Date posted: 11-18-03

Editors: You are encouraged to use this story in your publication. Please credit the author and DeKalb News Service as shown. And, please send two tearsheets to: Jim Killam, Department of Communication, Watson Hall, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115.

1,500 words

Horse sense
From NIU to sports radio, Terry Boers never kept his opinions to himself

By Laura Grandt
DeKalb News Service

CHICAGO - Larry Horse is infiltrating Chicagoland.

He can be found spouting wisdom on signs at sporting events, bars and even on the filth clinging to a pickup truck. Umpteen listeners have called The Score, WSCR-AM, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to report the latest Horse sightings.

For the uninitiated, Larry Horse is NIU alumnus Terry Boers, who co-hosts The Score's midday show with Dan Bernstein. One day this fall, an angry caller was chastising Boers, while the whole time mistakenly calling him Larry Horse.

The alias has become an inside joke with listeners. During one recent show, the first caller said he'd gone to the DMV, trying to be the first to get Larry Horse license plates … only to discover someone had beaten him to it.

The Boers and Bernstein show has become a mainstay of the station, which broadcasts to the Chicago area and beyond, including DeKalb. Between serious discussions about Chicago sports, the co-hosts joke around and scold the "dumb."

On the same day the Larry Horse license plates came up, other topics included tort reform, Scottie Pippen's leadership of the Bulls resembling "The Andy Griffith Show," who should not be the Bears next head coach and how entertaining it would be to cover the Bulls this season.
Sarcasm drips. In fact, Boers and Bernstein have been criticized for the way they treat callers. Basically, they're not afraid to tell someone when they think their ideas are dumb. While that brings on-air criticism from offended listeners, it also endears the duo to many others.

NIU roots

At least part of that endearing quality finds its roots at NIU, where Boers studied journalism and launched himself toward an initial career as one of Chicago's top sports writers. Already married and with a baby, he transferred to NIU as a junior in fall 1969 after attending Prarie State Junior College in Chicago Heights for two years.

The Vietnam War was at its height, and sports were the least students' concerns. Boers and others would sit outside near the student union (now Kishwaukee Hall) and discuss what was happening in the world. The impending draft was one popular topic.

Even when the weather turned colder, the group would still meet outside about 2:30 or 3 p.m., when classes finished. Only when the weather was unbearable would they seek the sanctity of the warm Student Union.

One day in particular stands out in Boers' mind: Dec. 1, 1969. He was 20 years old, standing in the crowded Student Union with other men around his age.

Nervous, anticipating, sweating, Boers and the other young men crowded around a couple of television sets waiting for the numbers to be called.

The numbers meant staying home or leaving. They might mean life or death.

"You never saw so many people rooting about birthdays," Boers said.

That was how the draft order was determined. Birthdays were selected at random. The eligible young men who had the birthday that was selected first would be in the first group drafted for war. The ones who had the second randomly selected number would be in the second group, and so on.

Boers waited to see in what place Sept. 13 would be called. The room was tense, and so full that not everyone could see the televisions. The first date was called.

September . . .

"There was a lot of very sweaty-palmed people there, and I would be one of them," Boers said.

Fourteen.

Boers missed placement in the first priority group by one day. Sept. 13 was called 174 birthdays later. he never was drafted.

Aside from the drama of that moment, what Boers remembers about those discussions in the Quad is realizing he had an opinion of his own. He went on to graduate in 1972 with a degree in journalism.

That year, Boers began his first newspaper job: sports editor for the bi-weekly Sun Journal Newspapers in Lansing, Ill. He made $95 a week, and drove all over the southern suburbs and northwest Indiana in his beat-up Grand Torino to find stories and columns.

The 15 months Boers worked there had a lasting impact. He spent a lot of time with co-worker Randy Hellman. The two quickly became friends. Soon, Hellman started coming into the office less and less frequently. Boers had suspicions about Hellman's health, but Hellman downplayed those. For a while. It turned out he had cancer. Within six months of Boers finding out, Hellman died.

"I never quite got next to it, that he was gone," Boers said. He'd also lost his mother just before graduating in 1972, and would lose his father in 1974.

Since then, Boers admits he's had trouble letting people, especially those he works with, get close to him.

After Lansing, he worked five years with Star Publications' Chicago Heights Star, and then applied for a sports job with the Chicago Sun-Times. He didn't get it. Editors there told him he needed more experience. That experience would come at the Detroit Free Press, where Boers worked for 15 months covering baseball and college football, and as a copy desk editor.

The Sun-Times hired Boers in 1980, where he worked on the sports copy desk before he was assigned to cover the Chicago Bulls beat in 1982, a post he held until 1985. It was an interesting time for the Bulls, as in 1984 they drafted a 6-foot, 6-inch guard named Michael Jordan.

Boers also would cover the Bulls in 1991 and 1992, the team's first two championship years. During those years in between, he was a Sun-Times columnist.

In 1990 he won a prestigious Peter Ligasor award for a column he wrote about Harry Caray. The column thanked Caray for nothing. Boers could not understand what Caray said, could not understand what he did to deserve his status among fans and did not understand how, if Caray did not know the players, fans were supposed to.

Boers also won three Associated Press awards with the Sun-Times, one each in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Two of the awards were for general column writing. The third was for an investigative report on horse drugging in harness racing.

Making airwaves

While writing for the Sun-Times, Boers also began to dip into radio. From 1998 to 1991, he co-hosted WGN Radio's "The Sports Writers" program Sundays - one of the highest-rated weekend sports shows at the time.

During that time, Boers was also co-hosting Chet Coppick's show, "Coppick on Sports" on WLUP-AM. Dan McNeil was the show's producer, and that's where the two first met. There was an instant chemistry, and a friendship quickly sprouted, McNeil said.

McNeil would fill in as host when Coppick was gone, and soon realized he and Boers had radio chemistry. In 1992, WSCR was born as a low-power, low-budget sports station. McNeil was an original host, occupying the 2 to 6:30 p.m. slot. Boers was a guest on the show's first day, and many days thereafter.

"Oh my goodness, it was something special," Boers said sarcastically. "It was crazier than I have ever seen. I didn't know how radio worked, but I didn't think that was it."

There were few callers or equipment at the beginning. When there actually was a caller, the producer would hold a handwritten note against the glass. Today, caller information is passed via a computer screen.

In a decision he considers the best of his life, Boers quit the Sun-Times that year and signed on full time with The Score, co-hosting with McNeil.

"We just worked," McNeil said. "I don't know if there was any genius going into us being paired together, but it just worked."

McNeil credits Boers' passive views on some issues, his calm demeanor during stressful situations and the pair's unique dynamic for their success as radio co-hosts and friends.

"There was a real sense of trust both on and off the air," McNeil said. "There was not much of an occasion to fight about typical things hosts fight about. We passed the ball on the air. There were days when I would dominate the air, and there were days when he would dominate the air, and we were OK with that."

The partnership lasted seven and a half years before station management split up the pair.

"It was very difficult, because I feel we had some unfinished business," Boers said. He felt the show was only just becoming stable and successful when he and McNeil were split.

Boers went on to co-host with current partner Bernstein. McNeil was paired with Dan Jiggets.

McNeil said allowing the split was one of the things he regretted most. He left the station for rival WMVP 14 months later, partly because of management's decision to reassign the tandem.

Both McNeil and Boers have publicly and privately discussed joining forces again. The opportunity presented itself over the summer, when Boers was in contract negotiations with WSCR, but WMVP did not make a serious offer, McNeil said.

Whatever the station, Boers can't envision anything that would steer his career away from radio.
"It would take something fabulous, and I don't even know what that would be," he said.

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