Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [224]
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
I basically wet-nursed Mark. We gave him the shot on SportsCentury much to John Walsh’s objection. I had to pull rank over John, who didn’t think Mark was experienced enough or had the right temperament to handle a job of this size. I’d like to say we saw a real genius there, but we didn’t; we did see a guy that had the right amount of energy. Part of the ESPN culture is to give people maybe younger and inexperienced an opportunity to succeed in a more responsible position.
MARK SHAPIRO:
I got into the room for the interview, and they start with, “For money or ego, we got a lot of important people wanting this thing. People like Rick Kaplan, Av Westin, Steve Friedman, and so on. Tell us about you.” So aside from just trying to sell myself, I went into a whole speech which might have sounded like I was arrogant but was said with total sincerity. I started bringing up historic examples of young people—whether it was Alexander the Great or Mozart—who had done great things at an early age. I wanted them to get beyond the whole age thing, and I wanted to show them how much I loved history. I said, “If I’m the right guy, I’m the right guy.” They could have said to themselves, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is?” but they didn’t. I totally sold it.
BILL CREASY:
He wasn’t a finger-snapping Hollywood schmuck. He was very impressive. He had great energy and an obvious desire for this job.
It finally got down to, “John, we’re going to hire this fucker, and you and I are going to control him or it’s going to be our ass.”
MARK SHAPIRO:
A few weeks later they offered me the number-one job at $100,000 a year.
The person who really deserves the credit for the project was George Bodenheimer. Just before we got started in late ’97, Steve [Bornstein] got cold feet. The production budget was $25 million, and at that point we only had GM as a presenting sponsor. If we were unable to secure new sponsors at a premium to what they typically paid for this genre of programming, the company was looking at a big loss. A meeting was held at the Stamford Country Club with George, six senior executives, and Bill Creasy. Steve had delegated the decision to George. He opened the discussion by asking the group, “Tell me why I should tell Steve we should do this.” Everyone was stone silent. This was my first window into the fact that Steve intimidated everyone. No one wanted to be responsible for being wrong if this project was a loser. Creasy finally got the ball rolling, the decision was bantered around for a good hour, and then George said, “We can’t afford not to do this. When it comes to sports, we have to make ourselves the destination for this kind of prestigious programming.”
PAT SMITH, Consultant:
I came up with the title SportsCentury. We were sitting in a meeting, Creasy, Shapiro, John Kosner, and I think John Walsh was there. And we were talking about what to name the program. I was doodling on a pad and I was thinking SportsCenter and I just added a U-R-Y and took out the E at the end, and thought it had some patriotism in there. I wasn’t going to say anything, but Kosner was looking at it over my shoulder, and said, “Hey, what about this?” A couple of weeks later, somebody announced that Sales really liked it, and so that’s what we called it, SportsCentury.
BUD MORGAN, Writer:
Mark really wanted to be out from under the pressure of having to satisfy John Walsh on a daily basis. That’s why we did the show in Westport and not in Bristol. He wanted to be his own man, and John Walsh, whatever his talents—and they’re considerable—is a very controlling individual in my opinion. He’s also very Machiavellian. So you have to watch yourself.
MARK SHAPIRO:
One of the most controversial decisions I made with the project was my intent to shoot all original interviews with a custom, stylized look developed by Peter Franchella,