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By Root 2293 0

and I was “one of the hottest up-and-coming sportscasters in America.” I said, “If you say so, ’cause I gotta take my three-quarter-inch equipment and drive out to a small town called Burney and shoot girls’ high school volleyball for tonight’s broadcast in my Men’s Wearhouse jacket with a hole in it.” He asked me to send a tape to him. I said, “No problem,” then I hung up. Five minutes later, another long ring-ring, and I sarcastically said, “Watch, this is ESPN on the phone; I’m such hot shit.” And it was Al Jaffe, who told me they saw my tape and wanted me to fly out as soon as possible to audition for SportsCenter.” I said, “You gotta be kidding me.” I had watched Berman, Dan, Keith, and Kilborn, so there wasn’t any of me saying that I could shoot higher. No, this was it—SportsCenter was the end-all and be-all.

When I first got there, they had you observe for three weeks. I wound up observing Chris Berman, who only did like three or four SportsCenters a year back then, and I noticed he was saying stuff in meetings, and if people laughed, it wound up in the show. He was trying out material, if you will; playing Peoria before going to Broadway.

They had these ESPN banners hung up in the hallways for the higher talent to sign for charity. People would say, “This is for such-and-such charity, and can you please sign this banner?” So I’m now doing a Sunday six o’clock SportsCenter, and Berman is doing Baseball Tonight right after it. The two of us are in the same makeup room; he’s in the chair. I had chatted only briefly with him before this, and I asked him, “Chris, you’re Mr. ESPN, let me ask you: how many shows do I have to do before I’m banner-worthy? You know, to sign those banners for charity. Is there a certain fail-safe point?” And he goes, in his big voice, I’ll never forget this: “You do a show here?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He goes, “Fuck it, sign the damn things.”

BRETT HABER:

Gary Miller and I were doing a SportsCenter in the studio; we were on the air, and all of a sudden the lights went out. The studio became pitch-black. They couldn’t see us on camera, but they could hear us from our microphones. We just laughed and tried to carry on.

GARY MILLER:

I just kept going with the highlights, and that shows you how much we hated doing the re-airs if we were the last show of the night. We figured if we kept going, they could just add the video in later.

CRAIG KILBORN:

I would come in at seven to do the 2:00 a.m. show. I used to eat a lot of carbs back then. There was this unbelievable pizza place right outside of Bristol, and they had this clam pizza that had a white sauce, red and green peppers, garlic, clams, and a bit of bacon. I used to go berserk on that.

RICH EISEN:

It was all very exciting. This was what I really wanted. But on the flip side, I wasn’t getting living in Bristol. It’s the ultimate humbler, if that’s a word. I don’t want to bash the town, because it’s like low-hanging fruit for people who always hear about ESPN. In fact, it’s a nice community, but it’s not the place for a guy who’s twenty-six years old, single, and reaching a professional level that was a dream. It was always difficult to get much of a social footing. I would go to a bar, and a free drink would wind up in front me, and I would look up for the fattest guy in the bar, and sure enough, he would be the one raising the glass. That’s the way it goes, man. Then again, I did meet my wife there.

CRAIG KILBORN:

You ever heard of a “Bristol Day”? A Bristol Day is where you come in, you’re off, you’re not working, you just come in and hang out in case they need you. They might need you to voice something over for the six o’clock or something else, but you don’t have to write and host a SportsCenter. Everyone had Bristol Days, but I never had one because, man, I liked working five nights a week. It was exciting, right? So in my last year, after working at 2:00 a.m., getting to bed at four or five, and being unhealthy, I decided for my health’s sake that I would rotate with different guys on my 2:00 a.m. show. I worked five days a week,