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SAL MARCHIANO:

He said, “I got an offer to go to KGO, ABC’s owned and operated station in San Francisco.” And he says, “They offered me $100,000.” And I said, “Well, what are you making here?” He says, “Well, I’m making $35,000.” I said, “How old are you?” Now, I think he said twenty-seven. I said, “Chris, you know, this is gonna be bigger than KGO, and if I were your age, I would never leave here. I don’t care what they’re offering you. This is gonna be bigger than KGO.”

CHRIS BERMAN:

It was me and another guy. They picked the other guy. They wound up being afraid I was too hard-core about sports. Had they picked me, I was going. But I wound up being in San Francisco for the game that changed the history of pro football. I was there for the catch. Montana. Clark. Unbelievable. The game’s over. The place is erupting and we’re running on the field to get interviews. One of the greatest moments in my career. Then I have to ask Tom Landry good questions after a one-point loss. This shit isn’t easy. I’m twenty-five.

So now, everybody’s interviewed for the first time in the brief little history of ESPN, and we’re going to drive like frickin’ Steve McQueen in Bullitt up to the city of San Francisco to KRON, Channel 4. I’m writing the piece in the car, and they’re going to give us an editor who we’ve never met to get it on the 11:00 p.m. show, which was 8:00 p.m. where we were. We run in there, and it’s about 6:35. We sit down with tapes and interviews, and we’re going to edit a piece for five minutes, including footage of the game and shots from down in the field. You have five seconds to make a decision. ESPN never attempted anything like this. We got it done at 7:51. It was a brave new world for us.

BILL FITTS:

Chris showed some talent early on, but the funny thing was, he kept on wanting to go out in the field. I told him, “Chris, we got a million guys out there, you don’t want to be out there, you want to be here, where you’re at an anchor’s desk.” I could tell he didn’t agree with me, and so we tried to get him out there from time to time, but at some point I remember he did come to me and say, “I guess you were right. This is where I wanted to be.”

STEVE SABOL, President, NFL Films:

We had an x’s and o’s show that was turned down by all the networks. It was a convention-puncturing idea, because no one thought at the time that you could use coaching film, showing all twenty-two [players]. But Allie Sherman was really good; he could explain things and simplify them. Chris Berman was like the host, and I was sort of like a trained observer in there. I remember when we started, Chris was just sort of developing his shtick, and I thought it was really funny, but Allie couldn’t stand it. Allie thought that the show should be really serious about football, and of the three of us, he was the only one qualified to do it. But it also couldn’t be entirely all that, and anytime Chris would interject any of his personality, whenever we took a break, Allie would stand up and say, “Chris, come here, I want to talk with you.” And he’d take him into the men’s room. And lecture him. And he’d say, “People don’t care about what you have to say about football. I’m the expert. They want to hear me. You are just here to tee it up and send it over to me.” But I was also the producer of the show, and I would pull Chris over and say, “Hey Chris, keep doing what you’re doing. It’s great, we love it, don’t let Allie intimidate you.” So I felt bad for Chris because he was getting two different types of instructions.

CHIP DEAN, Director:

I worked the overnight with Tom Mees and Chris Berman. I’m not sure there was ever a better team on SportsCenter than those guys. They were probably two of the more knowledgeable sports guys I’ve ever met, and they were passionate about what they did. They had personality. They sort of rubbed off each other. They sort of hit on each other on air. And they could wing it. Back then, we had a lot of young