South Beach Sessions - Chris Fowler

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[10] Proximo.

[11] Jersey City, New Jersey.

[12] Welcome to South Beach sessions.

[13] I'm excited about this one because Chris Fowler, I believe, has been hiding in plain sight in the shadows for a long time.

[14] You know his voice, you know his face, you know his work, because his work is great, but you may not know a great deal about him.

[15] I believe him to be one of the greatest success stories in the history of ESPN, because you went, and I don't know who you'd nominate for this class, but you went from doing a high school show.

[16] I remember watching you.

[17] We're about the same.

[18] age.

[19] I was a little younger and I remember watching as a sports network blossom, hey, who's that guy covering high school sports for ESPN?

[20] And what is this entire network about covering sports all the time?

[21] So thank you for doing this.

[22] I appreciate you time.

[23] And I very much appreciate your work because you've been doing it as a professional pillar for a long time.

[24] Well, that's very kind.

[25] I've admired you for a long time.

[26] I'm glad we had a happenstance meeting outside of the men's room of a Miami hotspot restaurant so we could reconnect and organize this.

[27] I'm looking forward to it.

[28] I would like to get to know you better personally because as I told you before, I've run into you in the occasional gym in a college town at an important college football game over the years.

[29] But I don't know your past.

[30] I don't know how it is you became as meticulous as you are.

[31] I don't know what your journey has been.

[32] So take us through sort of the beginnings of how it is that you grew up, how it is you gravitated to sports, how it is that you decided to make what looks like a dream living, because from where I'm standing, it feels like you figured some things out about life balance, about how to do work meticulously.

[33] It's hard, but also to choose exactly the life you have around your work.

[34] Well, thank you.

[35] I appreciate that.

[36] I will accept that.

[37] It's a lot of trial and error.

[38] I'm 61, so you've been around a long time, made a lot of mistakes, learned from it hopefully, and listen to a lot of smart people.

[39] That's obviously the key, surrounding yourself with people you can learn from and grow with.

[40] And you do learn lessons when you're in that situation.

[41] So I like to think I got a few things figured out.

[42] But a long way to go.

[43] I mean, infinite seeking is my motto.

[44] You never stop learning and hopefully improving and growing until your last day.

[45] So that's an ongoing process.

[46] Not to get too deep right away.

[47] But my grandmother was a sports fan.

[48] And that's where it comes from.

[49] I am living the dream.

[50] Since 10 years old, I wanted to do this for a living.

[51] What is this?

[52] What is the definition of this?

[53] Documenting live sports events and conveying the excitement that I felt as a listener in the early 70s, late 60s in Chicago, when my grandmother was a Cubs fan was sitting in the backyard of her apartment building and a folding chair on a transistor radio listening to every Cubs game and scoring them in a scorebook for those to know what that is.

[54] That is old school.

[55] Very old school.

[56] She had a book for every season and every game of the season was in that book.

[57] and these were good, but just good enough to break your hard Cubs teams.

[58] The 69 season, I'm old enough to remember.

[59] They're collapsed when the Mets caught them and the Miracle Mets won the World Series.

[60] I still hate the Mets for that.

[61] But I just found that listening to Cubs games with her, listening to Black Hawk's games on the radio and on television was just like enthralling.

[62] And if you want to break it down to why I love doing this, is because I like to see people express joy.

[63] And for me, it was the sound through the radio of Chicago Stadium going insane when the Blackhawks scored a goal and the organ playing and going to Wrigley Field and seeing the collective joy when the Cubs would succeed.

[64] I mean, obviously, there was a lot of disappointment too, but it was just a bunch of people coming together and being happy at the same time for the same reason.

[65] And I thought, what could be cooler than that if you could help be the voice to convey what was going on and deliver that to people?

[66] And so there were a lot of different detours and steps along the way we can get into, including Scholastic Sports America and even College Game Day, before getting to call championship events in my two favorite sports, which are college football and tennis at ESPN.

[67] So, you know, one employer for 38 years doesn't happen unless you navigate that well and get lucky with the rights that company acquires and learn how to say no because it's very easy to get off course in life and in any career, but particularly, I think, in media.

[68] So, you know, since 10 years old, I wanted to do it, did everything I could, extracurricular stuff throughout high school and college.

[69] I did PA announcing for high school hockey games in Colorado Springs.

[70] My brother was a player in high school, got to announce him scoring goals.

[71] That was like an early thrill within the arena, not on any kind of media, but, you know, went to Colorado.

[72] The shared joy.

[73] Yeah, no, it was amazing.

[74] It was just amazing to be in the – I still go as a fan all the time to all kind of different sporting events.

[75] For the energy.

[76] Yeah, for the energy.

[77] I mean, just to be a part of it, I think we do our best on TV to capture it.

[78] Some sports, you could argue, are better on TV.

[79] But the live experience for me, there's just no sense.

[80] substitute.

[81] I think of you as so even though.

[82] It's interesting to hear you say that it's the joy that lures you.

[83] Like, of course, you summon it during the big calls.

[84] But what I think of you is just maximum professional even.

[85] So to hear you say that the magnet for you is just being a joy associate.

[86] Yeah.

[87] Joy adjacent.

[88] I think that's what first got me into it.

[89] I know that you're going to have people that are pissed off and inconsolable on the other end of the spectrum.

[90] As often as you're going to have joyful people.

[91] But I think what.

[92] drew me to it was, was focusing on how important sports were to people and how much happiness it brought them.

[93] And it's been cool over the years to hear all kinds of comments from our customers that how much a show like college game day meant to them because it's the first time they sat with their dad or their brothers and watched sports.

[94] And that's how they came to have a passion for college football or someone grew up, because I've done tennis for 20 some years now grew up listening to us call Federer or Serena matches and that drew them to the sport.

[95] I can't tell you how neat that is because that was me. I was on the other end of it as a little kid getting equating with sports through the voices that brought it to me. Looking at you at 61 though and obviously everyone tells you that you look great, healthy, radiant and balance.

[96] I'll drink this margarita to that.

[97] But I don't think of you as a museum, but you now are that.

[98] You've covered enough of this history that when you go and do Wimbledon or when you're doing these big games, you have a library at your disposal of experiences.

[99] Yeah, and it's fun.

[100] I don't think of it that way, but you're right.

[101] I mean, I just talked about Nadal who was hanging it up, and Roth has been the most admired athlete for me that I've ever covered.

[102] I probably had the most admiration and affection for him.

[103] And the great thing about tennis is you see these long career arcs when it's an all -time great like that.

[104] 19 years ago, I watched him win his first Roland Garros title from right behind his uncle Tony and his family in the stands because we didn't have the rights to broadcast the finals.

[105] So I just went and sat with Brad Gilbert in the stands.

[106] That was 19 years ago.

[107] He was 19 at the time.

[108] He's now 38.

[109] So half of his life, he's been winning the French Open.

[110] And I was there to see the first one and quite a few others since then and then just watched on TV and tried to put into words how he felt about that.

[111] So, yeah, I guess when you've been around long enough, you are blessed to be able to see the entire career arc as you can of many athletes you covered in various sports.

[112] And there's a richness to that.

[113] I don't get that in college football.

[114] The career arc is about, you know, two years, two and a half years, right?

[115] But in tennis have had the chance and other sports I've covered too, to be able to see the growth of an athlete as a person and a player.

[116] And it's, I don't take that for granted.

[117] Why isn't it all your favorite ever?

[118] What he is brought to every performance he's given on the court, the grit, the competitive spirit, the fight, the willingness to suffer, to dig deep within himself, to do whatever it takes.

[119] The humility, he's grounded, he's a family guy.

[120] He practices the way you're supposed to practice.

[121] He has done a lot to grow the sport.

[122] By the way, he's acted off the court, just all of those things.

[123] And that's not me. everybody that's covered him would say that, all of his peers.

[124] They were paying nice tributes to him when he lost the other day in Paris, and that's the last time he's going to play that tournament.

[125] And I heard everybody from Cocoa Gough to Sasha Zver of the guy who beat him in that match, talk about what he has meant to them.

[126] And that's really a lot more important than what he's meant to me is what he's meant to the sport and millions and millions of other people.

[127] Are you someone when you talk about, I associate you with, like, because of the work, I imagine you to be very willful and meticulous.

[128] When you talk about the suffering of Nadal and the craft of what it is that you do and what goes into it.

[129] The product I get on television is a very polished one from you.

[130] But I imagine just watching your career art that you're probably obsessively and insanely meticulous, that you must be sort of unreasonably meticulous just from watching how.

[131] I'm telling you, since watching you covering high school, I'm like, that dude knows how to do television.

[132] He's sort of, he's perfected the sculpting of how how people learn at the, learn the doing of this.

[133] Again, that's very kind.

[134] There's no perfecting because you don't choose, chase perfection.

[135] I don't think it's possible.

[136] You just chase constant improvement.

[137] No, I think you have to love the grind.

[138] It's no different than being an athlete.

[139] It's not different than doing anything for a living.

[140] If you like the process of preparation, improving the groundwork that leads to the broadcasts, if that isn't torture to you, then you're ahead of the game.

[141] I don't think people understand the preparation, though.

[142] I don't think people, like, can you are...

[143] They're not supposed to.

[144] They don't have to understand it.

[145] It matters what it sounds like on Saturday.

[146] But I'd like them to.

[147] I'd like them to understand when you get out there and do a broadcast, any kind of broadcast, and you're on national television for three hours, learning everything you've learned over 38 years.

[148] Tell me about your process up to that and how forgiving you, are with yourself after you've performed less than wherever I am imagining an unreasonable standard is.

[149] Oh, last question, not very forgiving.

[150] I mean, I'm getting better at that because, as I said, you know, perfectionism is not a path to happiness.

[151] You can't be a very happy person if you hold yourself to a standard of perfection.

[152] I have a great conversation with John McIner about this.

[153] He was miserable because he was raised to be a perfectionist.

[154] When you realize you're going to make mistakes, you've got to move on and process it.

[155] So I've made plenty of mistakes.

[156] And, thousands of them and, you know, used to get really pissed off and pick up something out the desk and throw it somewhere, hopefully not at somebody, when I would get frustrated.

[157] But you overcome that.

[158] You realize that you're not going to be perfect.

[159] You just have to meet your own high standard and make sure that your standards for yourself or higher than anybody else is for you.

[160] And I think that's what I tell young people.

[161] You know, you've got to care more about your level or performance than anybody else does.

[162] If you do, you're going to do what it takes to be prepared.

[163] So, yeah, a lot goes into a football broadcast.

[164] A lot goes into a tennis match, even though there's only two players on the court.

[165] But, you know, the preparation for college football, I say this, having done NFL games as well in other sports, it's the hardest to do, just the sheer size of the roster.

[166] And the fact that the rosters change every hour these days in the sport.

[167] I mean, it just, it's harder to get your head wrapped around all the names, all the numbers, all the stats, all the history.

[168] and you have to learn how to be efficient with your time because you can't grind yourself to the bone and then still be fresh and sharp.

[169] You know, sometimes you get to figure out, hey, all that matters is really what you sound like Saturday night.

[170] For years it was Saturday morning for me. But, you know, you can have a great week of preparation, not sleep enough, not be sharp, and suck.

[171] And no one cares what you did on Tuesday, Wednesday.

[172] You know what I mean?

[173] So it's getting yourself in the right.

[174] position to perform.

[175] It's a performance what we do here.

[176] So you have to figure out what makes it work for you.

[177] Preparation is confidence.

[178] I say that.

[179] If you're prepared, you know you can handle the situation, but it's also important to know when to back off.

[180] I don't anymore like stay up till three in the morning studying my chart just in case the backup left tackle goes in the game.

[181] And I want to have a story about his grandmother.

[182] Okay.

[183] The diminishing returns, right?

[184] You have to know when to throttle back.

[185] There's just too much.

[186] to learn in college football.

[187] Tennis, okay, I should know everything about Djokovic and his opponent and a big match.

[188] I mean, there's just no excuse for not knowing that.

[189] But college football, you might see a team once or twice a year.

[190] You do what you can.

[191] You watch as much tape as you can, but at some point you've got to pull off and I'll go to the gym or go for a walk or meditate so that when the light comes on, you're going to be in the right frame of mind.

[192] I'm going to pin you down, though, on for a Saturday night performance, for the people who might think it's easy.

[193] Chris Fowler shows up and he's just going to do Saturday night and he's going to leave three hours later.

[194] Explain to them what that week is like now that you've arrived at a place that you could work smart and not just work hard, that you can be efficient about it.

[195] I'm guessing the workload is still pretty unreasonable.

[196] Yeah, I mean, we're doing more and more.

[197] I mean, what Herb Street does a couple games a week in a pregame show.

[198] He's a lunatic.

[199] Yeah, he's a lunatic working that.

[200] I don't know how he does it.

[201] It keeps his energy up somehow.

[202] I believe in doing less and trying to make sure that I can do the best I can at each thing.

[203] But still, you know, there's not really a bunch of time off in the week.

[204] College football, you know, you're looking at that team's recent game on Sunday, Monday.

[205] You're beginning to spin it ahead.

[206] You get your chart.

[207] You start to fill your chart in.

[208] You have conference calls with coaches and players.

[209] You have in -person meetings.

[210] You look at a lot of tape.

[211] You need to look at least two or three complete games of a team, especially later in the season.

[212] You've got to pick and choose.

[213] You can look at chunks of games, but looking at tape for play -by -play is important, too, even though it's mostly an analyst realm.

[214] You have to be familiar with what they've done so that you don't just parachute in and act like, you know, this game is a singular event and isn't part of a season.

[215] That'd be foolish.

[216] So time is spent doing that.

[217] There's so much information out there now.

[218] It was very different.

[219] I'm old enough to say that I started doing games.

[220] day, almost in the pre -internet era.

[221] The internet was just getting up and running.

[222] There were very few websites that had college football information on it.

[223] And so you could sound really smart.

[224] If you told people in a national platform what was going on in Eugene, Oregon, because you're able to read the Oregon Register Guard online, which no one knew how to do.

[225] Actually, I had some ways to get at these out -of -town sports sections.

[226] Like, this is so primitive, when that wasn't easy to do.

[227] Right.

[228] Now, you had secret access to newspapers in other cities.

[229] I had a website called eCola .com.

[230] You could link to all these local sports sections and read what the beatwriters are writing.

[231] Now, of course, that is baseline.

[232] That is the beginning.

[233] Not the sum total of your preparation, but the audience is so much better educated.

[234] And these big college games, there's so much on ESPN and other places that you've heard 10 hours of content on that game at the time we get in the booth.

[235] So you better come up with something different or fresh, and that's where sort of, you know, you explore other ways to get information that's proprietary or not out there for easy access all week long, and that helps too.

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[248] Grandma and shared joy is where it starts.

[249] How supportive was the family?

[250] What was the upbringing around you deciding to choose sports as a livelihood because it seems unwise.

[251] They were supportive but clueless basically.

[252] My parents were not sports fans.

[253] They were in the arts, but dad was a theater director, a professional theater director and professor of theater arts.

[254] My mom was a choreographer.

[255] They were very much in the arts world in the 70s.

[256] They had interesting parties at the house, interesting characters who dropped by.

[257] None of it centered around sports.

[258] They might watch a little bit of the Olympics.

[259] That was it.

[260] My grandmother was the one that got me into it, and I kind of just took it from there.

[261] But they were supportive, but my loss, my dad, I was 16, and he had a vague idea of what I wanted to do.

[262] I was just beginning to sort of think about college at that point, so he's never been able to see any of the success.

[263] My mom did see it.

[264] She was able to witness sort of like the emergence of game day, and she was proud, although being an Irish woman was very stoic.

[265] I wasn't showered with positive reinforcement or love or accolades the way somebody might have been from a different family background, but, you know, there was.

[266] that are saying that she was proud of what I was doing.

[267] And I've always been pretty good, Dan, at not needing a lot of external input.

[268] I mean, I don't say that it's unimportant to me what people think because there are customers.

[269] I will just say that feedback from them, be it really positive and kind or really negative, duly noted, but it's not going to rock my world.

[270] It's not going to make me feel too differently about what I do.

[271] I think you go about your business and, like I said, you meet your own standard.

[272] and you try to do right by the people you work with because I love the collaborative part of this and you're surrounded hopefully by people that also hold themselves to a really high standard and you take great pride in the production and so you're less concerned by what other people say or don't say.

[273] And I was fine with the level of support that I got that it wasn't like my mom was, you know, watching every show and jumping on the phone and telling our friends.

[274] It was good.

[275] It was fine.

[276] It seems like you've arrived, though, it's something that sounds like real confidence and that it would be hard to arrive at it if you lose your dad at 16, and your mom is, you know, stoic.

[277] Stoic is the good word.

[278] I mean, I don't know.

[279] I think you, I certainly didn't have a lot of confidence as a younger person.

[280] Wasn't a great athlete.

[281] Moved around.

[282] We changed schools a lot.

[283] I was a new kid a lot.

[284] You don't swagger into the school thinking, hey, I'm him.

[285] I'm going to run this show.

[286] You're just trying to get along and not get knocked around and, you know, you kind of try to blend in when you're the new kid all the time to not, at least I did.

[287] And so, you know, same by the way.

[288] Same fringes of sports, admiring the athletes, but just wanting to be close to what it is that they were close to, but not good enough to be as good as they were.

[289] Yeah, I play, but thankfully none of my career has to do anything to do how I played tennis or football or anything.

[290] So, you know, I liked it.

[291] but I recognized pretty early, I wasn't especially gifted.

[292] And it wasn't going to be a pathway for me to gain confidence or build an identity.

[293] You know, it wasn't, that wasn't going to be a part of my, my self -identity was an athlete or a popular person.

[294] So, I don't know, I think you gain confidence over time slowly if you're in my position or your position, maybe.

[295] I don't know how you felt, but, I mean, I had no game with girls in high school.

[296] That wasn't a part of it.

[297] I didn't go off to college thinking I was going to conquer the world.

[298] I just went off to work hard.

[299] and really take no handouts and make my way and sponge up every piece of useful knowledge they could and be around the Colorado Buffalo's program even though they were horrendous in football at the time and just sort of pay my dues and and loved it.

[300] But yeah, I think it took me a long time to have whatever confidence.

[301] I think I had belief in myself, but it certainly wasn't displayed outwardly too often.

[302] It feels like we had similar paths, right?

[303] I went to an all -boys school, and I was doing all that same stuff, just trying to fit in, didn't move around a lot, but had a father who was difficult to please or didn't show pleasure, and a very supportive mother, also warm, which was helpful to believe in something that was hard to believe in, because I wasn't even doing it the way you were doing it.

[304] I'm telling Cuban exiles who have come to this country to get me a private education.

[305] and an engineering scholarship, hey, I want to write about sports.

[306] I want to see if I can make money writing.

[307] It's not even television and some of the vanities.

[308] And so my father was mortified, right?

[309] Because he had made so many sacrifices so that I could get and become an engineer like him because it would have been a safer path, but I would have been unhappy.

[310] Like this thing that I chose fed me because of the same things you're talking about.

[311] The first time I go to the Orange Bowl with my dad, the electricity of the places, it's like it would have been what Disney World is to kids of that age.

[312] The Orange Bowl was to me because I'm being jostled around and I'm like, why is that noise being made?

[313] Why does it feel like this?

[314] Why does everybody feel so good?

[315] And it was more joyous than my household.

[316] It was my house didn't have, my house didn't have a lot of joy in it.

[317] My mom, my father's not a joyful person and my, you know, my mother tried, but I wouldn't say that there was a giant joy in my.

[318] work and commitment.

[319] That was those were the important things.

[320] All that the only way you got to freedom in this country was to work and working couldn't be joyful.

[321] So satisfaction more than joy.

[322] I get that.

[323] I, look, I've never focused, though, on the impact of what was lacking.

[324] You know, my dad got diagnosed with lung cancer when I was 14.

[325] So if anybody's out there, I'm sure too many people have known what that's like to have cancer in your family.

[326] The diagnosis is a huge benchmark.

[327] I lost him when I was 16.

[328] but I was 14 when he was diagnosed.

[329] And so that changed our family's life forever.

[330] One conversation after school at the family dining table when that news was delivered.

[331] It was kept from us for a long time because parents kept stuff from kids.

[332] Cancer wasn't discussed as openly back then and not with kids, certainly.

[333] And when it was finally time to tell us what was going on, it was scary as shit.

[334] And we knew in that moment that our life as a family was not going to be the same.

[335] and you're very, you're just, you're, you're unsure, you're scared.

[336] Pretty soon he was in another state getting treatment at a hospital in Colorado.

[337] We were back in Pennsylvania because he was at the faculty at Penn State when he got diagnosed.

[338] And we were apart for months and this was, you know, pre -everything, man. There was no FaceTime.

[339] There was no cell phones.

[340] You maybe got a phone call once a week from him.

[341] Here's how chemotherapy is going.

[342] How's school going?

[343] I mean, it was primitive communication, right?

[344] So it was all very scary.

[345] Those are such formative years for you.

[346] They were, but again, what do you do?

[347] I was the oldest of two kids.

[348] My younger brother was struggling maybe even more than I was because he was two and a half years younger.

[349] My mom was obviously really struggling.

[350] So you try to be there for both of them and not be a problem for anyone.

[351] You learn to be very self -sufficient.

[352] And I've never focused on, geez, that really sucked that I didn't have a relationship with my dad beyond 16, an adult, I'm envious of that to some degree because I think it's a rich experience.

[353] He never saw any of my success.

[354] I wasn't shower with hugs and kisses from my mom, but that's okay.

[355] I don't focus on what was lacking.

[356] I focus on what I needed to do to navigate through that.

[357] And as I said, be really self -sufficient.

[358] Go to school and be very determined.

[359] I'm not going to take a dime from my mom or anybody else.

[360] Like zero.

[361] So little scholarship here and there, a bunch of jobs.

[362] You know, people tend to see you now, and they would think that you were born that way, right?

[363] You're born on third base or that you don't know what adversity is, that you don't know what trauma is and heartbreak is.

[364] And I get a little emotional even talking about stuff like that because you've all got shit we've dealt with.

[365] Every single person you see walking around, that's what you learn.

[366] You might see a dream life or a God, the guy is so lucky, and I am.

[367] But that doesn't mean you haven't been through plenty of things to.

[368] help shape who you are.

[369] And I'm very aware that everybody I see has stuff, heavy stuff, hard stuff, difficult chapters in their life and stuff they have to overcome.

[370] And so I don't take forget where I am.

[371] I don't assume that others have it easy, even though it appears from the outside that they might be really lucky.

[372] What are the parts that make you emotional?

[373] That's a good question.

[374] I think just, you know, there's no point in sort of regretting what you don't have.

[375] I think that's what I've come through.

[376] You don't get better or stronger when you focus on what you didn't have.

[377] You take pride from the fact of what you made it through.

[378] And people had it a lot harder than me. Okay.

[379] I mean, everybody out there can relate to tough experiences.

[380] And many, many people came through a lot more than I did.

[381] But I just think that, you know, It's powerful stuff to think about how both parents really suffered.

[382] Both parents really suffered from poor health.

[383] My mom had Alzheimer's.

[384] It's a different kind of heartbreaking to lose someone slowly who is physically fine, but mentally erodes and becomes an echo of themselves.

[385] And Alzheimer's is awful in that way.

[386] So that was opposite from my dad, who was sharp mentally and still writing and creating but whose body was being ravaged by cancer at a time when they didn't really have treatments nearly as sophisticated as they do now.

[387] So, you know, both of those things, I think, if I think about them, make me emotional and if I allow them to, it's just not a part of my daily life, but it is definitely a part of who I am.

[388] If they allow, if I allow them to, it seems like you're very tough and don't want.

[389] It seems like I'm asking you the question, so you're not volunteering how tough your life was and you don't have to account.

[390] for how tough everyone else's life is to know that cancer, as you're talking about it, I saw with not primitive treatment, how, what that did to my brother over the last year.

[391] And I wasn't in my formative years.

[392] I'm in my 50s.

[393] And it wasn't my father.

[394] And so watching all of that, you've now mentioned twice, volunteered twice, my father didn't get to see my success.

[395] Clearly, that's something that stayed with you.

[396] Yeah, I think so.

[397] I'll tell you something.

[398] I won't tell the long version of this because people might wander away.

[399] But I discovered a shoebox full of cassette tapes my dad recorded when he was a cancer patient.

[400] He had planned to do a memoir because at that point, people had not written a lot of books about what cancer was like.

[401] Again, it was just, this was middle 70s and that stuff which just kind of swept away.

[402] It wasn't talked about.

[403] he wanted to do a book as he was recording his daily activities during treatment and some of it was very mundane and who he had lunch with and what he felt but some of it was deeper lessons he was just learning and these tapes sat in a box in my mom's basement for a long time got discovered when she passed away we were going through her stuff and I have since listened to most of them I'm going to do something with it so there's a project there because even though he never finished the tapes There's a lot of interesting stuff on there, and half the story, at least half of the story, is me listening to him record these at an age, and he was a lot younger than I am now.

[404] He didn't make it to 50.

[405] He died at, I think he's 47.

[406] So I was already a lot older than that when I listened to these tapes.

[407] And so it's an out -of -body experience.

[408] I promise you to listen to recordings of your dad's voice that you hadn't heard for 40 years, 45 years.

[409] You know, to now hear these tapes, and this is what he sounded like.

[410] He's very theatrical and being from that world, you know, doesn't speak like I speak, is very different than I am in a lot of ways.

[411] And to process, this is his voice as he is suffering, what his daily life is like, and then coming to these epiphanies that every day is precious and a simple lunch with friends is priceless.

[412] I'm sure you had conversations with your brother.

[413] You realize when you know your time is not limitless that these things, things are precious and he was recording it and my reaction was basically like no shit i mean he figured that out when he was a patient but that was so long ago and at such a younger age i've known that for a long time maybe since i'm 16 there were guaranteed nothing um you know when you when you have cancer in your family was three brothers of him not just him that that that cancer took you know you don't assume you're going to live to 90 you don't assume you've got plenty of time to do all these things because I'll live forever, you know, the mortality is in there.

[414] And so I think I've approached life like, don't put stuff off, you know, time is precious.

[415] And hearing him figure that out after he got cancer on tape, 45 years later was quite an experience.

[416] I'll do something with it at some point because, you know, it's, it's very interesting.

[417] I mean, no one I've talked to has had that similar experience about hearing tapes from a dead parent.

[418] No, it's a dead parent about dying, but you say it seems like, forgive this if I've got it wrong, but there's a certain lack of self -awareness in you saying no shit to those observations about mortality when it was forced upon you between the ages of 14 and 16, and so you lose your childhood there, you lose your father, and of course it's no shit, time is short.

[419] I just learned the lesson.

[420] If he'd lost his father at 16, he might have learned He smoked before cancer.

[421] My mom spoke, too.

[422] I was like, well, I mean, it was lung cancer that took him.

[423] I mean, you know, so yeah, he should have known.

[424] But it's just like when someone says, hey, there is power in something simple, just having a conversation on the phone with a friend and sharing this and that and just taking a walk in nature, there's power in that.

[425] I've known that for a long time because I've known that we're not guaranteed things.

[426] So to hear him arrive at that conclusion in his mid -40s, when.

[427] when cancer was staring in it, it was just an interesting experience, that's all.

[428] When you say you've known it, though, you know it because your dad died.

[429] I can't imagine that not being a thing that shapes you, like instantaneously, losing teenage years to the realization that life is short.

[430] Yeah, I don't want to feel like I walked around every day fearing a short life or fear of cancer.

[431] No, it's appreciating, It's appreciating small moments.

[432] It's finding real happiness.

[433] I choose not to be more, but I take care of myself.

[434] My pension for obsessing about health and wellness, I'm sure comes from that.

[435] It doesn't take a genius psychiatrist to figure that out.

[436] I try to take as good care of myself as I possibly can.

[437] But, you realize that the small things matter a lot when you have them taken away.

[438] It leads us to why you would seek out joy and why you would find it on a wilderness hike because you're just enjoying the precious moment of being connected to.

[439] Being healthy.

[440] I'm alive and grateful.

[441] I celebrate every day that I'm healthy, that I can get up and move.

[442] And so I have a hard time being sedentary and inactive.

[443] It drives me crazy to sit for a long periods of time and not do something because I just take great joy and activity and health and moving around.

[444] Where does that come from?

[445] Do you think it's in here somewhere?

[446] When you think of restlessness and activity, you've mentioned that your parents were performers.

[447] You don't strike me as somebody who's naturally inclined to performance.

[448] I was scared to get to step on stage.

[449] I had a lot of opportunities to be in theater as a little kid.

[450] You know, you jump out there in some Shakespearean thing.

[451] My Lord, my Lord, here come with it.

[452] I was scared shitless of that.

[453] I associated live performance with tension because as a production was getting ready to be launched, my dad would be nervous about it, and he had a temper, and he was wound up.

[454] and so that's what that's what theater meant to me was attention so I took acting classes that was definitely not for me and I was scared to death to give reports in class or reports were I mean I didn't like public speaking at all when I first got to ESP and you figure out you better get over that because they're going to pay you money you know it's stupid to be scared as standing in front of a group talking to people but but you know that none of that was natural.

[455] But no, the appreciation for nature did come from my parents.

[456] We took a lot of hikes, and they're both from Colorado.

[457] We spent time out there.

[458] I still do every summer.

[459] I feel very connected to them and myself when I'm out in the mountains.

[460] That's kind of my happy place.

[461] So that's always been there, even pre -cancer.

[462] I mean, just the wonders of nature and all its many forms.

[463] I mean, I like living here in Miami, because I love seeing the trees, and I love swimming in the ocean, and the color of this Bay is something that I just cherish every time I drive across the causeway.

[464] I just love nature and all its forms.

[465] And so being healthy enough to get outside and enjoy it is like something I'm grateful for every day.

[466] You mentioned your father's temper and you mentioned your own when you're frustrated with a mistake you've made and you throw.

[467] I don't have a big temper though.

[468] I'm nowhere near him.

[469] I promise you.

[470] No, no. I don't know what his temper is.

[471] I just want more details on the mistake that gets the thing thrown.

[472] I want to know, even though you've outgrown it, I want to know when you say you're unforgiving with yourself, because I do imagine, again, I'm making assumptions.

[473] I don't know you this way, but I assume that you're very tough and that you're very tough on yourself.

[474] And so when you're throwing the phone or whatever it is you're throwing, what is the nature of the mistake that makes you ravage yourself unreasonably, even though you don't do that that much anymore?

[475] Well, at least you add to that last part.

[476] I don't ravage myself very much anymore but i i i have been far far angrier at myself but i have it any other person not even close and especially these days i really don't i've never raised me worse or yelled at anybody at espn and all those years except for one person somebody that i actually really love and that stick by towel but that's a that's another that's a tv story that i've told at his event but yeah i lost my mind because he but he drove me to it no but i don't temper is not really a part of my my game especially to other people.

[477] I will, I actually, people who think, all they see is intensity and hard work.

[478] That's what they thought about Game Day for.

[479] This guy doesn't take a lot of joy.

[480] I've had people really smart, sensitive people, tuned in people who know me well, like Tom Ornaldi, take me aside and say, you know, I know you enjoy this show, but can you show the joy more?

[481] I said, yeah, sure I can.

[482] I mean, believe me, I'm very grateful to do this job, but it is such hard work that that comes first, right?

[483] beating your standard and the responsibility of that particular role in a show like that.

[484] You know, you are the point guard, the quarterback, whatever.

[485] People take their cue from you for better or worse.

[486] So you want to convey commitment, hard work, attention to detail, high standard.

[487] And I've been really, really grateful that people have expressed that to me, that they've seen that.

[488] Now, I took me longer to realize you should also show you're having a great time that this is, fun that you're lucky to be here in this spot, that you're taking great joy in this because they take their cue from that too.

[489] So that was a longer time coming.

[490] But I will still get pissed off of myself.

[491] If I miss an exit over here and I'm just not paying attention, I'll scream nasty words at myself in the car for five seconds and I'll calm down and go about my rerouting myself.

[492] But I can't, you know.

[493] What does your wife have to say about these parts of you that she accepts and understands and loves but may not love.

[494] Oh, Jennifer understands.

[495] I mean, I think that I don't have a temper.

[496] So I don't, and I never, I don't.

[497] No, I'm talking about being hard on yourself.

[498] When a woman loves you or when a person loves you, I know my wife helps me a great deal here.

[499] Because if I could fix one thing about myself or improve one thing about myself, I would be more gentle with myself.

[500] And having someone love you in a way that's understanding and accepting and can talk me in on stuff when I'm being unreasonable with myself.

[501] That's why I was asking you how she looks out.

[502] She's very, very hard on herself, too, though.

[503] She has very high standard.

[504] She's meticulous, detail -oriented.

[505] When she does a job, does it right.

[506] So we agree on that part of the thing.

[507] And she has let me off too easy if I don't do a good job with something because that's the way she is.

[508] But, no, but she understands.

[509] I mean, she's not the voice, though, that says, hey, you're too tough and yourself, relax, throttle back a little bit.

[510] I mean, that's not, I don't ask her to do.

[511] that and that's not the role that she plays.

[512] She understands, though, I can, I can sort through this myself and that I'm not going to beat myself up for a game that I consider to be below my standard.

[513] You know, you leave the stadium sometimes, and you know, you didn't bring all that preparation that you did properly to bear, or you just screwed up in the moment, or you let your concentration dip in the third quarter, or you didn't have the words when it was needed some big moment.

[514] But, you know, I don't, again, that doesn't carry over very long.

[515] I want a couple tequillas and I get over.

[516] All right.

[517] We'll keep giving you tequila and we'll keep trying to milk you for more and more information about how it is you're as good as you are at the things that you are good at.

[518] When you mention preparation, I'm going to try and pin you down here.

[519] At your most crazy extreme meticulous, preparation is how many hours a week, maybe not now, but whenever it was that you were most unreasonable about hungry and getting to a place that had achievement in it and wasn't necessarily reasonable or balanced.

[520] How many hours a week does it take you to prepare for what you're doing on Saturday night?

[521] What time are you going to bed on the most unreasonable preparation weeks?

[522] Not very late anymore.

[523] Maybe 1 o 'clock.

[524] I'm pretty nocturned.

[525] I'm not talking about now.

[526] I'm talking about whatever represents your greatest.

[527] streams on preparation when you were fighting for your dreams.

[528] When I did college game day and also did Thursday night football, it was super challenging.

[529] I probably worked, I don't know, 70, 80 hours because it was required.

[530] You know, I did a game on Thursdays.

[531] It was great fun.

[532] It was never the hugest game of the week.

[533] But I took it super seriously.

[534] I hadn't done that much football play -by -play until that.

[535] So it was myself and Jesse Palmer, Doug Flutty, Craig James, Aaron Andrews, that was, of our group and some kind of rotation.

[536] And I did that game and then commercially flew to Game Day site on Friday morning and cranked really hard to do a show that just kept growing from 90 minutes to two hours to three hours.

[537] It just got harder and harder.

[538] And the level of detail that I wanted to bring to the show to an increasingly educated viewership was stressful as hell.

[539] Outdoors.

[540] Oh, it's so stressful.

[541] I mean, yeah, the execution of the show is another.

[542] We can talk about that.

[543] But getting ready for the show, there was no downtime.

[544] It was nothing but that for 15th, three weeks.

[545] Again, I loved it, but it didn't leave much time to try to be a good husband.

[546] We were trying to be parents at that point.

[547] I wasn't present for every chapter of that.

[548] It was difficult and super challenging.

[549] I don't really, I'm not a reflective person.

[550] I don't think back on that much, but that was a tough time.

[551] And again, you do what you think you need.

[552] to do to meet your own standard and not disappoint yourself and it was a lot of work when i stopped doing the thursday game and just did game day um i could breathe a little bit um i still stay up really late i still don't want to miss anything and that that continues today i just think you can work as you said work smarter um and know how to prepare yourself for the broadcast and not get caught up like in the preparation is not the thing it just sets the table it's it's essential but the job is the performance right so like i said before you you can suck on saturday it doesn't matter to anybody including me how well you did monday through friday preparing geez i had that down i didn't say it well or i forgot this in the moment or i got this guy's pronunciation wrong okay that's what you're judged by you know practice it doesn't matter i how you shoot and shoot around.

[553] It matters what you do.

[554] That's right.

[555] You're judged on Saturday nights for three hours.

[556] You figure out, okay, how do I get the best out of myself for that three, four, I wish it was three hours.

[557] It's more like four hours.

[558] Is there any particular reason that you're not a reflective person?

[559] Wow, I've never been asked that question.

[560] Because I, number one, believe in the present moment a lot more.

[561] I don't believe in the future stressing about.

[562] that.

[563] I don't believe in trying to rewrite the past.

[564] I think what's done is done, all those kind of cycle babble cliches that people say that I happen to believe in, to a large degree, but that, you know, I do think that we can go deep if you want to.

[565] I do believe that control is an illusion.

[566] We think we have control over things we actually have no control over.

[567] We have no control over the past.

[568] I don't believe you have that much control over the future, except you can put yourself in position to succeed with the moment -wise.

[569] Play probabilities.

[570] Or try to play probabilities, but it's not controlled.

[571] So what you're doing now to get ready for that moment, you know, where preparation meets opportunity, that's luck.

[572] I believe that.

[573] So it's what you're doing right now to get ready for what might happen, but you're not stressing about what's going to happen in the future because we don't control that.

[574] So I think I've just learned that one way to take stress out of life and to be a happier person is to not spend too much time looking back or looking at.

[575] forward.

[576] What a wisdom, though.

[577] Like, I read an entire book, Eckertolle wrote about the power of now, and he writes about fear, regret, is the past, and fear is whatever it is you think you control in the future.

[578] He suffered much more in our imagination than we do in reality.

[579] Eckertelli writes about a lot of that.

[580] I read a lot of books like his and all his books.

[581] You know, what we imagine could happen, far worse than what's usually going to happen.

[582] I mean, nine times out of ten, we're imagining stuff worse than.

[583] then we'll actually confront us.

[584] But what a great thing for you to have learned.

[585] Like, how did you arrive at the path of looking for these kinds of nuggets of wisdom?

[586] Those are self -help books that you're reading about how to get to something happier and you seem to have, you're living it, it seems.

[587] Yeah, you know, I don't know.

[588] I guess intuitively, I've come to some of the same conclusions that these other people have.

[589] And when I read books, I mean, there are light bulb moments.

[590] I mean, I can't say that I read Eckartoli, and none of that stuff, I hadn't thought of that before.

[591] I mean, it makes sense.

[592] But when it reinforces something you already thought, and I read the Stoics, I read Marcus Aurelius, I read a lot of kinds, because there was a lot of smart people back then.

[593] And I think a lot of it resonates now.

[594] It's timeless.

[595] So, you know, just being focused on the present moment is not original, and it's not exclusive to one author.

[596] I think it's sort of, you know, Eastern thinking interests me. I've spent time in Nepal and the Himalayas getting to know Sherpas and talking to them and seeing kind of what makes them tick and what makes them joyful and what they prioritize and what they don't.

[597] I mean, it's all of life is prioritizing, right?

[598] And prioritizing begins with subtraction.

[599] You start subtracting things that are really unimportant to you that are wasteful.

[600] you know and then you're left with fewer things to worry about and you can choose from among those things about what to prioritize and that to me is just life if you stress about hey i've got so much on my platter and so little time to do it which i used to do all the time including preparing for games look how much energy you're wasting in the stress of that when in reality you know you come to the conclusion that you have plenty of time to do the things you really need to do the things you really need to do.

[601] As long as you can differentiate the stuff that you don't really need to do.

[602] And then once you figure out what's important to you, what's going to help you and help others and make you happy and gets you where you want to go, then somehow prioritize that.

[603] And usually for me, there's no room for sitting and complaining about the past.

[604] I like to do it.

[605] I like to reflect on, hey, memory lane.

[606] I sat with Corso the other day in Orlando.

[607] We start telling old stories and laughing.

[608] When I do that, I realize, oh, there's great joy in that.

[609] too.

[610] And I should take more time to do that.

[611] But it's never going to be more important to me than the present moment, you know.

[612] Understood.

[613] Why are you talking to Sherpas?

[614] Are you on a quest for curiosities?

[615] Like, how are, I know you like to travel, but what are you, what are you doing there?

[616] Like, you're trying to learn.

[617] Are you just inherently curious?

[618] No, I go there because the mountains are there, but the people of Nepal in that region who are basically, they're Tibetan, and they've come down from across the Himalayas from Tibet into Nepal, then the Sherpas who populate that part of that country are of Tibetan descent typically.

[619] No, they're just fascinating, very, very tough people who know how to keep things simple and know where to find joy and know what's important, I think, as well as the amazing scenery, which if mountains speak to you and mountains to me are the most profound expression of nature, and we talked about how much I love nature, then the Himalayas are where you go.

[620] and you test yourself mentally physically.

[621] You go over high passes and climb mountains.

[622] I've never climbed Everest or anything of that 8 ,000 meter range.

[623] But I've climbed smaller mountains there, and I've certainly spent a lot of time in altitude and taking great joy in that just went last year with my brother, 25 years after we had gone the first time and was extremely proud of being able to do that at age 60 and be physically better than I was at 35.

[624] But no, along with that, you, you, find stillness and just take a lot of lessons from kind of what you see and what you experience and there's a lot of wisdom those people are incredibly tough I mean old stories about walking four hours to school every day they walked four hours to school over the guy that the shirper that took us around just climbed Everest 20 times was telling us stories now that's not the thrust of his wisdom but it shows you that people have been formed by serious hardship and the resolve and the resilience that it takes to overcome that, and the fact that, you know, people sit there in a small village and they watch foreigners walk past their house every day, loaded down with super expensive camera equipment and climbing equipment.

[625] And they've spent $65 ,000, $70 ,000 to climb Everest, okay, for a month of their life.

[626] And that is an amount of money that is unfathomable.

[627] to anyone who lives there, right?

[628] So they've seen that their whole lives and have, I'm not climbing inside the head of every shirt I've ever come across, but in general, they're not envious, they're not jealous, they're not angry, they don't feel cheated, they don't feel deprived.

[629] They're very happy with what they have and how they live their life and what's important to them and not important to them.

[630] And that's family and health and being surrounded by these mountains.

[631] Are you someone who's perpetually, testing himself?

[632] Do you like to test yourself in a lot of areas, whether it be the weight room or beyond where you're pushing yourself through what might be some limits or trying to?

[633] Yeah, I think so.

[634] A lot of different forms.

[635] I mean, I don't give myself that pep talk every morning by any stretch, but I think part of what I consider to be a happy life, a fulfilling life, is one where you continue to challenge yourself and get outside of your comfort zone and improve and grow.

[636] And if you cease doing that, then something really precious is lost.

[637] And I really can't imagine life without that, without in some way continuing to try to improve and grow.

[638] And you can't do those things unless you're pushing yourself, unless you're getting out of your comfort zone.

[639] Again, that's cycle babble, but it really is true.

[640] I mean, you have to be comfortable getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself and risking failure.

[641] It's why I don't have any fear of losing.

[642] I don't really have any fear of failing.

[643] I want to do everything I try to do well, but if you sit around and ask anybody you talk to, you know, better than me, you talk to these athletes, if you're going to fear losing all this time, you're never going to take a shot.

[644] You're never going to take a risk.

[645] You go nowhere.

[646] If you fear losing and failing, you wouldn't even launch a career of being an athlete in sports because the odds are so long, right?

[647] So you've got to suspend that and not be afraid of failing and looking bad and falling short, and then you can and it's kind of freed up to keep trying to do different things.

[648] It's a broad question I'm going to ask you, but what has your wife taught you about love and where has your wife helped you grow through some of these things that we're talking about?

[649] I mean, that's a long conversation.

[650] I mean, I think when you run into your life partner, you learn a lot about love.

[651] You learn your capacity for it.

[652] You learn how to receive it.

[653] And you learn that it's the most, important thing.

[654] So we met at the least romantic occasion you could possibly think of, the ESPN Christmas party at a catering hall in Southern to Connecticut.

[655] My wife, Jennifer, was on body shaping, which was a show that was very, very important to ESPN.

[656] It was a family of stations early Am.

[657] It was really important.

[658] In fact, ESPN didn't have a whole lot before ESPN2 was even launched.

[659] There was not SportsCenter and get up and first take and these shows didn't exist.

[660] The show was an exercise show in Hawaii, was it Hawaii?

[661] Different places, yeah, Jamaica, Hawaii.

[662] Beautiful people exercising outdoors.

[663] So she did that for a long time, was very good at it, among other jobs.

[664] She worked as a home shopping host.

[665] She was on Channel 2 in New York at CBS and did a lot of acting and other things too.

[666] But she was in ESPN because of body shaping.

[667] And so that's what brought her to the company Christmas party.

[668] And we were supposed to get fixed up at a Super Bowl party by some mutual friends the year before.

[669] But nobody told me it was a fix -up.

[670] They just told me come to Connecticut on your off day to go to a Super Bowl party.

[671] And I was living in New York.

[672] I'm good.

[673] I'm up there during the week.

[674] I'm just going to watch the game on my couch.

[675] And after the fact, they said, we had somebody we wanted you to meet.

[676] You didn't tell me that.

[677] So we go around from January all the way until the next December.

[678] And she walks up to me at the company Christmas party, introduced herself.

[679] And I knew she was.

[680] And we just hit it off.

[681] And it's quite weird.

[682] but our first date was the Espies and Radio City, which, again, it sounds so sad.

[683] It sounds so unromantic and sad.

[684] Well, but 25 years later, I'm asking you a question about how she helped you grow and what she taught you about love.

[685] She taught me everything about love.

[686] I mean, I think, you know, you meet your life partner and you, you know, I'm not a parent, but so people say you learn another capacity for love.

[687] if you have kids born that you learn things about yourself and about love that you never knew before I'll accept that but not having experienced that my my growth in that area and knowledge of love comes from from Jennifer and I falling in love and and getting married and spending 25 years together almost 25 years together so um yeah she's been instrumental to me in so many different ways I can't even I can't even express it fully but but yeah you you when somebody is your best friend and your life partner.

[688] They know you better than anybody else, and for better or worse.

[689] Well, I like where my wife knows me better than I know me. It's not even that they know you better than anybody else.

[690] Like, there are good many things that my wife is showing me that I had not before seen about me before.

[691] Does that make you uncomfortable?

[692] I mean, I would say uncomfortable only in the places that you're speaking about when you say it's psychobabble to say that you have to go toward your discomforts to learn something new to grow to yeah true it makes you uncomfortable you understand that it's she means well it's it's it's for the it's for your oh but it's not it's not even it's but the thing is this is uh hot it's funny to say because she's the only one that figured these particular combination keys out i have to see it for myself it's not because i'm going to be nagged into changing like i did all of that my whole life before marrying her right uh that's not what's happening it's that i love this person so much I want to be what this person thinks I am.

[693] And so when I see things in my behavior that are patterns from that I just saw in my house and I didn't know that that's not necessarily how it has to be or I'm just not paying attention because I'm just not thinking about the things that have to be conscious in a loving relationship where you have to be unselfish about things.

[694] No, I'm deeply grateful that she shows me these things.

[695] It doesn't, it doesn't mean that I enjoy seeing them, but then I can get to work on them.

[696] I'm never going to work on them if it, if it's just forever blind spots.

[697] But getting married later, see, I was 36, I think when Jen and I got together and she was 32, 31, 32.

[698] So you've lived quite a bit of life and you've experienced things and you're not coming up together as kids.

[699] And so there are challenges because I think, if not fully formed, you're largely formed by that stage in life.

[700] Well, but I thought I was.

[701] That's the thing.

[702] say that I would have argued before meeting her I would have argued I'm formed men are formed by 50 there's not I mean we can we can talk about wisdoms and things that you can learn and always want to be growing but that clay can get resistant and and hardened and so I if not for her I think I might have ended up in something that would have been unwilling to change so readily because I'm doing it in the name of making sure I take care of somebody who deserves you should you should tutor me and how to be ready and willing to change that in fundamental ways I do find that hard I do think I am who I am I think obviously you need to respect the wisdom of your life partner and understand what she's telling you and be willing to adjust and but I do think that it's those are hard things and they're hard for her to accept for me too um because You can sort of nudge as much as you love someone and they love you.

[703] You can nudge them in a direction, but it's hard to find them in like change.

[704] But this is not, but what I'm saying to you, though, is it's not even nudging with what I have learned in this small space is her love tends to be such a pure thing, unlike anything that I've known before, teaching me about love, that if I'm landing wrong with her, because she's not inclined.

[705] mind to have these frictions with me, I'm probably doing something wrong.

[706] That's what I learned, right?

[707] And that's a hard thing to learn.

[708] Like, if you're stubborn, if you're Cuban machismo, if you grew up thinking you know certain things and that you know them with conviction, it's never her telling me anything.

[709] It's me noticing how something lands and being like, that doesn't feel right.

[710] Like that, I'm doing something there that I shouldn't be doing it.

[711] And then I start tracing what it is that is in in my past with my parents and what I saw in my house and I'm like oh well that's that's what I learned I think that's wise I think a lot of women listening to this would say yes they would stand up and cheer what you just said because that's a hard thing for us to do as men I think I admit that in myself too and you don't see the value in it though I do see the value in I do see the value in I do see the value of course but you're but because you seem you seem like somebody you've you've accrued wisdoms and to go with the Popeye I am what I am when I'm when you're still trying to grow at every term seems unnecessarily stubborn.

[712] I said I am one.

[713] I just think that, you know, you figure it out, when your partner, as much as you love them, does think differently than you and sees certain things that are fundamental to her and to you differently.

[714] Right.

[715] You can bang heads on it because you're just not going to find common ground.

[716] And so we have different ways of thinking about certain things and approaching life in ways that, you know, I have learned limitless things from her and what she's, what she's experienced and how she's developed as a person and come, she's come through a whole lot, talking about stuff, you know, so, but it doesn't mean that we're going to find.

[717] No, no, that makes sense.

[718] Yes.

[719] On fundamental disagreement, you're going to have fundamental disagreements.

[720] You don't hang around for 25 years ago.

[721] Look, we just got, this would be one of those agree to disagree things.

[722] I am not going to see it this way.

[723] We do not see social media the same way.

[724] Jesus, I don't understand why I ever want to pick up this phone and talk to people on Instagram.

[725] Just we'll not get it.

[726] And I say, well, you don't have to get it.

[727] It's okay.

[728] That's not a pillar of who I am.

[729] It's a part of me. I like to, my dad was a professor.

[730] I like to help share stuff with people.

[731] I don't go on there and say, you must or even you should very often.

[732] I just say, hey, I've made mistakes.

[733] Here's what I figured out for me. Here's an idea or two.

[734] Consider this.

[735] and that's that's the way it's presented but you know why do I how do I get off talking to strangers and telling them anything about anything that's we have to disagree on that right right well but yeah no and I I understand that also keeps you from being present social media does keeps one from being present but also we need it for our work and you just mentioned a little while ago the idea that you need to keep up my guess is that You have to be competitive and hungry, no matter where it is that you've arrived in life with success, and you feel the need to keep up with where everyone is because we're aging.

[736] On social media?

[737] I don't know about that.

[738] I need it for information.

[739] For what I do, the reason I said it, I was putting my sensibilities on you.

[740] I don't want to be in the phone.

[741] I prefer to get out of the phone, but there are certain things because of the daily necessities of what I do.

[742] Yeah, as an information getting tool, I mean, we don't open actual papers anymore.

[743] I mean, so, but I think she means, you know, why share with strangers anything on that platform?

[744] Why, it's not your job to do that.

[745] I do sports videos.

[746] I talk about sports sometimes on there, most of the time I don't.

[747] I'm sharing whatever else is important to me. You know, when you're not a parent, but you think you've learned a thing or two.

[748] I don't go up to strangers on the street who are a college age and go, listen, if we'd had kids that have been your age, so you're going to have to listen.

[749] I don't do that.

[750] But when I'm asked for help, I get pleasure in trying to help someone understand something that maybe I can assist with, you know.

[751] You have life wisdoms accrued.

[752] You're allowed to share them.

[753] Thank you, Dan.

[754] Before we get out of here, I wanted to ask you about both your experience with a college football video game that everyone is excited about.

[755] And whether you think that you've given EA sports, college football, the ability now with what it is that you did for them for many, many hours to replace you with AI.

[756] Of course, they'll replace me with AI.

[757] In the future, in the future, have you realized that you've just given them the entirety of your career as soon as they figure out?

[758] It's a multi -year contract.

[759] I'll say that.

[760] They can't do it after the first year.

[761] When the contract runs out, they can let machines do all of it.

[762] I think that that's a whole other conversation.

[763] You could do a podcast only on the looming dangers of AI.

[764] No, first of all, the video game was great fun for me. It's an important part of the college football landscape because people approach the sport very often through the video game.

[765] It hasn't existed for 10 years.

[766] ESPN blocked me from being involved in the first version of that game because I was a staff employee.

[767] they could do that at that point and they were supposedly going to develop their own video game in competition with EA so they didn't want me to be involved in it.

[768] It really bothered me because it's a part of the pop culture of the sport and now that it's back and it's been gone for 10 years and it's mind -blowingly advanced the players are involved.

[769] NIL has opened the door for you to pick your team with names on back of the jerseys and the level of technology in the game is staggering, way too hard for me to play.

[770] I have a PS1, which doesn't work on that game anyway.

[771] We have to have a PS5, I think, to play it.

[772] But just being involved in putting your voice in the game is flattering because, you know, it's just another outlet for what you do.

[773] And when somebody is playing a video game and they, you know, they throw a 75 -yard touchdown pass and they're playing Ohio State versus Michigan, you know, they want the voice narrating that.

[774] to be as excited as they are.

[775] And so that was the challenge.

[776] They wanted your voice.

[777] For years, they wanted your voice.

[778] Well, thanks.

[779] I mean, they wanted some voice.

[780] It hasn't even been around for 10 years.

[781] So I think people are psyched that it's back.

[782] And I think it's going to explode when it goes on sale in July for that reason.

[783] I've just gotten a lot of really positive feedback about the fact that the game's even returning.

[784] When people actually get a look at it, we were up in Orlando about a week ago.

[785] And people were shown for the first time just how, amazing the game was, bloggers and insiders, and I think it was embargoed until really recently, but now I can talk about it.

[786] It's pretty mind -blowing what's out there.

[787] And so, yeah, I mean, I wanted to do that really, really well.

[788] And 115 hours spread out over more than two years as they developed the game.

[789] It wasn't like an intense amount of time in any given week or month, but over a couple years, we got everything that could possibly happen in a game recorded and including stuff that would never happen in a real game, but it happens in video games where apparently people punt on second down sometimes because they lose their mind, but we're ready for that too.

[790] But no, I just, they played back a simulation of the play that I described.

[791] Ohio State scores 75 -yard pass first play in the big house against Michigan and played back what the computer had stitched together is my call, because you don't do a complete call.

[792] You do everything involved in a long play, you know, he's rolling right, looking deep, has a man caught in the clear, touchdown Ohio State.

[793] That's like six different little pieces of information you've recorded at different times that the algorithm somehow knows how to stitch together based on what the controller does.

[794] It's crazy technology, right?

[795] But when you do that, it didn't quite sound right to me because this is pretty granular but anybody who watches sports who's seen Chris Berman like lose his mind on you know NFL highlights at the end of a day on Sunday all right you have no idea what that's actually like in person you've seen it but the intensity level in the studio is I'm holding my hand a foot over my head to get to where it is I level okay Okay, because the process of putting it on the screen, filters, everything, it's the same thing.

[796] You know, you know how to do it.

[797] Well, in a video game, I found it was the same thing.

[798] I had to go crazy in a little padded room in my office town here, Miami Beach.

[799] Inauthentic.

[800] Faking emotion.

[801] Faking it.

[802] Trying to put yourself in a booth and imagine that situation.

[803] And then bringing a level of intensity that's very natural in the moment, but very unnatural.

[804] And then trying to do that, by the way, again and again and again, because we were calling these high -energy crazy touchdown plays, probably half a season's worth would be squeezed into like one three -hour or four -hour voiceover session.

[805] So you're losing your voice, you're losing your mind.

[806] It's very unnatural experience.

[807] You know, we finally figured out how to do this.

[808] Let's not quite do that.

[809] Let's have some regular three -yard gains and then we'll mix a touchdown call or two in there.

[810] But there was one day when I went in, I went into the room and And led to said touchdown Air Force, which is the first letter, first school in the alphabet, down to Wyoming.

[811] And it just went down there.

[812] And it was just with a couple of breaks, but you don't do that in real life.

[813] And so I wanted, when it was actually put together by the computer, I wanted it to sound like a real game.

[814] But it took a while to get there.

[815] And I had to kind of change my energy to make it work.

[816] I wonder if you thought about your mother, the choreographer, and the father, the theater coach, that sounds more like acting than anything that you've done in your career.

[817] Yes, it is.

[818] Although if you can put yourself there, you're just kind of imagining.

[819] It's not creating from, you know, something you do have it done before.

[820] You're just trying to fake it and say, I'm in a booth and I'm imagining this play in front.

[821] How did that sound?

[822] Like I listened back to some calls from real games to kind of get in that place.

[823] You're describing acting, Fowler.

[824] You're describing, you're describing.

[825] Acting.

[826] Yeah, but it's your own words.

[827] So it's, I'm not, I'm not trying to be, you know, quote like Shakespeare or, you know, I'm not, I'm not standing out there and say, here's the latest like, you know, Ibs, I'm, let's, let's, I mean, I, it's shit that I have said before and I'd say, just done in a different environment.

[828] That's all.

[829] Appreciate your work.

[830] Appreciate your time and appreciate that after all of these years that we're able to get together and do this, because, the audience should know, in the history of sports journalism and ESPN, there have not been a lot of stories like yours.

[831] You basically went from intern to top of the game there over 40 years.

[832] Like your first assignments at ESPN were on the lowest rung of the 11 years old, man. I thought they were going to hire me for SportsCenter.

[833] They didn't know.

[834] We got to the high school show for you.

[835] That's right.

[836] You were covering high school kids, but you did it with a great enthusiasm.

[837] And I still remember that as sort of aspiration.

[838] Watching you do that was like, oh, that's interesting.

[839] In fact, my first job in television was doing a show like that, the Miami Herald High School Sports Show right near here.

[840] Did someone tell you don't do that?

[841] Because the last thing I'll leave you with it, what I tell anybody is listen to your gut and your inner voice, and you only do that by cutting out the static.

[842] Well -meaning people will give you terrible advice along the way.

[843] And one of those pieces of advice was don't go to ESPN.

[844] Startup cable company was seven years old at the time.

[845] got there in 86 and you should not do that it's a magazine show not live high school sports you should go read scores these are real places that i have job offers um wichita um new hampshire cincinnati as a weekend guy i was lucky i i i was decent coming out of college i had i was in denver i'd worked out of out of college had worked in a top 20 market producing and then doing reports in sports not anchoring but i have been on the air in denny Denver.

[846] The ESPN hires me to do this high school show, and it felt right.

[847] And had I listened to everybody else, I would have had a different career.

[848] Had I listened to everybody else when I got to ESPN, they would have rerouted me to someplace very quickly away from that show, but not to college football.

[849] So about three decisions that I made early on, game day was one of those, were instrumental.

[850] So anybody listening to this, whatever you do, find a way to know yourself well because it starts there, trust yourself and all the best choices I've made.

[851] I've made a lot of bad decisions on stocks and real estate and all that, but they've made no bad decisions in my career.

[852] Every single time when it's been A or B or C, I feel good about that.

[853] And stay at ESPN, leave ESPN.

[854] Could have done that a few times.

[855] Obviously didn't.

[856] Wanted to, thought about it, didn't.

[857] Was the right thing to do was stay.

[858] Don't run away from something, run to something.

[859] So all of those things only come from the fact that whether it was being self -sufficient early on, I learned to know myself well and trust myself and make decisions based on what felt right and what felt fun, not money, eyeballs on you, ratings, none of that ever factored in.

[860] It still doesn't.

[861] It's what is going to feel fun and fulfilling and what feels right to you.

[862] So you wouldn't have met your wife either at the horribly sad Christmas party.

[863] Very, very different career in life, yes.

[864] What is the most tempted that you were?

[865] Which is the most difficult to...

[866] When I was pissed off about how things were going up at the company.

[867] When I felt unappreciated, underpaid.

[868] Yeah, I mean, we all have.

[869] You don't work at one place for 38 years without having chapters as you know well, right?

[870] Everybody has who's worked there.

[871] Every single person, right, at any job, not just on air, has felt that.

[872] And probably every other company out there, too.

[873] So, you know, you just, you just learn to check your ego, check your temper, and make a sound decision, as tough as it is to swallow it, it's the right thing to do.

[874] You toughed it out to have what looks like from here.

[875] I don't know if there's other stuff that you wanted to do aspirationally or ambition -wise, but it seems to me like you have at ESPN the exact job you want to have at ESPN.

[876] I do.

[877] But I'm saying that is good fortune, but it's also preparation.

[878] It's also knowing yourself well and making good choices.

[879] Because I could have taken six different detours in that path that would have landed me in a different place.

[880] And it wouldn't be calling the championship game in college football or the finals.

[881] It would be someplace completely different.

[882] It might have been also good and fulfilling, but not what I'm doing now.

[883] And what I am doing now are my two favorite sports championship events.

[884] And, you know, it's not sheer luck.

[885] It's just being ready for that and knowing yourself well and knowing who to listen to and who not to listen to.

[886] And most listen to your, listen to yourself.

[887] It is good to see you.

[888] And I'm glad that we did this.

[889] Thank you for spending the time.

[890] Yeah, I wish that we had had somebody around here bring us more so that I could have loosened him up and got all.

[891] I nursed this drink.

[892] I have just to sit for the end.

[893] Do you realize if we had three of these, he would have been ripping every executive at ESPN with me lobbing him lobs?

[894] I came prepared for that too, man. I can't prepare for that.

[895] No, no gotcha here.

[896] This is not the setting for gotcha.

[897] Thank you, Chris.

[898] Cheers, Dan.

[899] Now's a good time to remember where the story of tequila started.

[900] In 1795, the first tequila distillery was opened by the Cuervo family.

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[904] The tequila that invented tequila.

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[907] Trademarks owned by Beckle, SAB, the CV, Copyright, 2024.

[908] Proximo.

[909] Jersey City, New Jersey, please drink responsibly.