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There are five voices that have called Houston Texans football on the radio since Day One in 2002. Andre Ware has been there since the beginning. I've been there since the beginning. John Harris came aboard in 2014 and has been a tremendous partner. But before John, there were two other sideline reporters who helped build this thing from the ground up. The very first was John Granato, and let me tell you, getting the three of us together to tell stories from the early days was one of the most fun shows we've done in a long time.
I was a little banged up this week — collarbone surgery, a little mishap on a family trip — so John Harris held things down in the studio while we aired the interview that John and I recorded with Granato. It was the kind of conversation where you start talking and two hours later you realize you haven't even scratched the surface.
"It's awesome. It's good to be out with you boys again because I haven't been on with either of you two in years and years and years," Granato said when we got rolling. And that was the vibe the whole time — three guys who genuinely love this franchise and love each other catching up like no time had passed.
We went all the way back to the beginning. Granato was doing the morning show on SportsRadio 610 with Lance Zierlein before the Texans even existed, navigating a Houston sports market without an NFL team. When the franchise came along, he wanted the play-by-play job. "I went for the play-by-play job," Granato told us. "And they just said, 'Well, we're going to do it in a different way. But you're going to be the sideline guy.' And I was like, okay, you know what? That's great. That's a great position."
It was the right call for everyone, and Granato's four years on the sidelines gave us some of the most legendary stories in franchise radio history. The biggest, of course, is the Seth Payne player-of-the-game interview. After a loss, in that hushed, funeral-like locker room atmosphere, Granato awarded DT Seth Payne a $500 gift certificate live on the air. Payne had been giving quiet, monotone answers the entire interview, but when he heard about the prize, well, his reaction wasn't exactly FCC-friendly. "And he said the bad word," Granato recalled, laughing. "And I went, 'Whoa. Marc, back to you.'"
One of the funniest moments came when Granato told the briefcase story from MetLife Stadium in 2004. He'd left his bag against the stands — a bag that contained nothing but a hairbrush — and midway through the game, security had surrounded it and were prepared to blow it up. "I opened it up and I said, 'My hairbrush. You guys want to blow up my hairbrush?'" Granato said.
During the live broadcast, John Harris also paused to pay tribute to Janice S. McNair, Texans Co-Founder and Senior Chair, who passed away on July 14 at the age of 89. "We don't have this show. We don't have a football team without Bob and Janice McNair," Harris said. "Peace and love always, Mrs. McNair."
This is the first installment of our 25th-season retrospective series on the radio broadcast crew. Next week, we'll have Rich Lord, the second sideline reporter, joining us. And at some point during preseason, we'll get all three of us — me, John, and Andre Ware — together on the air. You won't want to miss any of it.
Make sure you're subscribed to Texans All-Access on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so every episode hits your feed automatically. Twenty-five years of Texans football, and the stories are just getting started.
