Those Guys Have All the Fun, by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, came out several years ago and immediately landed on my reading list . . . but I didn’t get to it until this summer. It tells the story of ESPN, all the way from its founding in 1979 up through 2010. Miller and Shales wrote a similar book about Saturday Night Live a few years ago, and the style is the same. The narrative moves chronologically from beginning to end, and aside from an occasional paragraph or page to summarize events, the story is told in the words of the numerous parties involved. The authors got access to the big-time on-air personalities over the years (Chris Berman, Bob Ley, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Linda Cohn, Tom Jackson, Rece Davis, Tony Kornheiser, Jim Rome, etc.), as well as various celebrities and producers who have interacted with the network and, more specifically, SportsCenter.
There were times toward the beginning of the book that were rather slow, because I wasn’t familiar with some of the events that occurred or the names involved in the late 1970s, early 1980s, etc. However, after about one-third of the book, I tore through the rest. As a kid I would wake up, come downstairs, and eat breakfast/get dressed for school while watching SportsCenter. Not just for a few minutes, but for about 1.5 hours. I was enamored with the way sports were presented by some of the announcers, and I couldn’t get enough of the highlights and stats, even when the show turned over at the top of the hour and repeated itself. So I looked forward to hearing about the behind-the-scenes action.
The slow parts for me were the business side of things, because quite a bit of time is spent discussing the negotiations with cable companies, buying rights to sporting events, the merger of ESPN with ABC/Disney, etc. What I found most enthralling was the discussion of the dynamics of what announcers were put on Monday Night Football, how the guys in the booth interacted, the friction between personalities, and so on. I didn’t realize at the time how controversial Tony Kornheiser was on MNF, mainly because I liked him and just thought of him as entertainment, not a football analyst. I can see where his personality might get in the way of other, more serious football announcers, but I reached a point a while ago where the commentators became somewhat superfluous and I could watch a game without the sound.
The book isn’t a quick read at all, but if you were into ESPN and SportsCenter during the years when business was booming, I highly recommend it.
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