While working at the Fort Lauderdale Improv last week, I got a chance to appear on the Dan Lebatard afternoon sports show. Lebatard, who is a great columnist for the Miami Herald and ESPN the Magazine, just happens to be one of the best sports talk show hosts around as well. I've heard his weekend show on ESPN Radio, and the guy has the rare ability of doing interesting sports radio without coming off bombastic.

So let's go down the list. Lebatard is a columnist for a major newspaper and is at the front of every issue of ESPN the Magazine. He fills in on PTI, the best show on the all-sports channel. He hosts a top-notch local sports show, plus a weekend program on ESPN Radio. He's got almost as good of a resume as Tony Kornheiser, which considering he's quite a bit younger and better looking than TK, could easily lend itself to ego-mania. But it doesn't. My experience with him was great.

Lebatard has a self-deprecating, laid-back style that makes him really difficult to hate, despite my natural inclinations. I respect how he has taken a contrarian view to a lot of the major issues of the day, unlike most columnists and talk show hosts who spew up the majority line just to pander to their audience. A good example of this was during a recent ESPN the Magazine column where he doesn't condone Barry Bonds' steroid use, and uses Chris Rock's great line about O.J. Simpson as an analogy: "I'm not sayin' he should have killed her... but I do understand." In the rush to judgement on many athletes, Lebatard is one of the few in the business who exposes how hypocritical we can be in our condemnations. (See this Miami Herald column for further evidence.)

Too many bloggers see the mainstream media as the enemy. While many of them are stuck in their old school ways, we need to celebrate the ones who regularly produce quality work. While I don't agree with all of his points, Lebatard generally gets it right.

So yeah, his life is better than ours, but at least as a sports columnist and talk show host in Miami, he has to cover the NBA on regular basis. From my view that is some punishment for the good life Lebatard lives, as I think I would rather cover the tarp at Pro Player's Stadium than cover the NBA.

At the ESPN 790 the ticket site for Lebatard's show, there are some really funny clips of The Juice comic favorite Frank Caliendo doing his thing. Let me suggest this clip as a starting point.