Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [343]
I worked for two more years, I didn’t get fired. Then on March 2 or 3 of 2008, I had a meeting, and we sat there and talked, and they said because they had just signed Cris Carter and I had been there twelve years, they said, “You know what? We’re not going to renew your contract.” I really didn’t think they were going to anyway. I mean, I knew they loved me, and had the incident in 2006 not happened, I believe I’d still be there. I know I would be.
But I also understood the position they felt that they were in. I was up for another raise and it would have been a lot of money, and they felt it was time to move on, and I said, “Okay.” You know, what are you going to say? It’s not like they looked at me and said, “You’re fired because of the incident two years ago.” I shook hands with Steve Anderson and Norby Williamson and we talked for a few minutes, they wished me luck, and I was out the door, and that was it. It was pretty much that simple.
MATT SANDULLI:
Harold Reynolds was the first and only Major League Baseball player ever to introduce himself to me, which I kid him about to this day. He was a Mariner and I was in Detroit doing a feature on Dave Fleming, the left-hander for Seattle who pitched at Georgia. I was standing outside of their dugout, and Harold comes up. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon when he walks up, looks at me, and goes, “Hey, I’m Harold Reynolds.” I’m, like, “Hey, I’m Matt Sandulli from ESPN.” “So what are you doing?” “I’m doing a feature on Dave Fleming, dah, dah, dah, dah.” Just out of the blue he decided to come say hello to me. I don’t know what he was doing or whatever. I kidded him about that when he came to work for us. But from a professional standpoint, one thing I would say about Harold, when he first got here, he really didn’t have much to say—he was, like, oh boy, enthusiasm, great personality, good guy, not sure he’s going to do well because he doesn’t have much to say. And he really worked at it and got himself to talk. He does a good job. I loved working with him on the college games because when he was analyzing the game, he did it from a coaching perspective. He was teaching; the whole game, he was teaching. It was the perfect forum for him.
I was on vacation when it happened, so it was July, and I got an e-mail. I’m, like, “Okay.” As a group we were told that Harold was no longer with the company.
DANA JACOBSON, Anchor:
In one of the end zones there’s a mural called Word of Life, but nicknamed Touchdown Jesus, and this is part of Notre Dame football. I’m a Michigan grad, and I bet on Michigan–Notre Dame games. So in 2008, when I spoke at this roast for Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic [of ESPN’s Mike & Mike in the Morning], I was obviously going to rip Notre Dame and make fun of Notre Dame football. Drunk, in the state I was in—not funny, cursing around the reference to Touchdown Jesus—not funny. I think it was a combination of the amount of cursing that I did, of continually going back to Notre Dame, of referencing Touchdown Jesus, it was probably just the combination. There’s a great picture on the Internet; I drank vodka from the bottle. I think I said something like “it’s my liquid courage.”
It was probably the most embarrassing night that I’ve ever had. Some of my bosses were there, and then the next morning having to send out e-mails right away and apologize—that is so not like me. I’ve been at a million events before and never been drunk and a million events after. It was just a bad night.
Deadspin broke the story when I had already been suspended. A week had gone by, and I was suspended for the following week for inappropriate behavior, one week’s suspension without pay. I had already sent a bunch of “I