From Finebaum to Van Pelt to David Johnston to even your favorite podcast, the sports talk format is so widespread now as to be taken for granted. Every sports town has its sports radio station with opinionated hosts (well-informed or not) moderating a sounding board for fans.

If you’ve ever spent much time in this world, you might appreciate this long Grantland look at the format’s origins at WFAN in New York. You’ll also learn how Georgia’s own Mikael Pernfors, then the #22 tennis player in the world, figures into the story.

And then we start talking to Mikael and he was terrific. He went to the University of Georgia and I’m thinking about a Swede in Georgia and off the cuff I say to him, “Can you translate for us? What would ‘How ’bout them Dogs’ sound like in Swedish?” And it was something like, Hur bout de hundar? That became the official slogan of the show, and then 30 times a day we would play Mikael Pernfors teaching us all how to say “How ’bout them Dogs?” in Swedish. Now all sports talk radio shows have that stuff.