Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [13]
BILL RASMUSSEN:
Getty wanted to see the results of a meeting we had scheduled with the NCAA. Walter Byers himself had said let’s talk, and I went back and forth to the NCAA’s headquarters in Kansas City a few times. Everything came together on Valentine’s Day. I was in Kansas City and they were agreeing to put this contract together. I also got a call from George saying that Stu had decided to go ahead and wanted me to fly out to L.A. after my meeting. So on the 14th of February, 1979, both the NCAA and Getty verbally said yes.
The final, binding document was signed on March 14, 1979. ESP was still six months from going on the air, but what happened that March would turn out to be a rousing endorsement of ESP’s strategy as well as a terrific bit of timing.
Rasmussen may have been bluffing about the latent potential he claimed to see in the tournament’s early rounds, but he was seen as a Nostradamus of the NCAA almost immediately. The 1979 tournament turned out to be the most exciting ever held up to that time—and for years thereafter. The final game, on March 26—two weeks after the NCAA and ESP signed their contract—kept 24.1 million viewers superglued to their couch cushions, enthralled not so much by the matchup of the teams as by their two electrifying star players: Indiana State’s Larry Bird and Michigan State’s Magic Johnson.
Future ESPNer Michael Wilbon wrote that the 1979 tournament “launched the popularity of college basketball and began the Golden Age of professional basketball” as well. It’s been said that the final game was the most-watched in basketball television history, and that it played a greater role in the start-up and eventual success of ESPN than any other sports event. Cable systems found themselves flooded with requests from fans demanding “that channel that has all the basketball.”
STUART EVEY:
While it’s true that before Getty was officially involved the NCAA indicated that they would look at Rasmussen’s proposal, they didn’t commit to it until I made a personal visit to the then-director, Walter Byers, evidencing our commitment to proceed. And let me tell you, that deal was probably one of the key reasons ESPN survived.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
A small part of Stu’s money started coming in February of ’79, but I consider a meeting with Getty that happened in May to be the most significant. They had given us $5 million to tide us over while they kept looking at things, and in May they had to make a go, no-go decision. They had my father and me come out to Getty in California, and we sat at this huge table at the Getty complex. It was kind of like a horseshoe, or a boomerang-shaped type of table. We were on the inside and there were a whole bunch of Getty folks on the other side and they were trying to be intimidating. They were very good at it.
Sid Peterson, the president, was there and so was Harold Berg, the chairman. There were legal counsels there too and, of course, Stu. I didn’t understand the corporate politics that Stu was playing, but it was clear that he had gotten to the point where he had to sell it again for that go, no-go decision.
GEORGE CONNER:
I’d never come across anyone who was more of a master politician. If Stu decided he wanted to do something, he would line his ducks up with the board members behind the scenes before a board vote. He always knew what the outcome was going to be.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
Somebody asked a question about our revenue projection through 1988. I gave an answer that was terribly imprecise and totally worthless.
Sid Peterson