About the only time ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike in the Morning co-host Mike Golic is not communicating with his kids is when he’s driving. And that’s only because Connecticut prohibits drivers from using handheld cell phones while behind the wheel.
But because Mike, sons Mike and Jake, and daughter Sydney have embraced social media, they’ve almost made the Father’s Day of old obsolete.
After dropping Sydney, his youngest child, off in South Bend last weekend, where she’ll swim and join her football-playing brothers as students at Notre Dame, Big Mike was asked what Father’s Day would be like Sunday with all his children in Indiana.
Silence.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” he finally said. “I talk to them so much — we have great relationships and we’re in constant contact — it’ll be like they’re here without them actually physically being here.”
Mike’s had the unique opportunity of making his family part of his job — talking about them during the show — as well as his personal life, making their relationship all the more special.
“They’ve always known that whatever they do is possible fodder for the show and sometimes in unflattering ways,” he says, “but now they get back at me on Twitter.” (The kids are at: @MGolicJR57, @JGolic88 and @SydGolic but dad still refuses to get his own account, preferring to use @MikeAndMike.)
It would seem the family that Tweets together, stays together.
“Not a day goes by when we don’t communicate, Tweet, call or text,” Golic says. “It’s not like we have to get to a phone, or write a letter.
“And because of that, and because we do so many other things together anyway, I guess we don’t make a huge thing of one day. Just because it’s Father’s Day, it’s not like, ‘Let’s spend the whole day hanging with dad.’”
With his three young’uns away at college, Golic admits “It certainly could get a little lonely,” but he seems well prepared for a childless Father’s Day.
“There have been other Father’s Days when all three haven’t been together,” Mike said, before chuckling and putting “His” day into perspective: “When that happens we may do the presents thing a little earlier, or a few days later, but they eventually find their way to me, and that’s the important thing.”
