Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [17]
We made a date to go to California and meet with Stuart Evey. He was the bagman for the oilman’s son and dealt with his suicide. Stu had a lot of ghosts in his closet; to get rid of all of them would be impossible.
I don’t think NBC knew about any of these meetings, but I don’t think NBC was happy to have old Chester at the network either. I think they figured I’d been around the world a little bit, knew what was going on in the business, wasn’t the most dynamic creative guy to walk on the sands of NBC, but a very dedicated employee. I think honestly if I looked into their heart, if they had one, I’d see that they’d wanted to get rid of me. If I went out on my own, that would have been fine, and if I stayed, they would just work around me.
They had already started ESPN—there were some things and people in place. I thought that would make it more difficult. But when Stu called and made me an offer to run the company, I said, “Okay, I think it’s a pretty fair opportunity.” We talked some dough and I got a lawyer because I wanted to get covered six ways from the moon. The only thing Stu didn’t give me was the one thing I really wanted: one or two points in ESPN that I would sock away and keep.
STUART EVEY:
I went through a series of long negotiations with Chet. He’s kind of a personable fellow, yet he was almost afraid, if you will, to see the future of ESPN. I convinced him nevertheless.
What mattered most to Simmons at this point in his career was the opportunity not merely to be present at the creation of something new but to be completely in charge of it. Evey assured him that Rasmussen wouldn’t stand in Simmons’s way, which made the position even more attractive. Of course, that promise wasn’t shared with Rasmussen.
Simmons was announced as president of ESPN on July 18, 1979, immediately enhancing the network’s reputation.
Very quickly, Simmons brought a trusted friend and colleague with him from NBC: Allan B. “Scotty” Connal, who’d gotten his start where future NBC chairman Grant Tinker got his—in the legendary NBC mail room. Connal was a TV legend himself: in 1968, his pleas not to cut off the final moments of a big Jets–Raiders game (running a few minutes past its allotted air time) went unheeded by engineers who insisted that a scheduled network kiddie flick begin precisely at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
The long-notorious “Heidi” incident represented an argument that Connal lost at the time but which history would soon declare him indisputably the winner of. Nobody ever pulled a “Heidi” again, Connal having struck a blow on behalf of the importance of sports (and especially football) to network television and to the American ethos.
Together, Simmons and Connal prepared to lay the groundwork for ESPN to get on the air, get taken seriously, and, most important, to survive.
CHET SIMMONS:
They could have hired a lot of people, but they needed to hire me because of both my management and production background. My first desk was in a small room with two other desks. I didn’t even have an assistant. I was back-to-back with Rasmussen so our chairs hit each other—and his son was at the third one against the wall. You could hear every word everybody was saying. I could’ve left at that moment. I could’ve just said, “Stu, it’s not what you told me, I’m getting out of here.” But I didn’t.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
When Chet came on, he didn’t want to speak to me very much, so I didn’t have a lot of direct conversations with him. He dealt with my father mostly, even though I was the executive vice president.
CHET SIMMONS:
I walked into the back of this building my first day and there was a whole bunch of people sitting at desks doing what is called ESPN, but nobody knew what the hell that meant. Now I could have roared, “Who are all these people?! Where did they come