Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [258]
Max wound up not coming in for the rest of the week. I ran out of ties on Wednesday and had to go shopping. Max never came back. I was hearing that ESPN was going to bring people in for tryouts, but for whatever reason—I never asked the reason and I don’t even know the reason—they never did. I did four months’ worth of shows on a daily contract—which I was happy to have because it was an on-air contract for hosting, which was more than I was making as a researcher for PTI. I signed my first contract a year and three months after Max left.
BOB RYAN, Reporter:
I’m a ham, an unvarnished ham. You have to be to survive and flourish on Around the Horn. Clearly, it’s performance art. It’s hard to say no because first and foremost, I’m an impoverished writer looking for outside income. But PTI is simply the most fun you can have on television. There’s only two of you, not four or five, and there’s something about the way it’s put together by that incredible staff. If you’re an egomaniac, it’s the show for you.
For every PTI or Around the Horn, there had to be a miss—or two or three. Beg Borrow & Deal, for one, was a thinly disguised imitation of the CBS hit Amazing Race. Two four-contestant teams had to bluff and finagle their way across state lines using their wits but no chits; no cash, checks, or credit cards. They also had to complete “sports-related tasks” en route. Originally titled Beg, Borrow, and B.S., the reality game lasted two seasons of seven episodes each (Rich Eisen hosted the first season, Summer Sanders the second) and managed to earn barrel-bottom ratings from its premiere in September of 2002 right through to its feeble finale in August of 2003.
Mohr Sports was, according to executive producer (and former cast member of Saturday Night Live) Jay Mohr, a cross between The Chris Rock Show and SportsCenter. Guests over the course of the talk show’s run included Alec Baldwin, Bill Maher, Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Kimmel, and Wesley Snipes. The series premiered on ESPN on April 2, 2002, and, after being tried out in nine different time slots and failing in all of them, closed down for good on August 20 of the same year. “It was a bit of a train wreck from the beginning,” Mohr conceded.
Unscripted, hosted by former Rolling Stone writer Chris Connelly, featured big-time sports stars in “real-time” interviews—without edits or postproduction tinkering—talking intimately and casually about their private and public lives. Although it fell short of completing a full year on the air (premiering October 22, 2001, and ending June 25, 2002), the show, with its novel approach to a tired format, was ambitious enough to make an impression on viewers. Guests ranged from Barry Bonds to Hulk Hogan to Sammy Sosa.
Although it was no failure, another ESPN original was scheduled to run only one night: Pete Rose on Trial. The ramblin’, gamblin’ guy himself did not appear, but such baseball stars as Steve Garvey and Jim Palmer (witnesses for the prosecution) and Hank Aaron and Bill Lee (for the defense) did, taking part in make-believe courtroom proceedings that ESPN televised in July of 2003. A jury of twelve, after listening for two hours to defense attorney Johnnie Cochran (of the infamous O. J. Simpson criminal trial) and prosecutor Alan Dershowitz, was supposed to decide two questions: whether Rose deserved a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and whether Rose did in fact bet on ball games, even though by this time everybody knew he had.
In a quixotic combination of verdicts, eight jurors said Rose did belong in the Hall of Fame and yet eleven of the same twelve ruled that yes, he’d gambled on games. It didn’t make much sense, but many viewers found the “trial” entertaining and provocative, with Jeffrey Toobin providing expert legal analysis.
CHARLEY STEINER:
After the