Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [111]
When I had my conversation with Murphy and Burke to tell them about my decision, I said I had been grooming Steve and he should be my successor. It wound up being a very smooth transition upon my departure. They understood Steve was the right guy, and Steve understood he had lots to learn.
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
People think I was disappointed that it took eight days or ten days or whatever it did to announce my promotion. It would have been nice if they had done it instantaneously, but it was not fair to some of the other contenders—primarily that knucklehead Roger Williams. He was running affiliate sales for ESPN at the time. He deserved to maybe be considered. But I was glad when they finally made it official.
FRANK BENNACK:
I was a bit disoriented, because when I made the decision to make the investment in ESPN, Roger was heading up the company, and I knew him well and respected him very much. He was a world-class guy. And then all of a sudden, he’s not there. So I have this new, important investment and it was being run now by Steve, who I really didn’t know well. It was a difficult time for me, particularly since, in my own shop and among my own board, I had a lot of detractors. A lot of people had been saying, why do you want 20 percent of this thing—tractor pulls and all the other pejoratives that can come out from one’s advisers. So I was not pleased, even though I had heard Steve was a talented guy.
TERRY LINGNER:
I love Steve Bornstein. He did a lot for guys like me, Anderson, and Wildhack. He started paying us better, including trying to beat the system by giving us outside contracts. But, by the same token, he didn’t make it easy to work for him, nothing like working for Scotty Connal or Bill Fitts. There was always a lot of second-guessing. When you would go up to the third floor, you weren’t sure if you were getting feedback from him, Ohlmeyer, Creasy, or whoever else was consulting at the time.
I kept a notebook a lot of times in meetings, and it really annoyed Steve. I would write everything down, which is not my nature at all—I actually hate it—but too often I would get specific instructions in the morning and then in the afternoon I would get a complete 180 from what I was told in the morning. I once said, “Jesus Christ, Steve, I mean I got it right here. You told me to do this.” And he said, “Well, I’ve changed my mind.” I can’t tell you how many times that happened.
But sometimes I could get away with what I wanted. This is kind of a funny one. Steve was not a fan of Lee Corso’s. I had hired Lee for College GameDay, and every Monday it was like, “Fire Corso. I can’t stand him, blah, blah, blah.” I said, “I’m not doing that. I can’t do it, Steve. Tell me somebody better.” And we’d go at it. I called Corso on his twenty-fifth anniversary at the network and said I’m glad it worked out.
In the early days, Bornstein, Creasy, and I did a fair amount of hanging out together after hours; we were bonding pretty well. It was clear Creasy was very, very high on Steve and Steve felt the same way about Bill. They fed off of each other and they were both programming guys. I was in the production department, and we’d be at a bar, and they would say to me, “You ought to slide over to our camp. You better start learning programming, because this is the path you’re going to have to start taking.” All I could think about was I wanted to learn more about production than I did about Nielsen ratings and trying to schedule programs.
It certainly crossed my mind that I could become president of ESPN, but I wasn’t prepared to do the things I would need to do in order to get it. I refused to play the cards the way they needed to be played to get there, particularly the politicking.
I left ESPN April 1, 1989, but stayed with the company as an outside contractor-producer. I really didn’t want to have a policy manual, and I wanted to do as much with auto racing as possible. It coincided with Major League Baseball coming to ESPN, which, I think, this is probably another good reason why I shouldn’t run a sports network. I despise