Andrew Perloff would be the first to admit that CBS Sports Radio — now Infinity Sports Network — technically poached him.
However, his departure from The Dan Patrick Show wasn’t solely about career opportunities; there were personal reasons that played a major role. During a recent appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast with host Brandon Contes, Perloff addressed these, opening up about why he’s no longer part of the beloved Danettes.
It also helped that he worked with Maggie Gray at Sports Illustrated.
Gray was initially paired with Bart Scott and Chris Carlin as the heir apparent to Mike Francesa’s afternoon drive slot. However, when Francesa returned to WFAN, Gray was bumped elsewhere. Frustrated with the shift, she decided to pursue a national platform — and for that, she needed a co-host.
Enter ‘McLovin’.
“The only downside with The Dan Patrick Show, there’s one major downside: it’s in Milford, Connecticut, and I live in Brooklyn, New York,” Perloff explained. “It was great. After the pandemic, everyone in New York had a car; it was taking me two hours to commute to work. So, that was really putting a lot of pressure on me personally. It was a giant problem. I loved being on The Dan Patrick Show; there was no way I was looking around.
“But just as it was becoming very problematic to commute — and we couldn’t move for my wife’s job — Maggie came along. So, ‘poach’ isn’t really the word I would use, but that opportunity came up and it kind of fit where I was with my life.”
Still, Perloff thinks that if he had approached Patrick and asked if he could move to a hybrid role, he would have “definitely” taken that option.
“He was always really easy to work for,” says Perloff. “But, my role on The Dan Patrick Show, I had to be there. So, I didn’t have any other solution how to deal with commuting. Dan and the guys would always say, ‘I don’t know how you do it, Perloff.’ ‘How do you drive two hours?’ It was a great job — that’s why I did it. But it was becoming too much.
“It worked out. It was just one of those fate things where Maggie called me up, and my contract was coming up, and Dan was really gracious about it, so it was time to move on.”
Perloff didn’t do that commute the entire time, though.
When he started with Patrick, he was still at Sports Illustrated and actually did the show remotely from the New York City offices of SI.
And then, the radio show went on DirecTV.
“Dan, in many ways, invented radio on TV,” Perloff said. “It was the first show to ever do it at a really high level. So he said, ‘You know what, Andrew? Why don’t you jump in that Honda Accord and drive up here every day? I know it’s a lot, but it’ll add a lot if you’re here.’ And through the years, my original role was to run the website and help Dan edit his Sports Illustrated column. Then, I just evolved into on-air, and once that started, I had to be there in person.”
He did that drive for 11 years.
It’s fair to say that his commute is just a tad shorter now.
