Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

1CK1S
1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited May 2011 in From the Cheap Seats
WWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!

The hotly anticipated oral history tell-all about ESPN--"Those Guys Have All the Fun"--hits bookstores on Tuesday.

The 700-page book was co-authored by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller--the guys behind the similarly salacious book about "Saturday Night Live," 2002's "Live From New York."

The latest offering from Shales and Miller has already set the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" aflame. As news of its contents have gradually leaked to the press, ESPN executives have been scrambling to defuse claims of sex, drugs and general debauchery made by some current and former employees.

"I can tell you categorically, we do not have a frat-boy culture," John Skipper, ESPN's executive vice president of content, told reporters at the network's upfront confab last week. "We do not condone that kind of activity."

Below are the seven accounts, culled from various advance excerpts, that have the suits in the network's Bristol, Conn., headquarters sweating the most.

Andy Brilliant, former ESPN general counsel:


The company would have Christmas parties up at some horrible place in Bristol. A couple of them were drunken orgies ... It became like a big frat party. There were a lot of drugs being done in the bathroom. There was quite a bit of ? going on afterward, a lot of it extramarital. But everybody went back to business the next workday.

Steve Bornstein, former ESPN chairman:


I think part of the sexual harassment stuff was location. It's one hundred miles from real civilization, and you got the kind of testosterone, ? mentality, frat house approach that's pretty much a recipe for stupid decisions being made.

Sal Marchiano, former ESPN reporter:


There was a ? sex life there. There was ? in the hallways. Okay, maybe not in the hallways, but there were a couple of stairwell stories ... There were drugs in the building, that I knew. There was one guy who dealt ? .

Bill Grimes, former ESPN CEO, on a New York City apartment the network once kept for staffers:


I remember [an ESPN exec] coming in and saying, 'We gotta get rid of this apartment … because the mail boys got a couple of our secretaries hooking over there.' Hooking! That's what he said ... 'They're making money after work when no one's there. It's getting out of control.'

Comments

  • 1CK1S
    1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    John Lack, ex-ESPN vice president, on the firing of former baseball analyst Steve Phillips over an affair Phillips had with a 22-year-old production assistant:


    ESPN suspending Steve Phillips as a commentator because he's a married man having an affair with an employee is like going to Harlem and saying we're going to arrest all black men who cross the street.

    Jack Edwards, former ESPN anchor:


    The number one thing that surprised me about ESPN was how little team spirit there was for a place that said that its business was sports. If I said 'I think you're wrong' to someone who was higher in the organizational chart than I was, what I would get back was 'You're not a team player.' And on more than one occasion I responded, 'When's the last time you wore a jockstrap?' A team is where you have your teammate's back regardless of what happens; you defend them and you sort out any ? laundry quietly behind closed doors. There was almost none of that at ESPN. There was no encouragement, because the atmosphere was one of stick the knife in his back, climb the corporate ladder. It was a very, very negative place to work. Don't believe the mascot promos. Life is not like that at SportsCenter.

    ? Ebersol, soon-to-be-ex-NBC Sports chief:



    ESPN basically has to have one of their talent talk about ? or put a picture of their ? on a phone--which is what that [Sean] Salisbury guy did--before they'll do anything about any of these various crazies, because they don't have to. Nobody can touch them.

    Michele Beadle, co-host of ESPN's "SportsNation," on the peephole video incident featuring fellow ESPN personality Erin Andrews:



    I felt bad for her. She looked fabulous but it was such a violation. I mean, I've had moments in my apartment in New York when the blinds were up for one brief second and you think, 'Ugh!' but that's nothing compared to what happened to her. Nothing. ... I think things might have been handled differently, but she seems to be moving on. Sometimes these things turn out better for people.
  • 1CK1S
    1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    AA has just received an advanced copy of Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN, written by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. Yes, it's true, the book does come in at 745 pages. It's an impressive piece of work. Judging from the excerpts released and what I've been able to skim through so far, the book will certainly be worth the read. Off the top, the first thing I wanted to investigate was ESPN's Monday Night Football booth and the Tony Kornheiser experiment, especially after reading this tweet from Deitsch. Was there any animosity behind the scenes regarding TK on MNF? The book makes it clear that Tirico and Kornheiser's working relationship was terrible and their lack of chemistry led to TK's ultimate departure from the MNF booth and the arrival of Jon Gruden. Below are actual excerpts from Those Guys on Kornheiser, Tirico, and Monday Night Football.

    Mike Tirico:

    The football game is surrounded by a bevy of wide-ranging opinions in the pregame shows, the postgame shows, and the talk shows during the week. People come to the game for the game itself. So we were trying to make what Tony does best - strong opinions - work within the body of the game; that was the challenge.

    Tony Kornheiser:

    We had a lot of philosophical disagreements, especially about the extent to which it was an entertainment show. When they had guests in the booth, many of them stunk beyond words. I was for MNF as I remembered it as a child with Cosell and Meredith and Gifford, but Mike really just wanted to be the play by play guy on MNF...

    Early on together I said, "Mike you know what really works well on PTI is when Mike and I talk over each other -" and he cut me off right there and says, "That's a nice little studio show, but MNF is very important, so don't ever interrupt me when I'm talking."... for two years he didn't even look at me.

    Look, am I happy now? Absolutely. In PTI, I've got the best show in America... But I thought I could have been better on MNF... But the happiest guy in America today is Mike Tirico, because I'm not in that booth and he's got a coach, so he doesn't have to worry about anything else.
  • 1CK1S
    1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    Bill Simmons:

    Tirico's always been nice to me, and I think he's a talented guy, but I thought how he acted was unforgivable, and I continue to feel bad for Tony... I had watched all of those Kornheiser games thinking, "If I was in that spot, and the expectation was that I was supposed to entertain, and had this guy with me who was subtly undermining me, changing the subject on me and greeting my jokes with dead silence, I would eventually strangle this person on live TV." Kornheiser is a better person than I am, apparently.

    Simmons:

    Tirico doesn't sell for Tony for three f*cking years, then has the gall to say nice things about him after Tony leaves? Come on. What kills me is that Tony got the rap for blowing this when nobody on the planet can succeed in TV if their play-by-play guy isn't selling them. Five minutes into their first regular-season Monday night game, Tirico had already laughed at more Gruden jokes than he did for three years of Kornheiser.
  • 1CK1S
    1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    *Jim Gray vs. ESPN: Gray accuses ESPN of running away from him after the negative reaction to his exclusive interview with LeBron James, The Decision, in which Gray dawdled through numerous questions (such as whether the NBA superstar bites his nails) before getting to the only one that mattered: would James stay with the Cleveland Cavaliers or jump to another team?

    Gray, a former ESPN reporter turned freelance TV journalist, says ESPN was totally on-board with his approach to the interview. "So to throw me under the bus and say, like, 'Our hands are off this. We didn't pay him. He's not a part of it. We wouldn't have had anything to do with it.' Come on!"

    * Chris Berman vs. Tony Kornheiser: Apparently, ESPN's two biggest on-air personalities make no secret of hating each other's guts. Never more so than when Kornheiser invaded Berman's NFL turf as an awkward everyman on Monday Night Football. Kornheiser says Berman accused him of spreading the rumor that Berman tried to pick up a woman in bar.

    "The whole time I was on Monday Night Football, Chris Berman never mentioned my name. He loathes me, in part because of the stuff I used to write about him," says Kornheiser in the book.

    Counters Berman: "In the mid-90's, somebody said I was in a bar and used a pickup line on a woman wearing a leather bra and she left with me. I really didn't know what they were talking about. But a colleague of mine, Mr. Kornheiser, chose to run with it, and the Internet chose to run with it for years. I don't even know what 'it' is but it's a very dangerous thing, especially when a colleague piles on and gives credence to it."
  • toheeb27
    toheeb27 Members Posts: 10,049 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    Lesson to folks, before u post something, if u think this might be late, it most likely is. Even Stringer Bell thinks u are tardy.

    313ly7m.jpg
  • killap
    killap Members Posts: 3,430 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2011
    Damn Lebron signed with the heat