Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [234]
The pay was pretty good, and, oh yeah, I had a great time. I got to meet some athletes who I didn’t know that I would have an opportunity to talk to and laugh with, and some of them are really interesting people. Despite all the things that they can do that I couldn’t do, they still marveled at what I did. They have an inordinate amount of downtime, so they know a lot about my movies because they watch them, so we have interesting conversations about me watching them and them watching me, so it’s kind of a mutual admiration society. But then I met some athletes who said, “You know, I want to be an actor when I finish”—they thought they could “do the acting thing.” I thought, “Hmm, okay, man, just play ball.”
MAURA MANDT:
The year 2000 was amazing. We had Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Derek Jeter, Marion Jones, Mario Lemieux, Mark McGwire, and a bunch of other big names. I went up to Jordan in the front row right before the show was going to start and asked him if he needed anything, and he said, “Yes, a wet towel.” I was a bit taken aback, but I had to race around to get one in time.
CHRIS LaPLACA:
Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky both said they would do some press immediately afterward—which for me was amazing. So they come offstage and the first thing they do is go the wrong way and disappear into the shadows of backstage. I’m thinking, this is bad, we’re never going to get them back. We all had to wear tuxedos that night, and there’s a guy on my team named Rob Tobias chasing them in his tuxedo. Next thing I see is the two of them emerging from the shadows and they’re walking back toward me. Inside the pressroom, Chris Berman was talking, so now I’ve got to entertain Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky before they bolt and blow this off. So I engaged them in conversation. I don’t remember what I said, but Berman was still talking and eventually Gretzky looked into the room, looked at Michael, looked at me, and said, “They don’t want to talk to me; they’re really here to see Michael. I think I’ll just go.” I said, “Please, no, wait. Really they do. Chris will be done in a second.” But Berman and the press kept going.
So now I’m starting to panic because Gretzky is really getting anxious and to have both Jordan and Gretzky go out there together was going to be a really nice moment for us. So we talk a little bit more, and then Wayne says again, “Really, no, really, they just want Mike, they don’t want me. I’m going to go.” I guess out of desperation, I turned to him and said, “Hey, Wayne, you’re the only guy in the building who’s named The Great One. I think they’ll want to talk to you.” Jordan started to laugh, and Wayne calmed down. Berman finished soon thereafter and the two guys walked out together. So we got that one done.
By the late 1990s, ESPN reached more than 75 million American homes, and was the most widely distributed cable network in the United States. ESPN2 now had 50 million U.S. subscribers, and internationally, ESPN reached over 150 million homes in over 160 countries, in twenty languages.
But it was once again time for some big new thing to emerge. And obligingly enough, one arrived—with a roar.
ESPN’s first live college football game was Louisiana’s Independence Bowl in December 1982. Two years later, ESPN began televising regular season games, and in 1987, the network debuted College GameDay, a weekly analysis of college football games. Tim Brando would be the first host, with former coach Lee Corso and TV gadfly Beano Cook as his co-anchors. It was Bill Creasy’s baby, his idea, and probably no one else could have convinced Steve