Sports feud: The Sacramento Bee vs. KHTK 1140

Did a Sacramento Bee sports editor really call and curse-out staff on Don Geronimo’s KHTK radio morning show last week? And did he do it twice?

Or did host Geronimo and his motley colleagues fabricate the recording, the latest in a spree of hijinks since the show premiered on air early last summer?

The Don Geronimo Show producer Joe Pittman claims that Sacramento Bee sports editor Tom Couzens first phoned into the show last Wednesday morning, February 22, and unleashed an F-bomb laden missive on a screener:

“This show sucks. How the fuck is this guy still on the air? Get this guy off the fucking air.”

The caller ID was initially blocked, but the screener checked station records and was able to retrieve the cellphone number that made the call. He wrote it down.

So, two days later, on Friday, February 24, when the same number called the station again—“This show fucking sucks”—a screener called the number back. It went to voice mail—Bee sports editor Couzens’ voice mail.

SN&R spoke with Couzens this past Monday, and he adamantly denied making the calls.

“I don’t listen to his show,” Couzens said. “I didn’t make those calls.”

Pittman insisted, however, that the calls are real and that KHTK did not fabricate them. Host Geronimo even called the number on air and briefly played Couzens’ voice mail before leaving this message:

“Are you looking for me big boy? Are you looking for me you piece of crap?”

He also trashed Couzens on the air: “Tom, you’re an unprofessional douche bag.”

These phone-call shenanigans are just the latest in a nearly eight-month feud between the Bee sports editor and KHTK program director Geronimo.

The beef apparently first reared its head last July, when—on the heels of The Rise Guys show’s departure from KHTK to the Bay Area—Couzens wrote a column panning Geronimo’s new show and criticizing his “sophomoric” humor and crude demeanor.

The Bee critiques have continued, as recently as December 7, when Couzens picked at Geronimo’s show for not talking about sports enough.

Meanwhile, Geronimo often has gone after Couzens. He claims Couzens also has contacted him in the past, such as a one-word email he received that read “Soon.”

On last Monday’s show, Geronimo and co-host Carmichael Dave churned the rumor mill some more, alleging that Couzens told other Bee sports staff that his cellphone was “cloned” and that the prank calls were a third-party rouse.

Still, Couzens repeated that the calls were not his. “It’s something he made up,” the editor said. “It must be. That’s all I really want to say about that.”