The 15

If you’re a regular reader of The15Net.com, you’re familiar with the phrase ‘Boston Sports Media is an incestuous cesspool’.

This has never been more true in the case of the most recent “retirement” (Kathryn Hahn Wink Dot JPG) of Glenn Ordway, 21st Century radio’s answer to “What if Eddie Andelman’s Sons Don’t Take Away His TracFone?” Glennie always loathed Eddie, which is amusing because Ordway is what he loathed.

A Steve Buckley comparison to WEEI Ordway 2.0 could be elderly Willie Mays falling on his face during the ’73 World Series, but OMF isn’t close ratings-wise for any playoff. OMF Ordway is staggeringly bad, but Glenn’s bloated ego is worse. He’s 1510 The Zone Eddie Andelman, just not as interesting. Ordway’s legacy is more complicated than Steve Buckley’s Athletic fluff job and Pissant Alex Reimer’s fawning piece on the unvisited WEEI.com would have you believe. Boston media might be the only free market where competition doesn’t improve the product. Boston media is insular. They don’t want to improve, compete, or be criticized; they want to keep their gigs without any heavy lifting. That is Glenn Ordway’s Boston Media legacy. Chisel that one on his gravestone.

The lack of anyone in mainstream media to offer criticism – spare me Charred Finn and Pissant Reimer, PR flacks under the guise of media critics – enables this. Paraphrasing Finn as done on the late BJBSJournal.com: Boston Sports Media is a family. A Crime Family.

Glenn Ordway was smug Senator Geary after meeting Michael in Tahoe. I’m not saying he murdered a prostitute in a brothel, caller; I’m just asking the question. (That’s how you do it, right, Glenn?)

Ordway was a man with no term limits in a one-party state. Never as smart as he thought, Ordway was caught off guard and gassed for Mike Fucking Salk at the end of his first run at EEI. He was relegated to the internet – a platform he once mocked – to do shows with guests bribed with expired gift cards.

OMF Ordway 2.0 never mattered. He was handed a guaranteed contract given by inept, desperate Entercom management, and he mailed it in daily. Ordway 2.0 was Pablo Sandoval.

Ordway is the Godfather of modern Sports Media in Boston. That’s not a compliment.

He double-dipped on his duplicity by going all-in on a ticket scalping scheme with his friend/co-host Fred Smerlas in the mid-nineties with the “Patriots Tailgate” glorified tent at Rodman Ford – a vendor Ordway had in his hip pocket – where they marked up tickets to Parcells/Bledsoe era games at Foxboro Stadium by multiples of multiples in exchange for lukewarm hot dogs and potato salad while Steve DeOssie sweated on patrons inhaling his cigar smoke.

Ordway was a staunch Bledsoe over Brady guy and mocked his audience for suggesting otherwise. Good call, Fredo.

Ordway gave Dan Shaughnessy and Ron Borges additional prominent platforms. He did the same for Alex Reimer and John Tomase. Two-thirds of the Unholy Trinity of current Boston radio, Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti, were regulars on the old Big Show. The Big Show was dreadful performance art. Facts didn’t matter, strawmen and fabricated narrativez did. The Whiner Line existed in no small part because the hosts weren’t funny or smart enough to create their own material. Ordway made a living for close to 50 years making fun of athletes, managers, coaches, and GMs, yet when BSMW’s Bruce Allen offered mild, thoughtful criticism of him on a website Glenn claimed nobody read, he would spend segments railing against Bruce and his Boston Sports Media Watch site. No one was more thin-skinned than the Big O.

Ordway the Program Director repeatedly killed Ordway the host, failing to see where media was headed as early as 2001 and derisively casting aside bloggers like Allen, Bill Simmons (I know, I know) and Dave Portnoy as losers in their mother’s basements. I’ll guess Ordway didn’t possess the self-awareness to see the irony when he was relegated to his wife’s attic for the Big Show Unfiltered podcast, which was less successful than The Gerry Callahan Q-Anon Hour sponsored by Shea Concrete, The Greg Bedard Podcast or Entitled Town.

Despite this, Ordway owns a house overlooking the ocean in Cohasset, proving a sucker is born every minute.

Ordway took a farewell tour when he got fired for Mike Salk 8.5 years ago,but yet again Ordway is getting thrown out on his ass due to illness: Listeners are sick of him. (Apologies for recycling a Howie Carr joke.) For most, getting fired again for underperformance after being replaced by Salkie and then being teamed with two ex-jocks on a fourth tier radio station would be shameful, but Glenn Ordway is incapable of shame.

Ordway was an exceptional opportunist, give him that. He was an outrage profiteer, feasting on the misery of his customers. If that is a talent, he’s talented. If Ordway is the Godfather of anything, he’s the Godfather of Gaslighting.

He’s Exhibit A for the prosecution in the landmark Turn Off Your Radios case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Seriously. Turn off your radios.