James Andrew Miller - Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

Thanks a lot for all your help. No problem; let me know if theres anything else you need. I will. Appreciate it. Oh, and can you do me one favor? Of course. What is it? Please dont mention my name in the acknowledgments. I dont want to get into trouble because somebody thinks I was a source.

That conversation, or one close to it, took place dozens of times with ESPN employees. Perhaps never before have so many been so helpful and yet so desirous of not being thanked. That being understood, let these few words serve as a general if inadequate thank you to all those at ESPN who were incredibly generous with their time, assistance, and, most of all, candor.

To ESPN management, who originally elected not to participate in the book, then changed their minds, we offer equal parts gratitude and empathy. Clearly this effort would not have been the same without your cooperation and without your allowing others to talk. But it cant have been easy to open your campus to inquisitive intruders without knowing what would come of it.

Gratitude also goes to those at other networks, league offices, and, most significantly, former ESPN employees for their openness. We are no less grateful to those who were interviewed but chose not to be quoted by name and those who, only because of space limitations, did not make the final cut. To them go apologies as well as thanks. To those who were not interviewed, it wasnt personal. There are literally thousands who could have made compelling contributions to this book; there just wasnt enough time and space to include everyone.

Maura Mandts army of ESPY professionals, particularly Jennifer Aiello, were selflessly helpful, as were many publicists, agents, and others representing those who participated.

All the interviews were recorded on old-fashioned cassette tapes, because the one and only Harriet Schnitzer, who started transcribing tapes more than twenty-five years ago for Running in Place: Inside the Senate, prefers tapes. She is a marvel. However, the workload would have been unmanageable without an incredible lineup helping out as well: Katie Andrew, Martin Beiser, Lila Blaylock, Jennifer Haubrich, Bari Laskow, Oliver Miller-Farrell, Ryan Mitchell, Victoria Rosner, Alex Shapiro, and Avi Zenilman all provided invaluable support. To push the sports metaphor further: what a team.

Steve Skaggs, a dear friend, took time to read the manuscript and thus make the work journey more stimulating. Michael Ferman, a brother in spirit, makes the life journey more stimulating.

This book has been published at Little, Brown because thats where their extraordinary editor in chief Geoff Shandler resides. The world would be a smarter place if he could take a look at everything before its final version. Gratitude extends to his colleagues at Little, BrownKaren Andrews, Amanda Brown, Nicole Dewey, Heather Fain, Peggy Freudenthal, Holly Hartman, Keith Hayes, Laura Keefe, Karen Landry, Pamela Marshall, Liese Mayer, Amanda Tobier, Mary Tondorf-Dick, and Betsy Uhrigand their gifted, gracious leader, Michael Pietsch.

If Sloan Harris were to leave the agency business and become, say, a dentist, we would be his willing and even eager patients; were he to become an architect, wed be at his office door asking him to design our houses. He is tireless in his devotion and deserves our warm professionaland personalindebtedness.

Finally: loving appreciation to Chloe Tess Miller, humanitarian and artist; to Sophie Alexandra Miller, athlete and scholar; and to Zachary Samuel Miller, idealist and visionary, for their incredible patience and heartfelt encouragement. These three gifts from G-d are the children of one coauthor and the G-dchildren of the other. In both roles, in their exuberance and delight, they put us to shame.

Running in Place: Inside the Senate

Live from New York: An Uncensored

History of Saturday Night Live

On the Air

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Live from New York: An Uncensored

History of Saturday Night Live

A fanatic is one who cant change his mind and wont change the subject.

Winston Churchill

It all started with a $9,000 investment, the purchase of a transponder by a father and son who had never seen one, and the suicide of a famous playboy.

I was fired as the communications manager for the Hartford Whalers in 1978, and then fired as executive director for Howe Enterprises. Gordie Howe was playing for the Whalers at the time, and the Enterprises job was just a way to do some things for Gordie and the boys. The way I was dismissed was intriguing. It was Memorial Day weekend, that Saturday morning, and I was getting ready to play golf. The phone rang and it was Colleen Howe, Gordies wife. She said, I dont have much time and I really wanted to see you because I didnt want to do it this way, but were terminating you at Howe Enterprises. I have to catch a plane, so good-bye. It was a surefire way to ruin a good round of golf.

My dad was in broadcasting my whole life. We have a close relationship, but its complicated.

We would broadcast high school hockey games together, and when he was with the Whalers, I filled in with a pregame talk show a few times. I had taken a year off after high school, then went to college for two years and dropped out. I dont think my dad was surprised. School and I werent the best of friends.

Then my father and I did a TV show on Channel 18 in Hartfordwhich was a religious station thencalled Sports Only, which basically was SportsCenter in its earliest form. It was around that time that my dad and I started batting around ideas, but none of them were quite right.

Years before, in 1950, Bill Rasmussen had the opportunity to play in the Detroit Tigers Class D farm club; he would have grabbed at the chance, but like many others of that era, he felt he had to attend collegein his case, DePauw Universityto hang on to a draft exemption that would keep him out of the Korean War. Sports remained his true love, however, and now, in 1978, with his forty-sixth birthday approaching, Rasmussen decided that the time had come to actually do what he dreamed of doing.

While working for the Whalers, Rasmussen had met an insurance man named Ed Eagan, who was working at Aetna but really wanted to be in television. Eagan had wanted to talk to Bill about the Hartford Whalers being the centerpiece of a monthly cable show about Connecticut sports.

I called Ed Eagan right after Colleens call and told him, I dont think its a very good idea to talk to me about the Whalers since Im not there anymore, but he said, Come on in, and well talk about something else. We ended up thinking we should do what I was going to do with the Whalers but do it independently. As the conversation continued we thought, why not do UConn basketball, and then we thought, if we can do UConn, why not Wesleyan, why not Yale, why not Fairfield, and Southern Connecticut? One thing led to another. Ed even had the idea for the first two shows: hot-air ballooning and a game from the Bristol Red Sox. Ed said we would tape a show every month with a sports topic of interest to Connecticut, and take these big two-inch reels of tape in his car to cable systems. We could do shorter distances on bicycle.

Rasmussen knew virtually nothing about the cable TV business, but he wasnt alone: in 1978, there were just over 14 million homes receiving cableless than 20 percent of all TV households. HBO had gone on the air in 1975 but offered limited programming and signed off at midnight. A year later, Ted Turner uplinked his then-piddling Atlanta UHF outlet to a satellite, thereby creating the countrys first SuperStation, but one that delivered more Braves games than original programming. The next year, televangelist Pat Robertson launched his 700 Club on satellite, and in 1978, despite the fact that HBO reached only 1.5 million homes, Viacom fired up its slow-blooming imitation, Showtime.