Father and son draw audience talking sports on Internet radio

Bryan Feldman and his son Jaycob, or Jayc, 15, may have a home run on their hands, all without picking up a bat. The pair can be heard on the Jayc & Dad Sports Talk show from 6 to 8 p.m. Sundays on REALITY Sports Talk on Internet Radio at lvrocks.com.

They can be “liked” on Facebook at facebook.com/jaycanddad and currently get about 1,000 hits on their podcast.

The two hinted at a deal in the works with ESPN Radio but were not yet ready to announce specifics.

Feldman has more than 16 years of experience in sports broadcasting, most of it in the Detroit area. The idea for the father-son sports show began when a friend asked Feldman, who lives near Summerlin, a pertinent question.

“He said, ‘What’s your legacy going to be? Have you figured it out yet?’ ” Feldman said. “And ... that very night, I was looking at the sky, and all of a sudden, it just came to me: Jayc and Dad.”

That was in July. The inspiration morphed into a sales pitch, and by mid-September, the show had its initial broadcast.

Like many sports radio talk shows, it takes calls from fans and features interviews with sports figures. The interviews are done live, with the sports figure calling in. They’ve included: Lem Barney, a former Detroit Lion who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992; Pete Karras, son of former Detroit Lion and Hollywood actor the late Alex Karras; Randy Clark, son of former NFL player and coach the late Monte Clark; and Luke Curry, world champion powerlifter.

Jayc, a freshman at Centennial High School, brings a youthful exuberance to the show and sees things from a different vantage point. It’s different but knowledgeable, his father said.

“He knows a lot about sports,” Feldman said of Jayc. “I’ll listen to him talk, and I think, ‘What (is) he talking about?’ ”

Jayc shrugged off the praise.

“If I find something fascinating,” he said, “I’ll research it. We had Denny McLain on the show last night, and he’s the last 30-game winner as a pitcher. So, I went on the Internet to find out how many 30-game pitchers there were.”

His research included statistics from 1884 and pitcher Hoss Radbourn.

“Most of the time it’s just ... finding out the little details about them,” Jayc said.

One of those little details: The last batter McLain faced was the infamous Pete Rose.

Feldman uses his contacts in sports to get players on the show, but those shows do not always go as planned. When McLain was on, he used a cellphone, and his service kept dropping the call.

Another time, the whole two hours had been planned around Mike Dean, a friend and knowledgeable sports fan. The father-son duo was left to fill time when Dean never called in.

“He didn’t show up ... he didn’t call, nothing,” Feldman said.

Luckily, the duo can ad-lib without a hiccup. It turned out that Dean had a hernia rupture and was being admitted to the hospital.

One segment of Jayc & Dad is called the Father Son Spotlight. It includes a sports celebrity and either their father or son. Jayc is fond of asking what was their favorite sports memory from high school. He has played basketball and football.

“We have a very limited audience,” Feldman said. “Because of bandwidth, you can only have so many people calling in at once or they’re going to get kicked off. The podcast gets way more hits than the actual broadcast.

“With the Internet ... you’re not regulated by the FCC, so you can say anything and get away with it.”

The Federal Communications Commission might not be listening, but Dad is. Feldman doesn’t let Jayc use dirty words. In speaking of Lance Armstrong’s cheating deception, for example, they coined their own terminology: That bites my mule.

“We keep it PG-13,” Feldman said.

Legal correspondent Michael Printy, a Las Vegas criminal attorney and sports aficionado, covers pertinent legal issues as they arise in the world of sports.

Another segment features their NFL correspondent, Pete Chryplewicz, a former Detroit Lion and Notre Dame tight end, who keeps the audience abreast with what’s going on from an insider’s perspective.

He said the timing was right for a 15-year-old to be heard on air alongside his father.

“In today’s day and age, anything is possible,” Chryplewicz said. “There are no more boundaries. There are no more stereotypes or prejudices. ... They found a couple voices of reason who listened to their (pitch) and said, ‘You know what? This is a feel-good, do-good type of program. Why not put it on the air?’ ”

Jayc said he likes the idea for another reason.

“It kind of brings us together, and it brings other father-sons together,” he said.

Their show is scheduled to move to the 6 to 8 p.m. time slot Sundays on KLAV 1230 AM beginning March 3.

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Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.