There are many sports I find enjoyable. The TV is always on
during the Olympics; all my years in marching band and pep
band created a love of football and basketball; watching some college sports
live (Clarke men’s
volleyball!) is fun. However, in many cases I would rather read or watch a
movie about certain sports than see the actual event either live or on TV. For
example I have always been fascinated by the 1919
“Black Sox” scandal, but really do not like watching a baseball game. Give
me a summary in a book or a movie
with a game montage and I’m a happy camper.
Perhaps that is why I was drawn to Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the
World of ESPN by James
Andrew Miller and Tom
Shales. It is an oral history of the rise of the Entertainment and Sports
Programming Network. The detailed story of the network from conception to its
current standing as a worldwide source of sports on TV, in print and online is
told by the people who lived it. Many sports are touched on in relation to how
they came to be shown on ESPN such as football and basketball (both pro and
college), baseball, hockey, soccer, NASCAR, the X games, and the Olympics. Of
course there is much discussion of “behind the scenes” at the network providing
a peek into contract negotiations with both individuals and companies as well
as descriptions of the ESPN culture in Bristol, Connecticut.
An oral history is the perfect format for a story like this
because it is presented only via direct quotes. There is some explanatory text
but the story is told directly from the mouths of the speakers themselves. This
format provides both sides of an argument – and there are many – or all aspects
of a scandal – there are a few of those, too – without giving the authors editorial
opinion. Note that because the title or description of each person speaking is
only listed the first time they appear in the book, it can be challenging to
keep everyone straight at the beginning.
Other oral histories include Live From New York about the development and rise of Saturday Night Live also
by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller and The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three
Acts by Tom Farley and Colby Tanner.
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