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Monday, October 20, 1997

Folksy Spanish scoreboard show a hit with Valley football fanatics

By TECLO J. GARCIA / The Monitor

McALLEN, Texas - An area priest is so loyal to a high school football radio program he calls in every Friday night with a quick summary of his favorite team's game.

A man only known as "El Coyote Mayor" is such a regular caller to the same show he's become a fixture. So much so, callers often insist on speaking to him.

Still others such as "El Bombero Atomico" and "La Grandota" also call in to the radio program to brag about their favorite football team, and ten of thousands more in the Rio Grande Valley are dialed in.

Just what has so many football fans across the Valley religiously plugged into a AM radio station on Friday night?

That's easy: Mr. Nifu Nifa.

Huh?

Actually it's Hugo De La Cruz, host of the 1940ish style Spanish language "Football Scoreboard with Mr. Nifu Nifa" show complete with sound effects, popular callers and team "corridos" (story-telling songs) that easily makes it the highest rated radio program in the Valley.

And while ultra popular with football fans in the Valley, some say the KGBT-AM 1530 show also serves as a type of public forum for the Hispanic community's expression of ideas, feelings and identity through sport.

But despite what all the show can be and what it is to its throng of listeners, the show is unmistakably De La Cruz.

"He's it. He's Mr. Football," said show producer Trini Lozano. "He motivates the people to listen and to call. He really gets them going."

The affable, energetic 52-year-old Elsa resident seems to love what he does and conveys that through his voice over the airwaves to the thousands of mostly Hispanic listeners.

In his 26th year as the host of the program, De La Cruz shows no sign of slowing down. And when asked to look back on the show's genesis his memory was a clear as his golden-throated voice.

"We really didn't know what to do, but we knew we had to something different than what other radio stations were doing," De La Cruz said in Spanish of the 1971 beginning. "We said 'Hey why don't we run a corrido?' And the Harlingen Cardinals was the first one we ever did. We got an immediate response. People loved it."

De La Cruz said the Valley's Spanish-speaking Hispanics - the radio station's listening base - liked the traditional yelling that normally accompany corridos. Soon after, a corrido was recorded for the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Bears, and a polka was created for the Edinburg Bobcats.

The scoreboard was an immediate success and fans promptly began to trade barbs about their favorite teams on the air, and it's continued to be successful over the last 2-1/2 decades, mixing a passion for football with a format many people could identify with.

"We reached the people; we have reached Hispanics," De La Cruz said. "I think before the scoreboard show there was some interest in football, but the show may have fostered more interest in football. It may have also created more communication between families, between sons and fathers who can sit down and discuss football.

"And now there was something on the air they could talk about."

Part of the reason for program's success is the captive audience it has following a football game. The show begins at 10 p.m. and lasts until 11:30 p.m. Listeners targeted by the radio station are getting into their cars for a drive home at about that time.

And as De La Cruz so astutely pointed out, high school football fans really don't have much choice but to listen to the radio for scores and reports immediately after a contest.

There are other stations offering the latest updates, but De La Cruz's air time is set apart by some of the hijinks, not to mention the language it's done in.

The most popular request De La Cruz gets is for a crying baby sound which is played for a losing team. The winner, meanwhile, gets a laugh track. Winners will also get their corrido or polka - if they have one - played in their honor.

Callers are also a big part of the show. They weren't until KGBT installed the seven-second call-in delay now standard in any radio call-in show. Stations delays a caller's voice seven seconds so language judged bad or libelous language can be edited out.

De La Cruz's callers mostly behave, but some listeners wish "El Coyote Mayor" would go away. An ardent supporter of the La Joya Coyotes, he calls in almost every Friday and begins every call with a trademark howl.

"He's the best howler I've ever heard," deadpans De La Cruz.

And although he talks to his regular callers often, De La Cruz said he doesn't know who most of them are.

"El Coyote has called in for four or five years, but I've never met him," he said. "People from La Joya call in and ask me who he is, but I don't know the guy. It may be better that way. Apparently he goes to games but people don't even know who he is. But I'm fine only knowing all these people over the phone."

Other regular callers like the priest from Rio Grande City, who follows the La Villa Cardinals, also spice up the show. "Padre Nacho," as he's called, phones in with the regularity of, well, Sunday mass.

Still others like "El Bombero Atomico (The Atomic Bomber)" or "La Grandota (The Big Woman)" also report games and get rivals riled up with outlandish statements about their favorite teams.

De La Cruz said he may have been most surprised by McAllen Rowe Warriors fans who called in and began humming something similar to a Native American chant. Then one of the fans belted out a rhythmic poem about the team's victory over the chant that was mesmerizing and left him speechless, De La Cruz said.

"It was completely not expected," De La Cruz said.

All the hoopla and talk within the show is more than just fun, said Juanita Garza, who teaches history at the University of Texas-Pan American. It can be healthy, too.

"It's a historical account of something you might call public history," Garza said. "It gives us a sense of a side of story being told that normally never does get told. They (the fans) are telling us things that are happening. Things that are important to them at the moment."

Garza said perhaps outside the Valley Hispanics are not normally associated with the game of football, but more with baseball and soccer. De La Cruz's program gives recognition to Spanish-speaking football fans and Hispanic football players, she said.

"Football is more than a physical activity," Garza said. "It's a social activity. It gives people a socializing out, and that is what the people in the Valley are all about. Socializing with family and friends with a sport they like and understand."

Lozano, who has produced the show for 19 years, said the show transcends generations of football fans.

"The kids get really excited and it's important to them," Lozano said. "They love it because they can fight on the air. They've been doing for years. This show was on before some of the kids calling in now were born."

Although Lozano said she did not know what the show's current ratings are, last year's ratings had KGBT as the most listened to radio station in Rio Grande Valley by a large margin.

In fact, the ratings showed KGBT's ratings higher in the fall than in the spring - possibly boosted by De La Cruz's scoreboard program that runs from September through the first week of November - according to Arbitron ratings.

And with a name like Mr. Nifu Nifa, which Brownsville resident and part-time radio personality Ronnie Zamora claims he coined in 1979 when he wrote for the Valley Morning Star, who could have thought the show's success would have sustained for 26 years.

His on-air name is a colloquial Spanish phrase that means something close to "nothing here, nothing there." Close, because there doesn't seem to be a literal translation. De La Cruz uses the phrase during when a team is shutout. He might say: "Harlingen 20, San Benito nifu, nifa (zero)."

De La Cruz knows he's on top of the radio racket, but he loves football and that's what people love about listening to his show. In the end it's all about football. Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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