• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2415 0

my closest friends before and during ESPN’s start-up was Bill Daniels. Daniels Communications became a real powerhouse when cable companies began to expand, and he owned the Los Angeles Express when the USFL was started. Daniels called me after a meeting of the United States Football League owners when they first were formed and said, “Stu, I hate to call you about this. But a number of the owners know I know you, and they wanted me to talk to you about Chet Simmons and the USFL commissioner’s job.” I immediately said, “Jesus Christ, Bill, cut it out. You know we’re right on the cusp of making this thing work, and, my God, that would take the heart out of me.” Well, that was bullshit, but I continued anyway. “Look, I can’t stand in the way of his career, and I certainly won’t.”

BILL GRIMES:

It was just awful, very, very difficult for Chet. I was very empathetic. Getty had a management meeting up at a place called Silverado up in Napa Valley. So Stu invited Chet and me to come and spend a day there. The idea was to meet the Getty people. But once we got there, you couldn’t say good-bye to Stu in between sessions, after sessions, even after dinner—you had to hang with him. So he told Chet and me to join him for drinks, and right in front of me, he began to berate Chet. It was awful. It was a bad, bad, bad situation. And I felt horrible. And either the next day or later that night, Chet said to me, this is not your fault, and I just hate this prick.

CHET SIMMONS:

So I’m coming to the end of my contract and all this stuff comes at the same time, which is good and bad. So we go to a bar—figure that out—we’re going to have a chat: Am I going to stay, am I going to go, what’s going on? I said, “Stu, look, I love this company, I love this job. If you want me to stay, these are the things that you gotta do. Number one: get out of my hair. I know I’ve got to communicate with you, but get out of my hair. And you’ve got to make me an offer to stay that’s incentive-based.”

And after seven hours, eight hours, going over the same crap hour after hour after hour, he would not move on any of the conditions of re-upping me except that he’d stay out of my hair, which was bullshit, and this and that and little things, but he wouldn’t do the big things. It was clear he wanted me to go, and I wanted to get rid of him. I put my hand out and said, “It’s been great and I wish you luck.”

I knew the USFL was having a meeting—I think we were in Chicago—and I walked from the bar to the hotel where they were having the meeting, and I walked in, and here are all these owners sitting around a table, and I said, “I accept your offer to be commissioner.” And that was the end of that.

STUART EVEY:

When I met with Chet, it was very short and sweet. I expressed my disappointment that he was leaving, but the truth is, it relieved me a great deal. Bill Daniels couldn’t have given me a better opportunity. I told everyone I was disappointed, but deep down, I wasn’t.

Chet always had a chip on his shoulder for me, but that’s fine. No problem. You notice, however, that he lasted only one year as commissioner at the USFL.

CHET SIMMONS:

We had a party. Everybody had a couple of beers. I felt for every one of them. These are the kids that had helped me make this company. I gotta tell you, it was a very, very exciting part of my life, those two years up until the end, when all the crap came down on my head from Evey. And if you ask me, the greatest part of my life, it was ESPN. Without question.

BILL GRIMES:

I got a call from Stu—maybe in the middle of the night, and he was drunk, in my opinion, calling from Los Angeles. He said, “I’m firing Chet and I’m going to name you temporary head of ESPN.” So I wrote him a letter and said I wasn’t interested in being an interim anything. I told him I wasn’t about to sit there while he went out to interview a lot of people, then bring somebody else in. And he responded very quickly—it may have been the same day or the next—and said, “The job’s yours.”

ROGER WERNER:

In those early days, we would go to Getty for board