me.

Terry Boers made me believe I had a chance.

A man with endless quirks, wildly entertaining, and completely himself. He showed us everyone is weird deep down — so why hide it?

Weird is cool.