Philly Front Office

ESPN took a lot of heat this week for another round of layoffs. I haven’t watched the channel other than for live sports in years because I don’t care for their brand of argumentative programming. Had you told me in the 1990s that something like SportsCenter would not be a part of my life today, I would have thought you were crazy. Whether it was the 6am, 7pm, or even 11p edition, SportsCenter was appointment viewing for me. Granted much of that was getting the kind of information that the internet would later provide, but it was about the anchors too. The personalities made it appointment viewing. Here are the best in no particular order:

Stuart Scott

“As cool as the other side of the pillow.” As a person who wakes up in the middle of the night frequently to flip their pillow to the cool side, this one always got me. His rapport with Eisen was flawless and I personally loved how he was able to do the serious along with the silly. His performance in the commercial where the anchors are playing basketball against the children is maybe the funniest thing the network ever did. He passed away over 10 years ago now and it’s interesting to think about what else he could have done while also being absolutely perfect for the job he did. “BOOYAH!”

Rich Eisen

Rich Eisen becoming the voice of the NFL was simply a great choice. To me he always came off as the cousin you love to talk with at family events. A great mix of dry wit and great delivery that drove story telling. It always looked like he was having such a great time next to Stuart Scott too. I believe it was Eisen who after Shaq said “my game is like the Pythagorean Theorem, it has no answer” responded with, “someone forgot to tell The Diesel, the answer is C squared.”

Kenny Mayne

Kenny felt like the closest thing to Norm MacDonald a news person could be. He leveraged his completely dry demeanor (“not in this game, that would be a record”) with the most absurd lines in a way that felt like he was trying to see what he could get away with. I remember the first time he yelled “THE FINEST MEATS AND CHEESES FOR ALL MY FELLOW TEAMMATES” and I was gob smacked. It was a constant test of what the audience might laugh at and all he had was the cameramen and fellow anchors to gauge it on. It took real balls to work the way he did. Also, “Your parents signed the permission slips, get up!”

Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann

I don’t care what anyone thinks of Keith Olbermann now, he will always be Dan Patrick’s tag team partner on SportsCenter to me, the golden pairing. While Keith was the abrupt one with phrases like “from way downtown…bang” and “he puts the biscuit in the basket”, Dan was just the opposite with his smooth and subdued delivery of lines like “dare I say…en fuego”, “the whiiffff”, and “golf shots, nothing but golf shots.” Combined, they WERE SportsCenter for years.

Craig Kilborn

Kilborn wasn’t on SportsCenter for very long before making the pivot to real-ish news as the first host of The Daily Show, but he made an impact as a mashup of both Patrick and Olbermann. He was smooth one minute (“Resourceful”) and then yelling out “JUMANJI” the next. The up and down approach with his signature delivery and it made him seem like he was already too big for the chair he was in. It was cocky and it was good. As his career would go on, most realized that he is good in small doses or limited length (like the Jim Harbaugh or Doug Collins of news anchoring) so his time in front of ESPN cameras was ideal.

Bonus: Karl Ravech

While Karl Ravitch did SportsCenter during his time with ESPN, most of us middle aged folks know him from coming on right after that show with Baseball Tonight. As the host, he was the dependable voice that brought me in, essentially the opposite of the guys above. He didn’t have to be zany and he didn’t need the catchphrases (though he had a few), yet he was still the keystone that kept the show inviting. That delivery and demeanor gave me my baseball the way previous generations received their news from anchors at the major networks. There’s a certain comfort in a person that can be dependable but engaging at the same time.

People talk about this being the final nail in ESPNs coffin but that’s hyperbole. Simply, the network has changed and it is not catering to people of my age anymore. It is what it is. Ravech is probably the last true member of that old wave. Other than live sports, there’s nothing left for me anymore.¹

1. This is not to say I don’t like Scott Van Pelt, I certainly do, but he was able to pivot naturally to more of a gambling and fantasy angle that does not interest me. ↩︎

Photo: SportsCenter