Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [155]
I love John Walsh, and I have a fond feeling for ESPN. But I find the ESPY Awards objectionable. We already have awards. The World Series is an award. An MVP is an award. We don’t need more awards. They make up this crap so they can fill time with it—the worst. And so it was the second annual crappy, shitty ESPY Awards. I went backstage with the assembled media, which was basically every small paper in Long Island, every small paper in New Jersey—that was who came to the ESPYs—and me, tuxedo, of course. Everybody else is just a schlub. There was no red carpet. There was an interview room after the guys would stand on stage and say, “Here’s the award.” Then they’d come back and be interviewed. It was bad. “What a night it’s been here at Madison Square Garden! Yes, it was the ESPYs. Extra special presentation—yes. Making it up. I’m Vic Star. Back to you.”
I was sort of poking fun, I mean come on—human interest? First of all there is tremendous human interest in every single guy, right? Most of the guys who get there are amazing. They come from nothing and somehow they’re so brilliant, they work hard, and they are great, and then they become stars. That’s a great story. But it’s a story that’s utterly common. They all have that story. When they try to make these guys into complicated superstars, they’re not that complicated. You know what they like to do? Play sports, make lots of money, and do lots of stuff. It’s not that exciting. I mean they really don’t have anything to say. Athletes generally, there are like a half dozen that—Charles Barkley is always fun to talk to but mainly, try Joe Montana as a football analyst, he was the biggest snore of all time. He’s a brilliant football player and probably the nicest guy in the world, but he’s a lousy TV analyst because jocks don’t have anything to say. They’re jocks. You can tell who the eight guys were who were great talkers; they’re the ones who wound up on TV. The other ten thousand aren’t worth talking to.
Then somebody had the bright idea that I should go to an Indy Car race at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and give them the Vic Star treatment. So I was goofing around. And the guy who was announcing was the famous Voice of Indy Car, Paul Page, and I threw it back to “Page Paul,” of course. And there was a vice president, a famous guy, a powerful guy who I don’t really care to piss off, called Howard Katz. To this day I’ve never met Howard Katz. But apparently he was not a big humorist. He was very serious. And from what I understand he was a huge racing guy. He thought racing was the shit. And so here was this punk in November of 1994 making fun of NASCAR, making fun of Indy, making fun of everything. And so the word came down from on high: “No more Vic Star. I don’t like this guy. Fuck him.” If I weren’t still a guy who needed to have a job, I’d have some choice words for Howard Katz to this day.
HOWARD KATZ:
I don’t remember the exact event, but I do remember there was a point where I just said, “No more, no more. I can’t take this anymore.”
I don’t think ESPN2 would’ve gotten launched when it did had it not been for John Lack’s perseverance and his drive, and that was his contribution in—I think he was there under two years. It ultimately would’ve happened, but there was a sense of urgency and that is to his credit. But John acted as if he was the chief operating officer of ESPN and threw his weight around in ways that were not consistent with what others of us thought. John Lack was constantly trying to get me to fire John Walsh. He just didn’t think very highly of John for whatever reason and he and I battled about that a lot.
JOHN LACK:
Steve, for all of his brilliance, as a programmer, wasn’t a great people-person, so I was also brought in to manage