Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [203]
My first meeting after being hired at Fox was with [vice president] Robert Banagan, and on my way to it, I got caught up in L.A. traffic, which I was experiencing for the first time. Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone in the car to let him know that I was running late. When I got there, I was flustered and he was irate that I was late. And he started fighting! He started telling me how they have writers, and I said, “Well, I’ve never had a writer. I write my own stuff.” And he stood up and put his face in my face and literally yelled. It was unbelievable. That’s how the whole thing started.
My assignments at the time were split between Fox Sports Net and the Fox network. I went to David Hill and said, “I’m so torn up about this,” and he picked up the phone, got me off that network, and rolled my whole contract over to just the Fox side. I remember at our big NFL seminar, Pam Oliver and I, who were always friends, sat together, and it was almost like the executives were pointing at us like they expected a catfight. Maybe it’s unfair now to say all of this without more specific examples, because I can’t remember them, but I just know that it didn’t feel right.
As I neared the end of my Fox contract, I bumped into folks from ESPN, and we started discussing my return; then those talks became serious. But ESPN wasn’t offering everything I wanted. I believe I called Steve [Bornstein] and said, “This thing seems to be falling apart again.” He said, “Well, everyone knows you want out of there,” meaning he didn’t think I had a lot of leverage, but I replied that I could make it [Fox] work if I had to, and the lifestyle at Fox was pretty good. That’s when ESPN sweetened their offer and the deal got done.
You are always more valuable to them when you leave; that’s the great thing about leaving. I really wanted the NFL, so when I came back to ESPN, part of the deal was that I would do an NFL show. That’s how I got it, and that show helped to really get me my credibility.
BONNIE BERNSTEIN:
CBS had been on sort of a football hiatus and then they got the AFC back from NBC and needed to hire more talent. They had reached out to me to inquire about my contract situation, so I went to my boss, Howard Katz, and I said, “CBS is interested,” and he was like, “Well, we’re planning on picking up your option.” So my agent went back to Sean McManus, who then was the boss at CBS, and Sean called Howard personally and said, “Look, we know you want to keep Bonnie, but we can provide her with an opportunity here that you can’t, because ESPN has Sunday night and that was it. So would you consider letting her go?” Howard called me and said, “I care about you personally and professionally, and if you think this is an opportunity that you want to pursue, I don’t want to stand in your way. Just know that the door will always be open.”
That meant so much to me. So I thought about it, and actually sought the advice of Robin Roberts and Bob Costas, both of whom I respect tremendously, and they gave me some great advice. I didn’t want to leave. Why leave a job that I love for another job? And of course, there’s always that fear of the unknown. But I thought, this is an opportunity to work at the network, and these opportunities don’t come along very often, and so I was going to take it. Then at the eleventh hour, [producer] Mo Davenport called me and he said, “Okay, if you want to stay, we can offer you sidelines for Sunday Night Football.” I was like, “Awgh!” It was brutal, ’cause that made it so hard, but I had made up my mind. It turned out ESPN wanted something in return, so they negotiated