Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [312]
With Petitti out of the running, Shapiro was “forced to look inward,” and suggested to Bodenheimer that John Skipper be given the title of editor in chief, with Jed Drake and Norby Williamson reporting to him. The title fit Skipper’s publishing background, Shapiro thought, but it made Bodenheimer uncomfortable; it didn’t sound like television to him. Norby, meanwhile, made his attempt to oversee production, but Bodenheimer nixed that idea. With no clear heirs apparent, ESPN’s organizational chart was suddenly in treacherous flux.
JOHN SKIPPER:
When Mark Shapiro resigned, I called George within hours and asked if I could speak with him about the job. I think it was on a Friday morning. George said sure—in fact, he said, why don’t we go out for a little boat ride tomorrow and discuss? Now, George is not a fancy guy. He has a boat, but it is just a little fishing boat.
So Saturday comes and I am more than a little nervous. First off, I am not a fisherman or a boat guy despite being a Skipper. We meet, head out into the Long Island Sound, and aren’t out of the harbor before I say, “George, I want you to consider me for Mark’s job.” He expressed surprise, and maybe what he meant was it was surprising to hear a guy who had not a lick of experience in television ask for a job producing and programming television.
He asked me what my thoughts were about the job and may have been surprised again to see me pull out a wad of yellow legal pages with my prepared thoughts about what I would do. I had spent the night before on the phone with John Walsh coming up with all of it. I had had significant differences of opinion about the direction we were headed with our programming, so it was not a chore to come up with a plan.
When we returned to the dock, George, who is a close-to-the-vest guy, gave me no clue as to whether he liked it or not but simply suggested that he would think about it.
I do suspect that at some point he turned to John Walsh and asked, “What do you think? Can he really do this?” Of course, John was invested in saying yes. And remember, John and I had been partners already in launching the magazine and in running ESPN.com.
However it happened, it is a great job and a fun job. And I think it has mostly worked out.
GEORGE BODENHEIMER:
I felt like I had an executive in John Skipper with great untapped potential. I thought that with John’s creativity and business acumen he could quickly learn what he needed to prosper in that position. And I feel like ESPN has the culture where you can plug somebody into a spot who may not on a piece of paper have all the experience that you might call for from central casting if you were asking for a head of all content. But he has—we had—still do today—a tremendous executive team underneath that position.
When rights to the 2010 World Cup became available and preliminary discussions began between ESPN and FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, observers saw nothing like the Mark Shapiro whose triumphant rampages of determination had landed rights to the NBA, Wimbledon, and other big events. Seemingly apathetic (for him), Shapiro clearly wasn’t of like mind when it came to soccer.
With ESPN holding back from the bidding war, it wasn’t surprising that Gary Zenkel, Dick Ebersol’s number two at NBC Sports, was able to secure a handshake deal for the rights, reflecting the lack of enthusiasm by other networks. But then something happened: Chuck Blazer, the only U.S. citizen ever to serve on the FIFA executive committee, went into a tirade, denouncing the NBC deal to the board and claiming it could mean the death of soccer in the United States.
For every person who thought Blazer sincerely believed that NBC lacked sufficient commitment to the sport, several others saw a different explanation. At that time, Shapiro was “suspected” of having accepted an offer for a new executive position from sports magnate Daniel Snyder,