This season longtime local sports radio voice, M sideline reporter, & mgo-misc. host Doug Karsch will co-anchor the Michigan radio network Tailgate Show with former U-M All-American Jon Jansen. Karsch will also continue his sideline reporting duties as part of the play-by-play broadcast. I’m pulling together a piece on the new show and recently chatted with Karsch.
Listeners of the radio broadcast know that Beckmann & Brandy referred to Karsch as “Krash”. I never knew why, admittedly never asked, but either way, I never really cared for it. I’m not sure why – I figured it obviously had something to do with Doug’s last name and I guess I assumed Frank or Brandy just thought it was funny to call him Krash. Meh.
Anyway, when I chatted with Doug recently I asked him about the nickname and if ‘Krash’ was going to endure in Frank’s absence. Here’s what Doug told me:
“I’ll tell you how it started and what’s funny is that I’ve been broadcasting since 1993 and I get asked more about that than anything else. It was my first year doing sideline, it was 2006 and Michigan had a game at Minnesota. The whole team arrives [at the hotel] and I was the last to check in. I was a rookie and I’m just waiting. The team checked in, all the support people checked in and finally I go to check in but they don’t have a room under my name. Now I’ve seen every misspelling of my name you can imagine. They kept looking through and found nothing. I said, ‘Try spelling it this way, try spelling it that way…”
“Eventually the manager reviewed the team list and said, ‘Is your first name Doug?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘We have it under Doug Krash.’ So at the Minnesota game at the team hotel I’m under Krash. Frank hears all this and says, ‘Well that’s going to stick.’”
I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll go with it, whatever [laughs]..they can call me whatever they want..’ I was just happy to have the job! And of course it stuck.
So I’m going to guess that Brandstatter will continue using it. And I don’t mind at all. [laughs] To this day more people ask me about that than anything else.”
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So there you go — and after hearing the real story I’ve instantly warmed up to the ‘Krash’ nickname – Go Blue!
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