‘Dale from Boise’ caller to Paul Finebaum triggers investigation into Bryan Harsin’s dad
By Keith Farner
Published:
Paul Finebaum has certainly had plenty of memorable callers into his show over the years, but one this week may have reached into another category — the limited but notable family relative caller. Was it Bryan Harsin’s father amid the ongoing turmoil at Auburn calling to offer support for his son?
AL.com and KTIK radio in Boise have each looked into the possibility and have reported that there’s something to it. Finebaum even wondered the same thing, and briefly mentioned it on the show. The call begins at the 8:00 mark of Hour 1 from Wednesday.
“First time caller on the show,” Dale from Boise started. “Anyway, on the recruiting portion of it, it said he didn’t recruit very well. Well, I think he did a pretty good job recruiting some of these players. They don’t have to be star-struck with five-star ratings. They can be good players. (He) went after good players that want to play the game and not star-struck with their stars and stuff.
“I thought he did a pretty dang good job: Kellen Moore, Leighton Vander Esch, Jay Ajai.”
Finebaum’s interest was piqued by the authoritative way in which “Dale from Boise” made his points.
“I got to Dale from Boise and he’s talking,” Finebaum said Thursday to AL.com. “He’s saying a lot of very inside Boise State-type of things. He mentions Kellen Moore and these other things I was aware of when Harsin was the offensive coordinator. The tone was that Bryan Harsin was responsible for all the success out there, and I didn’t object.”
A spokesman for the station and “Sports Talk with Prater and the Ballgame” with Mike Prater and Johnny “Ballgame’’ Mallory said it is very much a topic of conversation in their market.
“This is where Harsin is from,” a station spokesman said. “Where his dad has a history of talking to the sports station, and (we’re) asking the same question. We feel pretty strongly that ‘Dale from Boise’ could have been Harsin’s dad.”
Finebaum admitted to having a “weird feeling” about the call.
“I didn’t know his dad’s name was Dale until later, but I was going to be respectful,” Finebaum said about the call. “This guy, obviously, is fan of Harsin or knows Harsin. He’s calling from Boise. When he hung up, one of my producers said, ‘Man, someone on Twitter just posted that was his father.’ I said, ‘You know what? I wonder if it was.’ We thought about it. But again, it was early in the show, the show moved on.
“Then, last night and this morning, I started getting texts from media friends of mine who said they had friends listen to that and they think it is Harsin’s father. I’m like, ‘OK,’ so I got to the studio today and we listened to that and we listened to some other tape of him from a couple of months or a year ago. I’m a talk show host. I’m not an FBI voice analyzer, but it certainly sounds like the same guy who was on television as Bryan Harsin’s father.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
