Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [199]
In a vacuum, sure, not leading with the story was the wrong call, but there’s also that part of our DNA that thinks, “Is any one of us that important?” Maybe it’s presumptuous to think that the horrible death of one of us would be that important to lead the show.
Obviously it was the wrong call. The national reaction to his death was stunning. We couldn’t believe it. I had toll takers on the Tappan Zee Bridge stopping me for months afterward, saying, “I’m sorry about your friend Tom.”
CHRIS BERMAN:
I gave the eulogy at Tom’s funeral. I wrote it. Tommy was never going to be a star for whatever reason. Not that he wasn’t good enough; he was good enough, but Tommy had long been bypassed, if you will, on the fast track. Early on, he and I actually were charter members of the B team. We had T-shirts he made for the overnight crew that said “The B-team.” You know, we’re not good enough to be on before frickin’ midnight. So he always had the fake chip on his shoulder, I think, but he had long since been comfortable with “I’m not going to be ‘this,’ but I’m really good at what I do.”
I say this with love: he was kind of the whipping boy, just because you knew he could take it. And he was such an Eagles fan. If they lost, he took it so hard. He and I used to bet beers on things like the All-Star Game. We’d have the whole crew out in the parking lot at 3:00 a.m. downing beers after the show.
DAN PATRICK:
When I first arrived at ESPN and was the new kid on the block, Tom didn’t like me because he got moved down the totem pole. And I said to myself, “You know what? I’m going to make him like me.” And I remember going over to see a boxing match at his house and I realized that he had this veneer, this facade, and when I got behind it, I realized he was scared. He had kids, and he was just scared about his future.
As soon as you walked into the funeral home there was a big picture of Tom, and I broke down immediately. Then I took a right, and Tom’s casket was right over there. John Saunders came over and put his arm around me and I said, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I walked over to Tom’s wife and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” and then I walked out. It just crushed me.
Keith and I went to management and asked if the newsroom could be named after Tom, but we got pushback because they said it was too precedent setting. But to this day, I don’t know why they didn’t do it.
Of the many permutations to Disney’s taking over ABC, one of the most complex and troublesome was the relationship between ESPN and ABC Sports. Asking these two to get along wasn’t quite like expecting Israel and Iran to co-exist within the same borders, but it certainly didn’t lack ferocity. The cheeky upstart and the venerable champ had begun their dislike-hate relationship virtually with the birth of ESPN, and things never got any chummier. The challenge now was to have peace break out before civil war did.
SEAN McMANUS, President, CBS Sports:
I remember very well when Dennis Swanson was running ABC Sports, and they really were very condescending toward ESPN, extremely condescending. And I remember Bornstein coming in and saying, “Hey, why don’t we do college football together? If we bid together, we could be much more powerful.” But the ABC Sports guys completely looked down their noses at ESPN. I think that was never lost on the senior management of ESPN, the way they were treated. I remember I did a Big Twelve negotiation for cable and network rights, and if ABC had been with ESPN, they would have clearly wiped anybody else out. I said to the ABC Sports college guy, “Why don’t you guys get together? You could get this deal.” He said, “No, our guys don’t want to compromise with ESPN.” All it meant was compromising and sharing a couple of picks. They just didn’t want to do it. It was like negotiating with two separate companies: you’d do an ESPN discussion, then an ABC discussion. It was the damnedest thing. So we ended up doing a deal with Fox Sports.
GEOFF MASON:
The ABC Sports culture was one where we worked harder than most, but we found