Corn Nation’s Top 5 Podcasts

All of us here at Corn Nation follow a lot of sports and a lot of different types of sports related media. One of which being the format of podcasting.

We are lucky to have our very own in house recording with Greg Mehochko’s Five Heart Podcast. I recommend you start listing if you have not. Greg does a bang up job covering Husker athletics and will occasionally get one of us writers on there to give our two cents. As you can imagine we are all fairly opinionated and that alone turns itself into some pretty decent entertainment.

So, Greg’s baby above is considered the holy grail of sports podcasting here at Corn Nation. However, it would be in poor taste to just add this one and leave everything be. Also, this article would be a lot shorter and I think the powers that be would take issue with that.

Anyway, we have gotten together and put together a list of our top five sports podcasts along with a few others we think you all might like. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Feel free to mention your favorites in the comments section at the bottom.

Patrick G.

5. ESPN’s Campus Conversation - The was originally the ESPNU College Football Podcast with Ivan Maizel & Beano Cook. They did it for six years before Beano’s passing back in 2012. It was basically Ivan bringing up current topics and games and Beano remembering Pitt & Notre Dame Football from the 1940’s and 1950’s. It was great and I miss those two together. Since then it has gone through a few different formats and Ivan is still apart of it from time to time. It’s still a decent podcast and I will still listen to it when I can but it get’s the #5 spot due to the inconsistent co hosts that bounce around the episodes.

4. The Solid Verbal - This was the very first podcast I got into back in the day. Ty Hildenbrant and Dan Rubenstein are still going at it better than ever for over a decade and show no signs of stopping. They’re both fairly insightful on the topics they tackles and have a lot of fun with the content during the off season so you’re not going to get bored with it.

3. Shutdown Fullcast - I’m not going to lie, this show can be a mess and that’s what makes it great. Spencer Hall, Ryan Nanni, and Jason Kirk plug through whatever they want and occasionally give you some insight to college football. They make it by the seat of their pants and somehow pull off a nice product. Something I do not think most people could do.

2. Big Red Cobcast - They left us a few months ago but I can’t stay mad. Pat Janssen, Ryan Tweedy and whomever else they bring on are all in the entertainment industry and it shows in their work. They talk Husker sports and whatever else comes to their mind during any of their episodes. Also, it is very well produced. The quality of the product itself is one of the best I have heard across podcast formats. They have put a lot of time and effort into their product and it shows.

1. Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody - Not only my favorite podcast but also the best one for college football across the board. Bill Connaly & Steven Godfrey are two very smart guys who know a lot about college football, media, and analytics that I can’t even fathom to gather & fully understand. They crank through a lot each episode and you never go away like you’ve missed out on anything.

Nate M.

I’m going to break the rules a little bit. I listen to a lot of sports talk radio, but when it comes to Podcasts there are only a few sports podcasts that I listen to. Here are my five favorite podcasts in no specific order.

5. The Tim Ferriss Show - I generally am not into Podcasts that routinely go over the two hour mark. But sometimes Tim Ferriss has guests on there like the most recent episode I listened to where he intereviewd Dr. Gabor Mate where he talked about childhood trauma and the root of additions as well as other things. It was eye opening.

Tim Ferriss interviews men and women who are at the top of their profession. You hear about habits and faults and sometimes you get real good advice. Because the episodes are so long, I have to pick and choose what I listen to.

4. The Lowe Post - I love the NBA and if I could have any job it might be doing what Zach Lowe does. He is pretty plugged in with NBA GMs, Scouts, Coaches, and Players. He really gets into the X’s and O’s of the sport and a lot of the statistical arguments. He frequently writes great articles that usually will have game clips of how teams defend certain sets, or what other team do to try and counteract with adjustments.

3. Catholic Answers - This will be short since I know politics and religion can be polarizing. But I’m a Catholic and it’s one of my favorite podcasts. It is just the podcast version of the radio show where Catholics, Protestants, Non-Christians, and Atheists call in with questions. Pretty simple. There I’m done.

2. Cinephile - This counts as a sports podcast right? Adnan Virk is a sports anchor on ESPN and hosts Baseball Tonight for the four letter network. The guy just loves movies and so do I. The reason why I enjoy his podcast so much is because he isn’t a pretentious movie reviewer. And from what I can tell most movie reviewers are quite pretentious. If a movie is coming out, I want to know what he thinks of it. He also sounds like a genuinely great guy who would be fun to hang out with and talk movies.

1. Astonishing Legends - Easily my favorite podcast out there. I wish I remembered how I found them but I have been listening since their first episode. If you are into scary stories/myths then you would like their series on Black Eyed Kids or the Mothman. Or if you like conspiracies or mysteries then you would like their series on Amelia Earhart or the two episodes on The Nazi Bell. If you are into UFO’s then there are several episode on there too. My favorite series was on the Dyatlov Pass which was about a group of hikers that died while camping in Russia. Based off the forensic evidence, the group appeared to have gotten scared by something and all ran off in different directions without any protective gear. What scared them?

The best part about the podcast is that the two hosts don’t take themselves too seriously. From time to time when they know what they are saying sounds ridiculous, which at times it definitely is, they just pause and say “Well if you believe any of this at all....”

Honorable Mention - Radiolab - This might not make sense but who cares. I think this is probably the “highest quality” podcast out there but I really don’t listen to it much anymore. I usually reserve this podcast for long car rides. The topics this podcast covers as well as the production quality is very wide ranging. They have had emotional topics like a child who dies of a disease and the video game the parents made to cope with that loss to a story about the bacteria that brought life to to this planet.

Uglydog56:

5) Timeout with Taylor Rooks. I enjoyed her interviews when she was on BTN, and followed her move to the New York area. I don’t really follow any New York teams, but her interviews are always fun and intelligent.

4) Sean Callahan’s Husker Online Podcast. Good for gleaning tidbits for recruiting articles.

3) The Nebraska247 podcast. Reporting on recruiting is like a second job!

2) World Cafe. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510008/world-cafe-words-and-music-from-wxpn

Yes, I know this isn’t sports related. For a long time, I had this ‘weird’ music on my ipod that no one else had ever heard of. Here, not only do they play those artists, they interview them too. I try to catch it on the radio in the evenings, but if I miss, then it’s to the podcast I go.

1) KRVN. http://krvn.com/krvn-podcasts/

Just because I haven’t lived in Nebraska since 1993, doesn’t mean I don’t need to know whether the Cattle on Feed Report is bullish or bearish. And one of these days, I’m going to win $8.80 on Monogram Money!

Again, let us know what you listen to in the comments below.