Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [176]
GARY MILLER:
It was a great time to be at ESPN. By ’95 we were pretty much the dominant force in studio sports, so we would get the first interview. In the early days, you just had to be aggressive, grab somebody, and try to make friends with the PR people. By ’95, they were bringing everybody to us.
When the Braves won the ’95 World Series, it was just great. I had met a lot of those guys when the Braves still stunk and a bunch of us from CNN, where I worked before ESPN, would go to the games and there’d be like only four thousand people in Fulton County Stadium. Back then, they had Chief Nokahoma fire-breathing on the mound, then running to his tent in the left field bleachers. They even introduced a second character, “Princess Winalotta,” who was pretty attractive, came to a few parties, and had a fling with one of the CNN anchors. But now they were World Champs, and I was at ESPN interviewing people like [Tom] Glavine and [David] Justice live right after their victory. It was kind of poignant because I could remember and they could remember seeing me back when they were losing a hundred games.
TONY BRUNO:
When Arkansas was in the Final Four, we got an interview with President Clinton. Now, the White House protocol was that we had to send questions in advance; you really can’t do anything impromptu to throw the president off. So we had sent lots of sports questions in for the president, including, of course, Arkansas basketball. I remember vividly when I introduced the president. I said, “People listening to the show know that we always have fun here, and people think I’m always trying to pull a fast one on the American public, but right now, ladies and gentlemen, I wanna tell you, we’re not pulling a fast one on you. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on this show, the president of the United States of America, Mr. Bill Clinton.” And then he comes up and says, “Well, you know, people out there always think I’m trying to pull a fast one on the American public too,” and that wasn’t in the script. I was really impressed; he came out strong right out of the gate and even responded to impromptu questions. He was brilliant and it was a lot of fun.
BONNIE BERNSTEIN, Reporter:
The first thing that really put me on the map was during football season my first year at ESPN, back in 1995, and it had to do with Lawrence Phillips being suspended at Nebraska for having an altercation with his girlfriend. My boss at the time was Jim Cohen, and he called me after eleven o’clock on a Sunday night and said, “Are you seeing this stuff about Lawrence Phillips on SportsCenter?” I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I want you on the next plane to Lincoln, ’cause I want you to go interview Tom Osborne.” So I got on the plane and met up with Kelly Neal, who was one of our producers, and we went on a manhunt for Tom Osborne. I remember I kept calling the sports information director, Chris Anderson, but I never got a call back.
We got a tip that Osborne was speaking at a booster luncheon that afternoon, so Kelly and I went over there and waited for him to finish. He came out and I introduced myself, but he just kept walking. So I just kept walking right along with him, followed by Kelly, our camera guy and sound boom guy in tow. Next thing I know, he’s walking down a spiral staircase, and as he does, he asks why I didn’t try to set up an interview with the Sports Information department. I said, “Well, I called Chris Anderson, but he never got back to me.” Now, it turns out that “he” was actually a “she,” and she was right next to him, which was kind of mortifying. But I kept going and started asking him about Lawrence Phillips. So he gets to the bottom of the spiral staircase and there’s an elevator. He gets in the elevator thinking