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O'Donnell: Don Imus and Larry Lujack both touched sports, but from very different baselines

NEW YORK HAD Don Imus, Chicago had Larry Lujack.

With the passing of Imus at age 79 last week, the question is inbounds as holiday games:

Who ruled?

Both hit the national Billboard radar during the age of Nixon as "irreverent regional deejays."

But both then moved up very different transmitters.

For national infamy, pillory-ready racism and a knack for making politicians and pop cultural grovelers with something to sell pander, Imus was the king.

If the call goes for tethered professionalism, a permanent world-weary attitude and enough self concept to come very close to getting off and staying off the high wires at the right time, Lujack gets the ring.

Both repeatedly danced around sports.

Well into his 44-year run in The Big Apple, Imus, by fate rather than design, wound up as morning man when Emmis Communications moved WFAN-AM - the nation's first 24/7 sports radio - down the AM dial from 1050 to 660 in 1988.

He also notoriously met his media Waterloo in April 2007 when he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

At age 67, by advertiser exodus alone, Imus should have been done.

But he wasn't.

After righteous ashcannings by both CBS Radio and MSNBC, Imus bobbed to the surface like a dead alewife with helium gills on Citadel's WABC-AM and the Fox Business Network.

In truth, his survival from the threshold of Obama to the reign of Trump was as much about the steel-walled polarities that were in the process of engulfing America as anything else.

Larry Lee Blankenberg - an Iowa-bred raised in Caldwell, Idaho - never seemed to have the same ravenous desire to soar or to offend as Imus.

He took his radio surname from Johnny Lujack, the great Notre Dame QB.

His constant refuge from the public puppetry of "Larry Lujack, Super Jock" was the golf course, quite frequently Palatine Hills, about two miles from his Northwest suburban home.

One of his recurring passions was his role as point guard on the WLS-AM "89ers," a traveling basketball outfit that included "Li'l" Tommy Edwards, Les Grosbtein and 6-foot-8 station promo man Ed Marcin.

He retired at age 47 in 1987, to move to New Mexico and, in his own words: "Avoid rattlesnakes and wait to die."

Except for two small-scale flings at long-distance comebacks on Chicago radio - via WUBT-FM (2000-01) and WRLL-AM (2003-06) - he almost made it clean before his passing in 2013.

Li'l Tommy, from his retirement villa in southern California, offered a perspective on Imus and Lujack this week, telling The Daily Herald:

"Both guys took their humor to the edge.

"I always felt Larry knew when to stop."

So, Don Imus or Larry Lujack?

It was always a question of taste - and whether you merely washed the white sheets or wore 'em.

STREET-BEATIN': The Bears' big postseason media session Tuesday played out as worthless farce. Biggest losers were George McCaskey and Ted Phillips - McCaskey is clearly juggling too many ghosts; Phillips is a capable money guy who apparently lacks the ruthless cunning of Don Vito Corleone's Tom Hagen. ... Speaking of cunning, is Chris Collins facile enough to mitigate away from the slow-sand of Northwestern men's basketball to become a prime candidate to succeed fading Roy Williams at North Carolina? (Schmock if you will, but Collins is highly regarded in the region and if he gets the endorsement of longtime family chum Michael Jordan, he's suddenly a serious play'ah.) ... When Bob Sirott signs on as the fresh good-morning voice at WGN-AM (720) next week, he'll be the eighth full-time a.m. host that Dave Eanet has worked with. The others: Wally Phillips, Bob Collins, Spike O'Dell, John Williams, Greg Jarrett, Jonathon Brandmeier and Steve Cochran. ... Industry experts report that the 40 most-watched sports TV events of the past decade (2010-2019) were NFL games. No. 41 was the opening ceremony of the London Olympics (2012) and No. 42 - hey-hey! - was the Jon Lester-Aroldis Chapman masterpiece in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. ... Veteran NBAer Jimmy Jackson - once the summer party king of Toledo - has become an excellent studio analyst on Fox's coverage of college basketball. (He's doing his homework.) ... To those who cashed on the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday: All gambling aces should have power alleys, even if it is 1-14 NFL teams in thoroughly meaningless season finales. ... Free consult to Michael Reinsdorf and staff: Those blue Bulls uniforms are seven shades beyond hideous on any Crayola spectrum. ... And gold-standard Pete Vecsey, on reports of Stephen A. Smith's new $10 million per-year deal with ESPN, told Sports Broadcast Journal: "I almost gagged on my Metamucil when I heard what they're paying him."

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.

New York disc jockey Don Imus died last week. Associated Press
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