Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [306]
I just looked at him. “Well, hold on, man, I spent twenty years at ESPN. I did every major show in the remote production department that ESPN had. So you’re telling me that a guy who’s been here less than three years—and you can’t even put us in the same league as producers—and you’re going to apply loyalty to him and not to me?” He said, “I’m sorry, I hired him.” That’s when I was just, like, “This is ridiculous.” So then he started throwing out other jobs that I don’t want to mention because these are jobs that my friends currently have. And I was, like, “Those guys are my friends. I can’t just come in and take their job.” And he’s, like, “Oh, they won’t mind. We’ll just give them something else to do.” I said, “No, no, no, they will mind.” Then I said, “Maybe we should just table this conversation for now and have it again.” Where I left it for me was, ESPN is going to be my last resort. I’m going to pursue every other job that I can possibly get, just knowing that ESPN is the fallback, but I don’t want to go back to ESPN because I don’t want to work for this guy.
AL MICHAELS:
I don’t want to say “stunned,” but I was very disappointed when Monday Night was no longer going to be on ABC. At that point, there was never a question in my mind that if I wanted to remain on Monday Night, I’d be the guy.
It was upsetting when I was told by George that Jay Rothman was going to be the producer and not Fred Gaudelli because of “a loyalty factor.” That’s when I said to George, “I don’t understand this. What do you mean by loyalty? Fred has been with the company longer than Jay, and he went from Sunday Night to Monday Night at the behest of the company. Clearly that meant that Fred was the best man, because Monday Night is the crown jewel package.” So I never understood what that “loyalty factor” was. I read that to mean that loyalty only extended to the ESPN brand, and when Fred went to ABC he was no longer an ESPN guy—even though they asked him to make the move and ESPN and ABC were both under the same umbrella.
I felt for Freddie. Fred Gaudelli had been their best guy, and they wouldn’t have elevated him to Monday Night Football if they thought somebody else was better. And, by the way, nobody is. Freddie is the best producer I have ever worked with.
HOWARD KATZ:
Freddie Gaudelli is the best football producer on the planet. I respect a lot of other people’s work, I just think Freddie’s the best. So I was sort of surprised that Mark made the decision that he did. In Mark’s mind, I think he was trying to be loyal to his guys. Well, you know, Freddie had been one of his guys too, so to that extent Freddie certainly got caught in the crossfire.
FRED GAUDELLI:
There is no loyalty in business; we all know that. But for me it was just the up-close and personal example that it really doesn’t exist, it really doesn’t. When I sat there and thought, “Okay, why is he choosing Jay over me?” and I’m just kind of making a checklist—you know, experience and all these different things—I mean, I don’t want to make this about me and Jay, but there was no comparison. This was, like, crazy! John, Al, myself, and Drew had all done this for quite a while, and certainly Al and John had achieved a mega-status in their roles, and I’d been doing mine for a long time. Even Mark had said publicly more than a few times that I had set the standard for football production. He was quoted on that from the producers’ standpoint in various places. So I knew what it was about.
I was not jumping onto the Kool-Aid wagon. Mark Shapiro ran a dictatorship, and ESPN still suffers from it today.
NORBY WILLIAMSON:
There were people here who haven’t been around that long, and they thought of Freddie as an ABC guy. No, that’s wrong. He’s part of the fabric of this place. He helped build this place. That