Roughly 20 years ago, Max Kellerman seemed like a name on the rise in the world of sports and media punditry when he bolted his cushy gigs at ESPN hosting Around The Horn and Friday Night Fights for his own show at Fox Sports Net. And when I say own show, I mean "own show" - he called it I COMMA MAX, paused everyone with a "MeVR button", and in general was too far gone among the swelling tides of grandiosity and extreme self-deprecation. He was also buried deep in the basic cable stack on the less-available FSN, while his infinitely more agreeable replacement Tony Reali made a surprise hit out of ATH on ESPN, and has lasted to this very day. Along with former "Disembodied Voice" Bill Wolff and Michael Holley, there are lots of familiar touches and quirks carried over from Max's time on ATH to this program. The format of the show changed a lot in the short amount of time it aired, as the original Max vs. The World boxing theme gave way to a more generic PTI rundown-style discussion by the show's end. In the end, what once generated a ton of buzz quickly sucked itself into the dustbin of sports media history, to be brought out as a curiosity to consider. Especially if you need some fodder for the water cooler.

Grand Puba's initial verse from "One For All" is in the running for best lead in hip-hop history!

By this point, Geto Boys albums began to read like a macabre anthology of grisly ghetto slasher/horror stories, with each subsequent release trying to outgross the previous effort. It all came to a peak in the fall of 1991 when they had a hit with "Mind Playing Tricks On Me", followed quickly by Scarface's solo release, which turned out to be another thriller, and on a lot of levels, better than actual Geto Boys records. Essentially, this is a Geto Boys-style record executed by Scarface, with his own unique imprint (the man in the black hat), so it's fairly clear Willie D and Bushwick weren't really needed to make Geto Boys records, right? "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die" thematically capitalizes on "Mind Playing Tricks On Me's success, and like every good horror protagonist he had enough sense to off himself at the end ("I'm Dead"), but not before leaving a trail of dead bodies ("Diary of a Madman").

This stark, bleak, intentionally low-budget affair was a surprise hit towards the end of 1991 thanks to the single "Mind Playin' Tricks On Me". Paired with a rather grotesque album cover, it belied the actual fact that the group was splintering behind the scenes, which is the reason most the tracks are solo efforts, giving it a disconnected feel. Some of these spots stand out on sheer outrageousness alone - Bushwick Bill's "Chuckie" writes the initial book on horror-core rap, and Willie D's "Trophy" is a great dig at music industry hypocrisy - but more often than not, the diatribes miss their target, or don't have anything to say. Still, all of these crazy personalities trying to share space on a rap album is not something you hear every day.

Was this an excuse to keep Bob Golic employed between the field and the booth?