Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [121]
Tom Mees and Chris Berman had been the show’s best anchor duo of the eighties, and the work done by Walsh and Anderson—along with fellow producers Scott Ackerson, Norby Williamson, and Barry Sacks, stats guy Howie Schwab, and the impressive reporting bench of Jimmy Roberts, Andrea Kremer, and Peter Gammons, among others—had all dramatically strengthened the broadcast. When a new era began late in the decade, the goals were straightforward: to make SportsCenter as important as anything else in the ESPN lineup—if not more so—and to overtake CNN in the ratings.
When Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick took over the 11:00 p.m. edition on April 5, 1992, there was neither a massive marketing campaign to alert viewers nor a splashy PR strategy for landing their faces on other talk shows and magazine covers. Fanfare was minimal. Instead, Olbermann and Patrick showed up for work and just started doing their job.
DAN PATRICK, Anchor:
I had gone to Eastern Kentucky. I came out of high school totally confused, thinking I was either a professional baseball or basketball player, and it turned out I was neither. I transferred to Dayton, where my dad worked in computer science. Two older brothers had gone there, and then my younger brothers and sisters went to Dayton as well, so all six of us went there just ’cause my dad was there and we got a discount to go to school. They had a 50,000-watt radio station there, and my brother was on it, so without my brother being at WBUD in Dayton, I wouldn’t have gotten on the radio. I don’t know how I would have gotten into the business.
I sent Bob Ley and Greg Gumbel a tape of me interviewing Joe Garagiola, who had come through town, but they said I needed more time before going on TV. I couldn’t get hired in Dayton, because I lost out to a guy who now drives a limousine. Then I went to Atlanta to visit a girlfriend and she said, “You should take a tape into CNN.” I waited until the last day ’cause I didn’t want to get rejected again. I asked to see the head of sports and when they told me to just leave the tape, I said, “I’m going back to Ohio tomorrow.” They told this to Bill McPhail’s assistant—he was the guy running sports—and he told her to ask what part of Ohio. I said Dayton, and it turns out he was from Columbus. He came out to see me, looked at the tape, and hired me that day.
I was making $50,000 a year at CNN and was now working in New York. You know who I had replaced? Keith Olbermann. I took his place as the sports reporter. We covered Philly, Boston, New York, D.C.—no matter what it was—Preakness, Belmont, World Series, the great Celtic games, the Garden, whatever it was in that area, we covered it. Then I had the audacity to ask for a raise as my own agent. I said, “I want $10,000 more,” and they said no. So instead of understanding the negotiating game, I said, all right. I called John Walsh and I said, “You know who I am?” He said, “Yes, I do.” And then he said, “When can you come up?” That was a Friday. I went up the following Tuesday, and he asked me if I would be willing to move to Bristol. I said yes, and then he hired me. I took whatever they gave me—I think it was $100,000. Didn’t even bargain.
Six months in, I go to lunch with Steve Bornstein, and Stevie B. said, “I think you’re doing a pretty good job. I’m going to tack two more years onto your contract.” I thought, “Wow, fantastic. The president of ESPN thinks I’m doing a great job. I’m going to do the eleven o’clock SportsCenter. I’m on national TV every day and making more money than my dad did probably the last four years of his life.” But what I didn’t realize was that I had really shot myself in the foot, because agreeing to that extension really meant I wasn’t going to be making