September 29, 2022 • 49 mins
A-Block (1:47) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trial of the Proud Boys starts in DC, near the trial of the Oath Keepers, while one liberal commentator is blasted for asking about climate change and Hurricane Ian, but Tucker Carlson is free to insinuate President Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. So this question: (2:47) WHY and WHEN did much of our country GO CRAZY? When did despicable but sane conservatives go insane? (4:09) I think the answer is: the conservatives' guard rails began to fall off when the 9/11 PTSD sunk in (13:52) Certainly what Bush got away with, in Iraq, with torture, conservatives lost any fear that they couldn't get away with anything - including claiming JFK Jr. is back from the dead.
B-Block (19:27) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Gonzo, in New York (20:27) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Coolio, In Memoriam; J.R. Majewski, in trouble again; Marjorie Trailer Park Greene, in divorce court; and John Barron rides again. (22:20) IN SPORTS: Tim Mayza and Matt Buschmann are in the record books! (Oh and Aaron Judge too) And of triple-headers, quadruple-headers, and sextuple-headers (23:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MTG self-owns while hog-hunting, Martha MacCallum doesn't understand Puerto Rico, and Chris Hayes advocates something unconscionable, as they compete for he honors (29:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Saturday is the 29th Anniversary of the launch of the New Coke of TV Sports: ESPN2 - and I still have the scars!
C-Block (41:15) Part two of Things I Promised Not To Tell. There were two reasons I was willing to give up SportsCenter to be the face of the ESPN2 disaster. One reason, I've always mentioned. But the other? I don't think I told more than one other person in 29 years. In this podcast: I TELL THEE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
(00:26):
And now the Trial of the Proud Boys begins today
in Washington, Wild Jury selection continues in the trial of
the Oath Keepers. The oath Keepers who will defend themselves
paranoid far right vigilantes by claiming they were just following
what we're about to be legal orders from a president.
In Florida, Hurricane Ian has hit so strongly that, after
(00:48):
decades of fake ones, there was an actual shark swimming
on the flooded streets of South Fort Myers. But when
a television news anchor asked if the intensity of these
storms was somehow connected to climate change, the far right
came down on him as if he were crazy. Why.
Virtually the same hour, one of their TV news figures,
Tucker Carlson actually insisted that the likeliest suspect in the
(01:12):
sabotage of the nord Stream one and two natural gas
pipelines off Denmark was President Joe Biden, and then Carlson
listed a series of things the Russians could do as retaliation.
So this question for you, when did much of our
country go crazy? Where does this come from? People like
(01:37):
Tucker Carlson He was once just a despicable, run of
the mill conservative, but he wasn't crazy. Same for Laura Ingram,
Rudy Giuliani, Elie Stefanic, Lindsey Graham, Dozens more terrible, reactionary,
destructive conservatives, but not crazy. I sat at an anchor
desk at MSNBC once and I heard Tucker Carlson, then
(01:59):
a new MSNBC host, rattle off a list of conservative
conspiracy theorists he thought was damaging the United States of America,
Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck. Laura Ingram has
a brother who is out. When I knew her, she
was proud of him, defended him, even claimed he was
(02:21):
part of what she called the not so vast right
wing conspiracy. And for all her political vitriol, she was
utterly accepting about orientations and lifestyles and rights. What sent
these people who pretty much lived their lives well balanced
on the edge over the edge? Believe it or not,
(02:42):
I think I know. I think I've a known all along,
and I think what sent them over the edge was
nine eleven. I have never been satisfied that we have
correctly gauged just how much undiagnosed PTSD there was in
this country after those attacks. I don't mean just among
conservatives or just among political figures, but consider their particular cases.
(03:07):
Go back to Labor Day two thousand one. Laura Ingram
was in her fifth year as a member of a
small group of conservative blonde women who basically took up
half the guest slots on cable news from Fox to
MSNBC to CNN. Ingram and and Colter were the ones
you called first. Then maybe Mary Mattlin. If you couldn't
(03:28):
get them and you were desperate enough, you went to
Kelly Anne Fitzpatrick. You know her now as Kelly Anne Conway.
But if you wanted somebody with the same venomous conservative viewpoint,
but who actually seemed like a pleasant person who would
occasionally let you convince her she might be wrong, you
called Barbara Olsen. There were literally dozens of liberal pundits
(03:49):
whose names would be pitched to me as guests, and
I would have said, add, rather talk to Barbara Olsen.
Barbara Olsen was on the plane that went into the Pentagon.
And whatever explanation of nine eleven you subscribe to, from
reality to the wildest of truth or pipe dreams, you
must admit this is true. Having somebody who does your job,
(04:11):
is your age, lives in your city, looks like you,
is your professional colleague, is your friend. Having that person
get killed in a terrorist attack unprecedented in this nation's history,
is enough to give you several doses of PTSD, especially
if you never seek help, as if Laura Ingram or
Rudy Giuliani or Kelly and Fitzpatrick Conway act like the
(04:34):
kind of people who would willingly seek professional help. How
many more Americans who, on September two thousand one already
had the exact kinds of personality disorders and the authoritarian, sadistic,
and dominating tendencies that comprise being a conservative. How many
of them were driven around the proverbial bend the next
(04:55):
day or more slowly, perhaps over the course of years.
This mixture of terror and personal loss coming up hand
in hand with the heavy opportunity to enforce the kind
of restrictive regime they always wanted to impose on this country.
That mix must have been utterly destabilizing for them. And
(05:17):
yet what happened five years and two months after nine eleven,
this nation gave the House and the Senate to the Democrats,
in large part because the Republicans had clearly manipulated the
terror threat to fit their political needs. It had become
so obvious that even the Republican's own choice to lead
the new Department of Homeland Security admitted that even he
(05:37):
was convinced it had become political. And two years after that,
this country chose an African American president over an XPOW
war hero, something that would have been unimaginable on nine
eleven or nine ten, for that matter, and then they
re elected him over generic milktoast Republican number thirty seven.
(05:57):
All the time, the PTSD and the Giuliani's and Ingram's
and Carlson's and millions of other conservatives just kept multiplying
and multiple lying. So when Trump appeared, offering strongman rule
with just enough of a thin veneer of policy excuses,
that the Republican Party saw the perfect bill of goods
to sell to racist conservatives shattered by nine eleven, shattered
(06:19):
by a black president. They had found their personal savior
and their ticket to power, and somebody who would also
beat up all their PTSD ghosts for them. Do not
get me wrong about this. Not for a moment am
I saying that Osama bin Laden made Tucker Carlson imply
that the President of the United States blew up a
(06:39):
Russian pipeline. Nine eleven just eliminated the self imposed restraint
Tucker Carlson and the others had once maintained. People didn't
believe it at the time, but when Nuke Gingrich was
Speaker of the House, he really did think that he
could impeach and remove Bill Clinton, and then before the
(07:00):
new president Al Gore had a chance to appoint a
new Vice president, gang Rich he could impeach and remove Gore,
and then the new president of the United States would
be the Speaker of the House himself. When everybody who
heard this laughed, Newt read the room took a beat,
and Newt laughed too. But he really really thought he
(07:22):
was America's personal strongman savior and that the country would
swell up in righteous indignation and let him undo the
presidential election. I mean, where do you think crazy Trump
and his minions got the whole de certify, overturn, restore
redo nonsense. As late as two thousand six, Newt Gingrich
(07:42):
thought we were one terrorist attack away from having to
repeal most of the first Amendment so we could prosecute
or at least sue people who said on popular things,
and that we'd need a president willing to do that him.
Where do you think crazy Trump got that idea from?
And Rudy Giuliani was a try to stop me in
court thug during his first term as Mayor of New York,
(08:05):
long before he walked through the ashes of the city's
emergency Response Command, which he personally ordered built inside the
World Trade Center against everybody else's advice, and shortly after
the one good week of his life, he was crazier
than ever before. People gloss over this, but he tried
to get the scheduled expiration of his term as Mayor
(08:26):
of New York on January one, two thousand two, postponed
because clearly the city could not spare his leadership in
the post terrorism world. And when that didn't work, Giuliani
proposed that he and his newly elected successor, Mike Bloomberg,
should be co mayors for a month or two months,
or six or thirty six. And Laura Ingram always had
(08:50):
that streak of fascist madness running right down her middle.
You know the famous story of her living boyfriend he
kicked her out and was taking down from the walls
all those framed pictures of them together. So she made
replacements of the photos and took the spare key she
had secretly gotten duplicated. Waited until he left his house
(09:10):
one day, and she went back in and put nearly
all the photos back up on his wall, and so,
upon seeing what could have been a deleted scene from
the movie Fatal Attraction, the boyfriend wisely replaced all the locks. Thus,
when Laura went back to finish the job and could
not get into the house, she went around back to
where he kept his garden hose, stuffed the business end
(09:32):
in through the mail slot of his front door, and
then turned it on, destroying ten thousand dollars worth of
hardwood floors. You never heard that story. You know where
I heard that story? She told me. She told me
on a date, and she was proud of it. No,
Laura's trolley did not suddenly jump the tracks on nine
(09:54):
eleven in April of this year, when she explained her
opposition to college loan forgiveness. I shuddered. I mean I
shuddered twice the first time, just like you shuddered. Then
I shuttered again because of a phone call she made
to me a scant twenty three years ago. If you
have forgotten when she came out against loan forgiveness, what
she wrote was, quote, my mom worked as a waitress
(10:15):
until she was seventy three to help pay for our college,
even helped with loan repayment. Loan forgiveness just another insult
to those who play by the rules. First of all,
Laura's mother worked until nineteen four, but by nine, and
it was probably early, maybe as early as nineteen ninety two,
Laura Ingram owned her own duplex in Georgetown, while mom
(10:39):
was still a plate jockey at Willie's Steakhouse in Connecticut.
That was only my first shutter. My second shutter came
for this flashback to the phone call in the spring
of nine. She and I were still kind of friendly,
and I used to go on her radio show and
talk baseball and promote my cable sportscast and the Game
of the Week, which I hosted for Fox. So when
(11:00):
I heard her mother had died, I called to offer
my condolences and she called me back. Do you know
what her last words to me were, This will tell
you everything you need to know about me. I nearly
hung up right then, I wish I had She quoted
her own mother's dying words, Laura, why are you so bossy?
(11:23):
I mean, she told me that, and like the garden
hose through the mail slot story, she was clearly proud
of it. Who does that? I mean, if you're going
to tell people your mother's last words, do you make
them good? And when we make them sound like Mom
didn't think you were nuts? I mean, how is anybody
gonna check? Finding my way back to my point, I
(11:48):
am not suggesting that the madness of two thousand twenty two,
the willingness of the same people who once believed in
elections and democracy, at least to the degree that they
filled out all the paperwork and slapped on a fake
smile as they did so, to just shed that and
in brace dictatorship more enthusiastically with every passing day. No,
(12:09):
that did not start on nine eleven. But the guard
rails we all have in place to keep our crazier
thoughts from staying too long, or god forbid, getting out
where other people can hear them vanished on nine eleven.
For Laura Ingram, for Rudy Giuliani, for Newt Gingrich, for
Tucker Carlson. I'll say this much. We know without question
(12:34):
any sense inside these fascists that they could never get
away with their authoritarian wet dreams that faded in the
weeks and months and years after nine eleven as they
saw what Bush got away with. Let's use nine eleven
as an excuse to invade a country that had nothing
to do with nine eleven. Who's gonna stop us if
we want to respond to terrorism by forfeiting two centuries
(12:55):
of refusing to use torture in the name of the
United States America? Who's gonna stop us? Half the people
in this damn country don't even know where Canada is,
let alone Iraq. What are they gonna? What do they care?
As they saw all that, somewhere a key turned in
all their minds. We got away with the presidency in
two thousand. Sure the election was raised or close. Sure
(13:17):
we had a legitimate case. But did you see how
fast the Democrats folded? I bet we can do it
sometime when it isn't close. De certify the electoral College.
Good idea. We can win without the popular vote or
the electoral vote. That means we're electoral geniuses. What you're
(13:37):
saying that, then it's not a democracy anymore, and there
aren't any elections anymore, so we're not electoral geniuses. Well,
they will just make it illegal to teach anything we
don't like in school. That'll show the bastards. So here
we are. What happened on nine eleven burned permanently all
the elements of post traumatic stress disorder into their minds,
(13:58):
and what they got away with after nine eleven made
them realize they could get away with anything. So Tucker
Carlson can say what he wants without consequence, and the
Proud Boys and the oath Keepers can go into court
in Washington today thinking they will be exonerated because they
simply throw out the name Trump. And when the President
(14:20):
slips and asks if a congresswoman is there for a
conference about the issue that mattered the most to her
and she died in a car accident last month, we
actually have to listen to Joe Biden getting bashed by
conservatives and fascists and q and ons and Trumpists, whose
principal political tenant today is that John F. Kennedy Jr.
(14:42):
Has come back from the dead. Yeah, it's Biden with
the cognitive problems. No, JF K Jr. Is over there,
and he's also he became a conservative and now we're
(15:03):
stupid hats and forgets to shave. Still ahead on countdown,
Marjorie Trailer Park Green wants you to go hog hunting
with her. The jokes they write themselves in sports the
Aaron Judge watched never stops, and in Things I promised
not to tell. It was the new Coke of television
sports ESPN two launched twenty nine years ago Saturday, and
(15:28):
I've still got all the scars, Buddy, and I have
one more detail of that story that I have never
previously revealed. There were two reasons I went along with
this crazy scheme to take me off Sports Center to
do that instead. Reason number two, the secret reason, as
personal a reason as there could ever be, I will
(15:52):
finally reveal to you on this podcast that kids is
a tease. That's next this discountdown. This is countdown with Keith,
(16:16):
Thank you, Larry. Still ahead on Countdown. Finally, with the
Judge thing and the late baseball great Earning Banks, it
was he used to say, it's a beautiful day, Let's
play two. But who would ever say let's play six?
Coming up first. In each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need whom you can help. Every dog
has its day. Gonzo may die in the New York
(16:38):
Pound today because there's something wrong with his human. Time
and time again, this large seven year old brindle mixed
breed is put on death row, and time and time again,
his human reclaims him at the last minute, and then
his human dumps him back at the pound or on
the street, or just lets him wander off. If Gonzo
is not saved by a rescue, this is probably it.
(17:00):
You can help prevent this needless tragedy with a pledge
to help defray rescue spences. Just go to my Twitter
account for Dogs in Trouble Tom Jumbo Grumbo and look
for Gonzo's tweet and thank you very much for doing so.
(17:29):
Post Scripts to the news, some headlines, some commentary, some snark.
Dateline Los Angeles artist Leon Ivy Jr. The rapper Coolio
Gangster's Paradise has died in Los Angeles. Dateline Holland, Ohio Oops.
More trouble with Republican House candidate j R. Mjewski's military record. First,
he said he was an Afghanistan combat veteran acclaim his
(17:50):
official records does not support. Then he said he was
denied permission to re enlist by the Air Force because
he'd gotten into a brawl. No, the records show he
was stopped for drunk driving on a US air base
in Japan. Dateline, Floyd County, Georgia. Perry Green has had enough.
It is irretrievably broken. He says, what is his marriage
(18:12):
to Congresswoman Marjorie trailer Park Green? He filed on her
last night. Guess she'll just be Marjorie trailer Park now
stateline Twitter. Trump almost fired his own daughter and daughter
in law as White House aids and wanted to let
them know by a tweet. Talked out of it by
Chief of Staff John Kelly and Representative Debbie Dingle says
(18:33):
she got a two thousand nineteen phone call from someone
purporting to be a Washington Post reporter whose name she
did not recognize. The more the man talked, the more
she believed the caller was actually Trump. These tidbits are
from What Else, an excerpt from a new book by
Maggie Haberman. The good news here is, with all of
(18:54):
these excerpts, you no longer have any excuse to buy
or read the new book by Maggie Haberman, since it
has now been excerpted by every outlet except eesp end deportees.
(19:18):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that, not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith in Sports. So finally Tim Maza
has done it. Who's Tim Masa. He's the fifth year
veteran middle reliever of the Toronto Blue Jays, and he
is the guy who gave up Aaron Judges record tying
(19:40):
sixty one homer in the seventh inning against the Toronto
Blue Jays last night for the New York Yankees. Yep,
Judges home run might have been caught by a fan
leaning over the Blue Jay's bullpen, but it wasn't. He
won't see that again in his dreams for the next
seventy years. It went instead into the bullpen and was
caught by Toronto coach Matt Bushman, who is the husband
of sportscaster Sarah Walsh. And yes, by the way, I
(20:02):
subscribed to sixty one being the all time home run
record and Aaron Judge having tied it. As I noted
the other day, the all times strikeout record is three
eighty three by Nolan Ryan and the Angels in nineteen
seventy three. Even though Matt Kilroy of the Orioles struck
out five thirteen and eighteen eighty six. The records are
not just numbers, they are numbers in context. Kilroy was
(20:26):
pitching from fifty feet away from the plate, Ryan from
sixty six inches. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves lost three to
two in ten innings at Washington, and the New York
Mets beat the Miami Marlins five four in ten, all
five runs driven in by Met third baseman Eduardo Escobar.
(20:51):
Thank you, Nancy Faust take five. The Mets now lead
the Braves by a game in the National League East,
going into their three game series in Atlanta over the
weekend with the storm. The Mets offered to play game
one of that series in Atlanta, not on Friday, but today.
The Braves said no thanks. Mets manager Buck Showalter joke
the Mets would be ready to play a triple header
(21:13):
if the weather demanded. It sounds farcical, but baseball used
to have triple headers. The Pirates and Red's played the
last one on October two. Baseball's official historian, my friend
John Thorne, noted that in nineteen oh three, the Hudson
Marines of the Hudson River League, a minor league in
New York State, played a quadruple header against the Poughkeepsie
(21:37):
Colts and won all four games in turn. Minor league
historian Tim Haggarty then noted that on September four, Manchester
needed to win six games to clinch the second half
title in the New England League. They somehow talked the
Portland's Phenomens into playing a sex tuple header six games,
(21:59):
two in the morning, four in the afternoon. Manchester needed
to win all se x. They won all six, still
(22:20):
ahead on countdown. Every year about this time I get
the urge to put on a green silk floral shirt
and a brown leather jacket and say good evening and
welcome to the end of our careers. The anniversary of
the infamous launch of ESPN two in things I promised
not to tell. Coming up first, the daily roundup of
the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger f X specimens who
(22:43):
constitute today's worst persons in the world. Lebron's, MSNBC's Chris
Hayes answering somebody on Twitter who asked how the average
citizen could reduce the risk of nuclear war. Quote. I
think probably the best answer is cut off weapons to
Ukraine and lean on them to sue for peace now.
(23:04):
But if that's the way forward, people should make the case.
I'll always be grateful to Chris because the night MSNBC
tried to suspend me for those political donations to candidates
who had received a rash of death threats. They asked
him to anchor in my place, and he refused, but
cut off weapons to Ukraine and lean on them to
sue for peace. Congrats, Chris, you've become Tucker Carlson the
(23:28):
runner up. Martha McCallum of Fox nudes. For twenty six
years now, Fox has adamantly proclaimed that it has opinion
hosts and it has news anchors, and they are separate.
One part of the equation they always leave out is
that whereas the opinion host are evil and racist and
fascist and Tucker Carlson, the news anchors tend to be idiots.
Martha McCallum on Hurricane Ian quote, you feel terrible for
(23:52):
people in Puerto Rico who were just hit and Cuba
who were just hit. Thank god, we have better infrastructure
in our country. You hear all the time about news acts.
Martha mccadum's bio notes that after she took her undergrad degree,
she studied at the Circle in the Square Theater School
(24:14):
and founded the Miranda Theater Company. But our winner, Marjorie
trailer Park Green. She is out with a new ad
offering you the chance to go up in a helicopter
with her while she tries to shoot Ferrell hogs. With
Ferrell hogs, I said fair, I said Farrell Hoggs, I
(24:36):
said Farrell Hoggs Son with a machine gun of some sort.
We've got skyrocketing inflation, high diesel fuel, and Democrats America
last policies. Democrats aren't the only one destroying farmer's ability
to put food on the table. We've got wild hawgs
destroying farmer's field. So we decided to go hog hunting.
(25:00):
Let's help American farmers out. Sign up Hello and let's there.
Then appears this web address MTG hog hunt dot com
MTG for Marjorie Taylor Green Hog. Marjorie Taylor Green Hog.
(25:26):
Sometimes any jokes that I might offer would be superfluous.
Marjorie Trailer Park completely self unaware Green two days, worst
person in the world to our number one story in
(25:55):
the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell, And this one will take a while.
Twenty nine years ago, Saturday, October one, we launched ESPN two.
They talked me into becoming the face of this first
of ESPNS endless clones of its television self. I wore
a brown leather bomber jacket and I said the first
(26:17):
words in the first actual program, and those words were
good evening and welcome to the end of our careers.
And that's pretty much all anybody remembers of this unmitigated disaster.
ESPN two exists today, of course, and successfully, but it
only became successful when they stopped trying to make it
something different from original ESPN, and management, with genuine heartbreak,
(26:38):
accepted the idea that all the nation wanted was more ESPN,
not different kinds of ESPN that begat ESPN News, ESPN U,
ESPN plus ESPN. The oh Cho Tarter control ESPN. But
that's not what they wanted ESPN two to be. They
(26:58):
wanted it to be hip and cool, you know, for kids,
And they were gonna make it hip and cool and
forced it to be hip and cool if it killed
them and you and for that matter me. It is
why they took the co anchor of their most successful
sports center ever and broke up the partnership and moved
(27:19):
him to a new network that almost literally had more
people who thought they were in charge of it than
watched it. And why three months later, when Sports Illustrated
magazine chose ESPN two as the seventh worst thing to
happen in sports in the year, only the seventh worst,
we were grateful, and I then scurried back to Sports
(27:39):
Center and we all pretended like ESPN two had never happened,
and we almost never mentioned it again. But the saga
of why it went so desperately and immediately wrong is
worth telling in brief, and if you will listen to it,
I will tell you something I have never admitted publicly before.
Why when they asked me to leave Sports Center after
(28:02):
a very first successful year on Sports Center to go
do this cockamamie new network thing. Why on earth given
the choice, I actually said, yes, nobody knows this, you
will in a few minutes. But first, by the time
(28:22):
I went to work there in ESPN had finally moved
out of its perennial status of near bankruptcy and near
irrelevancy to profit and prominence. From a launch in nineteen
seventy nine through the mid nineteen eighties, the place had
always either had a new owner, or a new schedule,
or a new plan to avert bankruptcy. When I joined
the fledgling sports department at CNN in I used to
(28:44):
watch my high school classmate Chris Berman do his show
called Sports Center from what was obviously a closet with
one light, no air conditioning, and no teleprompter. Sometimes it
would be twenty minutes long. Sometimes it would be two
minutes long. Each time I'd look at poor Chris sch
fitzing and looking a little claustrophobic, and I'd say, well,
(29:05):
hooray for CNN Sports. We're not the worst. But by
ESPN had begun to be willing to spend a little
money to bring in a prominent local sportscaster from Los
Angeles me and give him the keys to the eleven
o'clock Sports Center. And this company, which did not have
any merchandise, did not sell anything with its logo on it,
(29:27):
finally decided to expand and launch an all sports radio
network and When those plans did not go very well,
they spent a little extra money and they talked me
into moving to Connecticut three months earlier than planned to
launch the radio network, and it was an instantaneous hit
by early n Then there were rumblings and then rumors,
and finally an announcement that they would build upon the
(29:49):
radio success by starting a second television network, ESPN and
ESPN two. But and from the beginning, this was the point.
It was not going to be just another ESPN or
the ESPN spillover channel, or the channel for when there's
a great basketball game and a great football game at
the same time and we want to cover both. It
(30:11):
was going to be different. There'd be live broadcasts of games,
just like ESPN. There'd be a studio sports show just
like Sports Center, but it be hip, you know, for
kids in the Sports Center newsroom. The assumption was the
face of ESPN two was going to be Mike Tariko.
Mike had had a very tough Nino and it seemed
(30:34):
like something that could re establish him in the company,
or if he had a tough nineteen something he could
be jettison from. If the whole thing went up in flames,
I heard Robin Robert's name mentioned once or twice, and
I don't know if they ever approached Robin, and I
think Tariko told me once they had mentioned it to him,
but never seriously. So when they called me into my
boss's office in the spring of nine, I just assumed
(30:56):
they were yelling at me for something I said, since
that's what they usually called me in for, or called
me and Dan Patrick in four or called Danny just
yell at him for something I had said. Instead, they
offered me ESPN two. We want you to be to
ESPN two, said John Walsh, who basically ran everything ESPN
(31:17):
did that was not a ball game. We want you
to be for ESPN to what Chris Berman is to ESPN.
They explained that there would be younger sports on their
X games stuff and mountain biking. They kept talking about
mountain biking and a lot of stuff with trees, but
that the flagship program would match my sense of humor exactly,
(31:37):
that it would be snarky and flip and with it
and hip and cool, you know, for kids. They said
they would let me continue on Sports Center until August
and then have me work for two months helping them
design and rehearse the new show. They actually wanted my opinion,
and they offered to give me like a raise. Understand,
(31:59):
the ESPN would fight you over an eleven dollar cab
ride on an exper report. They would call you into
a meeting, they would spend thirty minutes on this. They
would then offer you eight dollars. A twenty five percent
raise was the n ESPN equivalent of eternal life. Still,
(32:22):
I had my doubts for one thing. As it was,
we seemed to be pretty hip and cool on Sports Center.
As it was, Dan Patrick and I had an on
air relationship that you could not practice, nor design, nor cast.
It was just there or it wasn't. We were the
two guys in the World War One bunker who knew
that the Jerry's would eventually get us right in the psalm.
(32:43):
So all we could do was first take out as
many of them as we could and sing and laugh
while we did it. But I had two reasons for
saying yes anyway, and I'll save the one I've never
told anybody at all for the end of this recollection.
The other reason was believe it or not, I'm I'm
(33:06):
a team player. I am not the guy who will
come in and lie on behalf of the team. And
I am not the guy who will turn away and
say nothing when the coach is slapping the crap out
of one of my teammates. But if you say, we
are management, we have thought this through. We want you
to leave Sports Center to go do ESPN two and
be hip and cool, you know for kids, I will
(33:28):
say yes, plus money. Only they had not thought it through,
as it proved. The first problem was the new network
that was supposed to be different from ESPN, and the
new show that was supposed to be different from ESPN.
Sports Center was going to be run by John Walsh,
the guy who ran Sports Center and basically created what
(33:51):
you saw then and what you see now, And to
actually produce the show, he chose Mike Bogad, who was
the coordinating producer of the eleven o'clock Sports Center that
I was doing with Dan Patrick, and Norby Williamson, who
was the line producer of the eleven o'clock Sports Center
with me and Dan Patrick. And although they would not
give me a title other than anchor, the other guy
running it was me the co host of the eleven
(34:12):
o'clock Sports Center. To add to this, crowd of rebellious, innovative,
anti establishment thinkers who yesterday had been the establishment. John
Walsh hired the sports editor of the Boston Globe, Vince Doria.
To my mind, Vince would cover himself in glory at
ESPN two by once proposing a really bad idea, a
(34:34):
laugh track for the Nick mackay comedy segments. And when
I said, that's a really bad idea, it's still a newscast.
What if we have a laugh track someday when some
teams plane crashes, he said, you're right. I'm thinking maybe
I don't know as much about this TV stuff as
I thought I did. Will you tell me the next
time I have an idea that's that bad. But at
(34:55):
this point, Vince was thinking maybe we could defferentiate ESPN
two from ESPN by showing baseball and basketball box scores overnight.
There was an opinion and Inns held it that we
should be the Christian science monitor of sportscasts on ESPN two,
which was definitely not, you know, for kids. The show
producers they brought in were also mainstream. My friend and
(35:17):
producer Ron Growning came in from Los Angeles. He actually
thought they met the stuff about younger sports. He bought
a magazine rack and subscribed us to all kinds of
biking magazines and hiking magazines, and nobody ever read them.
They hired producers from Madison Square Garden Network. They hired
associate producers from Sports Center and made them producers to
(35:37):
join me on the anchor desk. They hired a newspaper
columnist from Detroit named Mitch Album, and they hired all
the local sportscasters they did not have room for on
Sports Center, and among them was a guy named Stu
Stu Scott, and Stu was great, but Stu and everybody
else just came in and did regular sportscasts just as
if they'd been on regular flavor ESPN. Finally to be
(35:59):
my real co host, they were going to hire, well,
we never found out who they were going to hire,
because one day the word came through that the chairman
of ABC Cap Cities, which owned ESPN and everything else,
had seen this weekend sportscaster in West Palm Beach doing
a tennis tournament of some sort or raindelay during a
tennis tournament or something, and thought she was great, And
(36:20):
overnight there was a bidding war for her, and we
had just hired her to be my co host in
Her name was Susie Colder. Everybody on this renegade network,
including me, was thoroughly non renegade. It became rather apparent,
rather quickly that management's understanding what made something cool and hip,
you know, for kids, was you're ready, what clothing we wore.
(36:47):
This is the story of the infamous leather jacket I
wore the first night, which you will hear when countdown continues.
After this, back to the number one story on the
countdown and things I promised not to tell on Saturday's
twenty ninth anniversary of the launch of ESPN two, or
(37:08):
as I described it to Kenny Maine for his podcast yesterday,
the Titanic Only It's on fire first, as I said,
the organizing principle was forced hipness, and the organizing principle
of forced hipness was the clothing we war. And that
brings us to the primary image that still appears whenever
(37:30):
the launch of ESPN two is broached or googled. My
infamous brown leather bomber jacket. Fall comes early to Bristol, Connecticut,
and if it were not cold enough there at the
end of September, there was also something wrong with our
new ESPN two studio. No matter what they did to
(37:50):
the air conditioning system in there, it was like forty
eight degrees all the time. So I was standing outside
one day trying to get warm, contemplating the succession of
train wrecks that had been our first five verse pilot
shows and dry runs, and I was wearing my brown
leather bomber jacket because it was cold. When another of
(38:10):
the many executive producers, John Lack, came over to say hi,
and he was in mid sentence when he looked at
the jacket and went stone cold, silent. Wait. He finally
said the word eureka forming over his head. Would you
could you? If I asked you, would you wear that
jacket on the show? I pretended to hesitate. I realized
(38:36):
only the jacket could save me from freezing to death
in our winter on the TV version of The Donner Party,
And so I said, I suppose, And that's why I
was wearing that jacket. It was called in the studio.
Why they gave Steve Buckley from the Boston Herald a
baseball cap to wear on the air for his segments
and where backwards why they put other guys in football
(38:58):
helmets and insisted that nobody wear a tie ever, not
even former Boston College football coach Jack mcnell. That should
be obvious, you know, for kids. It became rapidly apparent
that all ESPN two was ESPN dressed up differently. I
had a leather coach, the on screen graphics were in
(39:18):
lower case letters only. The camera was not on a tripod.
It was carried around by a cameraman who soon had
a bad back. The other problem was exemplified by that fellow,
John Lack. I liked him. He had run MTV News
and he actually had some ideas about differentiating presentation and
content for younger audiences. But by the time he suggested
(39:40):
the jacket, he also had a second message for me. Listen,
he said, I can't get through to these people. They
tell me I'm in charge, and then they tell me
our first new hip revolutionary story is going to be
a profile of Doug Flutey, the quarterback. And I say,
how's that different from Sports Center? And they look at
me like I'm crazy, and they say, he's playing in Canada.
What we're doing a story about Canada? Who would believe
(40:01):
we're gonna do a story about Canada. But I know
you get it, Keith. So when we're actually on the air,
you have to keep it different. You have to be
in charge. When we're on you are the executive producer.
This was extremely bad news because by my account, this
(40:23):
would have made me the fifteenth or sixteen different person
who believed they were in charge. There was John Lack,
There was Walsh. There was a new vice president named
Howard Katz. There was Vince Doria. There were the two
Sports center guys, Norby and Bogey. There were the line producers.
There were a couple of consultants. There was the president
of ESPN, Steve Bornstein. There was the chairman of ABC
who had discovered Susy Colbert. There was the guy who
(40:45):
put in the state of the art air conditioning system
in the studio. There was the other guy, Walter Cronkites
lighting director. As he kept telling us who put in
the state of the art lighting system. All of us
individually in charge, so nobody was in charge. The night
before the premier's September, John Walsh, the Sports Center man,
(41:08):
saw me in the hallway and said, listen, I just
got some amazing information from audience research. Do you know
which show in all of television has the highest percentage
of viewers who are aged eighteen to twenty four. This
was an important question, a relevant question, because these were
the kids, you know, for kids. ESPN two had been
(41:30):
created to get that eighteen to twenty four year old audience.
So I guess the answer was, I don't know some
show on MTV. No, Walsh said, gleefully, it's Sports Center.
And I froze, and I said, wait, John, if if
we already have the eighteen to twenty four year old audience,
(41:51):
why are we starting a new network to get the
eighteen to twenty four year old audience. Do you really
think they're gonna give up the show they like and
and move to a news show on a new channel
just cause? And Walsh laughed and shrugged and shuffled down
the hallway, and I called a cab to take me
(42:11):
to the Hartford Airport so I could leave the country.
Only at the last minute I chickened out. The premiere
October one began with me, I swear this is true,
going to shave in my house and instead dropping and
breaking a mirror. The network signed on at seven pm
with the national anthem and some sort of statement from
(42:32):
Chris Berman blessing it, and then a very long sketch
parody of the then hit film The Fugitive, in which
I was the fugitive from Sports Center. Get at the
Fugitive from Sports Center, you get it. Then the lights
came on. The poor guy with the camera staggered in
and I said, good evening, and welcome to the end
of our careers. The television sportswriter of the Associated Press,
(42:53):
John Nelson, was there in the studio. He immediately flashed
that quote to a not waiting world, and ESPN two
and Sports Night were born, you know, for kids. The
first night seemed okay, largely because ESPN threw a party
in the parking lot under a gigantic tent, free food
(43:15):
and booze, hundreds of staffers and guests and celebrities and
free booze. That place later became known as the Tent
of Consent. Don't ask me. I was on the air
and three hours I had nothing to do with this.
Later that night, near the tent, the network president stumbled
(43:37):
crossing a little bridge over a stream and wound up
in the water. And he still had a better night
than we did. The show's bounced from topic to topic
and mood to mood once with Bill Pito anchoring with me.
Sports Night ran a mini documentary on a high school
basketball star who chose which college to go to to
play ball at entirely by letter and telephone. Only when
(44:01):
he arrived did he discover he was the only white
guy in an entirely black conference. We showed the first
ten minutes of this extraordinary story, then we promised to
show you the rest of it, and then we welcomed
to live studio guest, Eddie Layton, the organist from Yankee Stadium.
(44:21):
He played a few tunes, and then we went back
to part two of this very grim documentary about this
very dim basketball player, and that hour was kind of
good compared to the rest of them. Eventually, we moved
Sports Night from Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights to Monday
through Friday at five pm, so Sports Night was on
(44:42):
in the afternoons. Though it was December, the limitless air
conditioning continued. Susie Colbert began to wear a blanket on
her lap just out of camera view. I begged to
be returned to Sports Center, and they agreed provided I
gave back the Rays and extended my contract for a
year and gave back a little bit more. Sports Illustrated
(45:03):
at that point, still the lead and most influential sports
media outlet in the world, warned us it was going
to list in its year end issue the worst things
to happen in sports in nine and we ESPN two
we're gonna be on it. And when the magazine came out,
there on the list, behind the stabbing of the tennis
star Monica Sellis by a fan of her rival, stephie Groff,
and behind Michael Jordan's retirement, and behind a college football
(45:25):
player suing his coach because somebody else became the starting quarterback.
There we were Sports Illustrated's choice as the seventh worst
thing in sports for ninetee And the reaction of the
anchors and the staff and even the management and all
eighteen people were in charge of ESPN two Sports Night
was unanimous, Hooray, We're not the worst. We're not the worst.
(45:45):
We're not the worst. In my last week anchoring the show,
we discovered that Walter Cronkites lighting guy had never spoken
to the guy who put in the air conditioning system.
Walter Cronkites lighting guy had focused the principal backlight in
his state of the art lighting system directly onto the
(46:07):
principal monitor for the other guys state of the art
air conditioning system, so the state of the art air
conditioning system had spent six months thinking the temperature in
the studio was two ordered seventeen degrees. They let me
go back to Sports Center, providing I gave back all
the extra money, and I happily did it and a
little more. Sports Night staggered on for a few more
(46:29):
weeks before being canceled, and all the talent Stuart Scott,
Susie Calbert Bilpedo, and the guy they hired to replace
me when I escaped back to Sports Center, Kenny, Maine.
They all went on to do Sports Center. As to
ESPN two. We all pretended that never happened, just a
bad dream. And then there was that other reason I
(46:51):
had agreed to try it. I have not told anybody this.
I don't even think I told the other person involved this.
But the night before ESPN management called me and said
we'd like you to leave Sports Center and become the
face of ESPN two. A woman I worked with at
ESPN said yes, she would like to go out with me,
(47:13):
but that doing that while we worked together would be
a disaster. So after management's offer, I asked her if
my new schedule, which took me away from her department,
was sufficient professional distance so that she'd feel comfortable dating.
And she said yes. So I said yes, and and
we started dating. And that didn't work out either. A
(47:50):
part of life's rich pageants have done all the damage
I can do here. Help me out. Give this thing
a good review, or rating her heart or a smiley
emoji or whatever. Forward it to somebody, Tell somebody about it.
The Countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth Arrange, produced and performed
by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. Guitarist,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, all orchestration and keyboards
(48:11):
by John Philip Chanelle. Produced by t k O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed Our sports music. The Olderman ESPN
two theme, not from the original shows, from the two
thousand thirteen show that was written by Mitch Warren Davis,
and it appears courtesy of ESPN Incorporated. Musical comments throughout
(48:32):
by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organists of all time,
and our announced you today was Larry David. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. Let's countdown for this the
six thirty second day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. A new episode tomorrow
(48:53):
till then on Keith Alderman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith al Reman is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(49:14):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
(00:26):
And now the Trial of the Proud Boys begins today
in Washington, Wild Jury selection continues in the trial of
the Oath Keepers. The oath Keepers who will defend themselves
paranoid far right vigilantes by claiming they were just following
what we're about to be legal orders from a president.
In Florida, Hurricane Ian has hit so strongly that, after
(00:48):
decades of fake ones, there was an actual shark swimming
on the flooded streets of South Fort Myers. But when
a television news anchor asked if the intensity of these
storms was somehow connected to climate change, the far right
came down on him as if he were crazy. Why.
Virtually the same hour, one of their TV news figures,
Tucker Carlson actually insisted that the likeliest suspect in the
(01:12):
sabotage of the nord Stream one and two natural gas
pipelines off Denmark was President Joe Biden, and then Carlson
listed a series of things the Russians could do as retaliation.
So this question for you, when did much of our
country go crazy? Where does this come from? People like
(01:37):
Tucker Carlson He was once just a despicable, run of
the mill conservative, but he wasn't crazy. Same for Laura Ingram,
Rudy Giuliani, Elie Stefanic, Lindsey Graham, Dozens more terrible, reactionary,
destructive conservatives, but not crazy. I sat at an anchor
desk at MSNBC once and I heard Tucker Carlson, then
(01:59):
a new MSNBC host, rattle off a list of conservative
conspiracy theorists he thought was damaging the United States of America,
Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck. Laura Ingram has
a brother who is out. When I knew her, she
was proud of him, defended him, even claimed he was
(02:21):
part of what she called the not so vast right
wing conspiracy. And for all her political vitriol, she was
utterly accepting about orientations and lifestyles and rights. What sent
these people who pretty much lived their lives well balanced
on the edge over the edge? Believe it or not,
(02:42):
I think I know. I think I've a known all along,
and I think what sent them over the edge was
nine eleven. I have never been satisfied that we have
correctly gauged just how much undiagnosed PTSD there was in
this country after those attacks. I don't mean just among
conservatives or just among political figures, but consider their particular cases.
(03:07):
Go back to Labor Day two thousand one. Laura Ingram
was in her fifth year as a member of a
small group of conservative blonde women who basically took up
half the guest slots on cable news from Fox to
MSNBC to CNN. Ingram and and Colter were the ones
you called first. Then maybe Mary Mattlin. If you couldn't
(03:28):
get them and you were desperate enough, you went to
Kelly Anne Fitzpatrick. You know her now as Kelly Anne Conway.
But if you wanted somebody with the same venomous conservative viewpoint,
but who actually seemed like a pleasant person who would
occasionally let you convince her she might be wrong, you
called Barbara Olsen. There were literally dozens of liberal pundits
(03:49):
whose names would be pitched to me as guests, and
I would have said, add, rather talk to Barbara Olsen.
Barbara Olsen was on the plane that went into the Pentagon.
And whatever explanation of nine eleven you subscribe to, from
reality to the wildest of truth or pipe dreams, you
must admit this is true. Having somebody who does your job,
(04:11):
is your age, lives in your city, looks like you,
is your professional colleague, is your friend. Having that person
get killed in a terrorist attack unprecedented in this nation's history,
is enough to give you several doses of PTSD, especially
if you never seek help, as if Laura Ingram or
Rudy Giuliani or Kelly and Fitzpatrick Conway act like the
(04:34):
kind of people who would willingly seek professional help. How
many more Americans who, on September two thousand one already
had the exact kinds of personality disorders and the authoritarian, sadistic,
and dominating tendencies that comprise being a conservative. How many
of them were driven around the proverbial bend the next
(04:55):
day or more slowly, perhaps over the course of years.
This mixture of terror and personal loss coming up hand
in hand with the heavy opportunity to enforce the kind
of restrictive regime they always wanted to impose on this country.
That mix must have been utterly destabilizing for them. And
(05:17):
yet what happened five years and two months after nine eleven,
this nation gave the House and the Senate to the Democrats,
in large part because the Republicans had clearly manipulated the
terror threat to fit their political needs. It had become
so obvious that even the Republican's own choice to lead
the new Department of Homeland Security admitted that even he
(05:37):
was convinced it had become political. And two years after that,
this country chose an African American president over an XPOW
war hero, something that would have been unimaginable on nine
eleven or nine ten, for that matter, and then they
re elected him over generic milktoast Republican number thirty seven.
(05:57):
All the time, the PTSD and the Giuliani's and Ingram's
and Carlson's and millions of other conservatives just kept multiplying
and multiple lying. So when Trump appeared, offering strongman rule
with just enough of a thin veneer of policy excuses,
that the Republican Party saw the perfect bill of goods
to sell to racist conservatives shattered by nine eleven, shattered
(06:19):
by a black president. They had found their personal savior
and their ticket to power, and somebody who would also
beat up all their PTSD ghosts for them. Do not
get me wrong about this. Not for a moment am
I saying that Osama bin Laden made Tucker Carlson imply
that the President of the United States blew up a
(06:39):
Russian pipeline. Nine eleven just eliminated the self imposed restraint
Tucker Carlson and the others had once maintained. People didn't
believe it at the time, but when Nuke Gingrich was
Speaker of the House, he really did think that he
could impeach and remove Bill Clinton, and then before the
(07:00):
new president Al Gore had a chance to appoint a
new Vice president, gang Rich he could impeach and remove Gore,
and then the new president of the United States would
be the Speaker of the House himself. When everybody who
heard this laughed, Newt read the room took a beat,
and Newt laughed too. But he really really thought he
(07:22):
was America's personal strongman savior and that the country would
swell up in righteous indignation and let him undo the
presidential election. I mean, where do you think crazy Trump
and his minions got the whole de certify, overturn, restore
redo nonsense. As late as two thousand six, Newt Gingrich
(07:42):
thought we were one terrorist attack away from having to
repeal most of the first Amendment so we could prosecute
or at least sue people who said on popular things,
and that we'd need a president willing to do that him.
Where do you think crazy Trump got that idea from?
And Rudy Giuliani was a try to stop me in
court thug during his first term as Mayor of New York,
(08:05):
long before he walked through the ashes of the city's
emergency Response Command, which he personally ordered built inside the
World Trade Center against everybody else's advice, and shortly after
the one good week of his life, he was crazier
than ever before. People gloss over this, but he tried
to get the scheduled expiration of his term as Mayor
(08:26):
of New York on January one, two thousand two, postponed
because clearly the city could not spare his leadership in
the post terrorism world. And when that didn't work, Giuliani
proposed that he and his newly elected successor, Mike Bloomberg,
should be co mayors for a month or two months,
or six or thirty six. And Laura Ingram always had
(08:50):
that streak of fascist madness running right down her middle.
You know the famous story of her living boyfriend he
kicked her out and was taking down from the walls
all those framed pictures of them together. So she made
replacements of the photos and took the spare key she
had secretly gotten duplicated. Waited until he left his house
(09:10):
one day, and she went back in and put nearly
all the photos back up on his wall, and so,
upon seeing what could have been a deleted scene from
the movie Fatal Attraction, the boyfriend wisely replaced all the locks. Thus,
when Laura went back to finish the job and could
not get into the house, she went around back to
where he kept his garden hose, stuffed the business end
(09:32):
in through the mail slot of his front door, and
then turned it on, destroying ten thousand dollars worth of
hardwood floors. You never heard that story. You know where
I heard that story? She told me. She told me
on a date, and she was proud of it. No,
Laura's trolley did not suddenly jump the tracks on nine
(09:54):
eleven in April of this year, when she explained her
opposition to college loan forgiveness. I shuddered. I mean I
shuddered twice the first time, just like you shuddered. Then
I shuttered again because of a phone call she made
to me a scant twenty three years ago. If you
have forgotten when she came out against loan forgiveness, what
she wrote was, quote, my mom worked as a waitress
(10:15):
until she was seventy three to help pay for our college,
even helped with loan repayment. Loan forgiveness just another insult
to those who play by the rules. First of all,
Laura's mother worked until nineteen four, but by nine, and
it was probably early, maybe as early as nineteen ninety two,
Laura Ingram owned her own duplex in Georgetown, while mom
(10:39):
was still a plate jockey at Willie's Steakhouse in Connecticut.
That was only my first shutter. My second shutter came
for this flashback to the phone call in the spring
of nine. She and I were still kind of friendly,
and I used to go on her radio show and
talk baseball and promote my cable sportscast and the Game
of the Week, which I hosted for Fox. So when
(11:00):
I heard her mother had died, I called to offer
my condolences and she called me back. Do you know
what her last words to me were, This will tell
you everything you need to know about me. I nearly
hung up right then, I wish I had She quoted
her own mother's dying words, Laura, why are you so bossy?
(11:23):
I mean, she told me that, and like the garden
hose through the mail slot story, she was clearly proud
of it. Who does that? I mean, if you're going
to tell people your mother's last words, do you make
them good? And when we make them sound like Mom
didn't think you were nuts? I mean, how is anybody
gonna check? Finding my way back to my point, I
(11:48):
am not suggesting that the madness of two thousand twenty two,
the willingness of the same people who once believed in
elections and democracy, at least to the degree that they
filled out all the paperwork and slapped on a fake
smile as they did so, to just shed that and
in brace dictatorship more enthusiastically with every passing day. No,
(12:09):
that did not start on nine eleven. But the guard
rails we all have in place to keep our crazier
thoughts from staying too long, or god forbid, getting out
where other people can hear them vanished on nine eleven.
For Laura Ingram, for Rudy Giuliani, for Newt Gingrich, for
Tucker Carlson. I'll say this much. We know without question
(12:34):
any sense inside these fascists that they could never get
away with their authoritarian wet dreams that faded in the
weeks and months and years after nine eleven as they
saw what Bush got away with. Let's use nine eleven
as an excuse to invade a country that had nothing
to do with nine eleven. Who's gonna stop us if
we want to respond to terrorism by forfeiting two centuries
(12:55):
of refusing to use torture in the name of the
United States America? Who's gonna stop us? Half the people
in this damn country don't even know where Canada is,
let alone Iraq. What are they gonna? What do they care?
As they saw all that, somewhere a key turned in
all their minds. We got away with the presidency in
two thousand. Sure the election was raised or close. Sure
(13:17):
we had a legitimate case. But did you see how
fast the Democrats folded? I bet we can do it
sometime when it isn't close. De certify the electoral College.
Good idea. We can win without the popular vote or
the electoral vote. That means we're electoral geniuses. What you're
(13:37):
saying that, then it's not a democracy anymore, and there
aren't any elections anymore, so we're not electoral geniuses. Well,
they will just make it illegal to teach anything we
don't like in school. That'll show the bastards. So here
we are. What happened on nine eleven burned permanently all
the elements of post traumatic stress disorder into their minds,
(13:58):
and what they got away with after nine eleven made
them realize they could get away with anything. So Tucker
Carlson can say what he wants without consequence, and the
Proud Boys and the oath Keepers can go into court
in Washington today thinking they will be exonerated because they
simply throw out the name Trump. And when the President
(14:20):
slips and asks if a congresswoman is there for a
conference about the issue that mattered the most to her
and she died in a car accident last month, we
actually have to listen to Joe Biden getting bashed by
conservatives and fascists and q and ons and Trumpists, whose
principal political tenant today is that John F. Kennedy Jr.
(14:42):
Has come back from the dead. Yeah, it's Biden with
the cognitive problems. No, JF K Jr. Is over there,
and he's also he became a conservative and now we're
(15:03):
stupid hats and forgets to shave. Still ahead on countdown,
Marjorie Trailer Park Green wants you to go hog hunting
with her. The jokes they write themselves in sports the
Aaron Judge watched never stops, and in Things I promised
not to tell. It was the new Coke of television
sports ESPN two launched twenty nine years ago Saturday, and
(15:28):
I've still got all the scars, Buddy, and I have
one more detail of that story that I have never
previously revealed. There were two reasons I went along with
this crazy scheme to take me off Sports Center to
do that instead. Reason number two, the secret reason, as
personal a reason as there could ever be, I will
(15:52):
finally reveal to you on this podcast that kids is
a tease. That's next this discountdown. This is countdown with Keith,
(16:16):
Thank you, Larry. Still ahead on Countdown. Finally, with the
Judge thing and the late baseball great Earning Banks, it
was he used to say, it's a beautiful day, Let's
play two. But who would ever say let's play six?
Coming up first. In each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need whom you can help. Every dog
has its day. Gonzo may die in the New York
(16:38):
Pound today because there's something wrong with his human. Time
and time again, this large seven year old brindle mixed
breed is put on death row, and time and time again,
his human reclaims him at the last minute, and then
his human dumps him back at the pound or on
the street, or just lets him wander off. If Gonzo
is not saved by a rescue, this is probably it.
(17:00):
You can help prevent this needless tragedy with a pledge
to help defray rescue spences. Just go to my Twitter
account for Dogs in Trouble Tom Jumbo Grumbo and look
for Gonzo's tweet and thank you very much for doing so.
(17:29):
Post Scripts to the news, some headlines, some commentary, some snark.
Dateline Los Angeles artist Leon Ivy Jr. The rapper Coolio
Gangster's Paradise has died in Los Angeles. Dateline Holland, Ohio Oops.
More trouble with Republican House candidate j R. Mjewski's military record. First,
he said he was an Afghanistan combat veteran acclaim his
(17:50):
official records does not support. Then he said he was
denied permission to re enlist by the Air Force because
he'd gotten into a brawl. No, the records show he
was stopped for drunk driving on a US air base
in Japan. Dateline, Floyd County, Georgia. Perry Green has had enough.
It is irretrievably broken. He says, what is his marriage
(18:12):
to Congresswoman Marjorie trailer Park Green? He filed on her
last night. Guess she'll just be Marjorie trailer Park now
stateline Twitter. Trump almost fired his own daughter and daughter
in law as White House aids and wanted to let
them know by a tweet. Talked out of it by
Chief of Staff John Kelly and Representative Debbie Dingle says
(18:33):
she got a two thousand nineteen phone call from someone
purporting to be a Washington Post reporter whose name she
did not recognize. The more the man talked, the more
she believed the caller was actually Trump. These tidbits are
from What Else, an excerpt from a new book by
Maggie Haberman. The good news here is, with all of
(18:54):
these excerpts, you no longer have any excuse to buy
or read the new book by Maggie Haberman, since it
has now been excerpted by every outlet except eesp end deportees.
(19:18):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that, not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith in Sports. So finally Tim Maza
has done it. Who's Tim Masa. He's the fifth year
veteran middle reliever of the Toronto Blue Jays, and he
is the guy who gave up Aaron Judges record tying
(19:40):
sixty one homer in the seventh inning against the Toronto
Blue Jays last night for the New York Yankees. Yep,
Judges home run might have been caught by a fan
leaning over the Blue Jay's bullpen, but it wasn't. He
won't see that again in his dreams for the next
seventy years. It went instead into the bullpen and was
caught by Toronto coach Matt Bushman, who is the husband
of sportscaster Sarah Walsh. And yes, by the way, I
(20:02):
subscribed to sixty one being the all time home run
record and Aaron Judge having tied it. As I noted
the other day, the all times strikeout record is three
eighty three by Nolan Ryan and the Angels in nineteen
seventy three. Even though Matt Kilroy of the Orioles struck
out five thirteen and eighteen eighty six. The records are
not just numbers, they are numbers in context. Kilroy was
(20:26):
pitching from fifty feet away from the plate, Ryan from
sixty six inches. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves lost three to
two in ten innings at Washington, and the New York
Mets beat the Miami Marlins five four in ten, all
five runs driven in by Met third baseman Eduardo Escobar.
(20:51):
Thank you, Nancy Faust take five. The Mets now lead
the Braves by a game in the National League East,
going into their three game series in Atlanta over the
weekend with the storm. The Mets offered to play game
one of that series in Atlanta, not on Friday, but today.
The Braves said no thanks. Mets manager Buck Showalter joke
the Mets would be ready to play a triple header
(21:13):
if the weather demanded. It sounds farcical, but baseball used
to have triple headers. The Pirates and Red's played the
last one on October two. Baseball's official historian, my friend
John Thorne, noted that in nineteen oh three, the Hudson
Marines of the Hudson River League, a minor league in
New York State, played a quadruple header against the Poughkeepsie
(21:37):
Colts and won all four games in turn. Minor league
historian Tim Haggarty then noted that on September four, Manchester
needed to win six games to clinch the second half
title in the New England League. They somehow talked the
Portland's Phenomens into playing a sex tuple header six games,
(21:59):
two in the morning, four in the afternoon. Manchester needed
to win all se x. They won all six, still
(22:20):
ahead on countdown. Every year about this time I get
the urge to put on a green silk floral shirt
and a brown leather jacket and say good evening and
welcome to the end of our careers. The anniversary of
the infamous launch of ESPN two in things I promised
not to tell. Coming up first, the daily roundup of
the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger f X specimens who
(22:43):
constitute today's worst persons in the world. Lebron's, MSNBC's Chris
Hayes answering somebody on Twitter who asked how the average
citizen could reduce the risk of nuclear war. Quote. I
think probably the best answer is cut off weapons to
Ukraine and lean on them to sue for peace now.
(23:04):
But if that's the way forward, people should make the case.
I'll always be grateful to Chris because the night MSNBC
tried to suspend me for those political donations to candidates
who had received a rash of death threats. They asked
him to anchor in my place, and he refused, but
cut off weapons to Ukraine and lean on them to
sue for peace. Congrats, Chris, you've become Tucker Carlson the
(23:28):
runner up. Martha McCallum of Fox nudes. For twenty six
years now, Fox has adamantly proclaimed that it has opinion
hosts and it has news anchors, and they are separate.
One part of the equation they always leave out is
that whereas the opinion host are evil and racist and
fascist and Tucker Carlson, the news anchors tend to be idiots.
Martha McCallum on Hurricane Ian quote, you feel terrible for
(23:52):
people in Puerto Rico who were just hit and Cuba
who were just hit. Thank god, we have better infrastructure
in our country. You hear all the time about news acts.
Martha mccadum's bio notes that after she took her undergrad degree,
she studied at the Circle in the Square Theater School
(24:14):
and founded the Miranda Theater Company. But our winner, Marjorie
trailer Park Green. She is out with a new ad
offering you the chance to go up in a helicopter
with her while she tries to shoot Ferrell hogs. With
Ferrell hogs, I said fair, I said Farrell Hoggs, I
(24:36):
said Farrell Hoggs Son with a machine gun of some sort.
We've got skyrocketing inflation, high diesel fuel, and Democrats America
last policies. Democrats aren't the only one destroying farmer's ability
to put food on the table. We've got wild hawgs
destroying farmer's field. So we decided to go hog hunting.
(25:00):
Let's help American farmers out. Sign up Hello and let's there.
Then appears this web address MTG hog hunt dot com
MTG for Marjorie Taylor Green Hog. Marjorie Taylor Green Hog.
(25:26):
Sometimes any jokes that I might offer would be superfluous.
Marjorie Trailer Park completely self unaware Green two days, worst
person in the world to our number one story in
(25:55):
the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell, And this one will take a while.
Twenty nine years ago, Saturday, October one, we launched ESPN two.
They talked me into becoming the face of this first
of ESPNS endless clones of its television self. I wore
a brown leather bomber jacket and I said the first
(26:17):
words in the first actual program, and those words were
good evening and welcome to the end of our careers.
And that's pretty much all anybody remembers of this unmitigated disaster.
ESPN two exists today, of course, and successfully, but it
only became successful when they stopped trying to make it
something different from original ESPN, and management, with genuine heartbreak,
(26:38):
accepted the idea that all the nation wanted was more ESPN,
not different kinds of ESPN that begat ESPN News, ESPN U,
ESPN plus ESPN. The oh Cho Tarter control ESPN. But
that's not what they wanted ESPN two to be. They
(26:58):
wanted it to be hip and cool, you know, for kids,
And they were gonna make it hip and cool and
forced it to be hip and cool if it killed
them and you and for that matter me. It is
why they took the co anchor of their most successful
sports center ever and broke up the partnership and moved
(27:19):
him to a new network that almost literally had more
people who thought they were in charge of it than
watched it. And why three months later, when Sports Illustrated
magazine chose ESPN two as the seventh worst thing to
happen in sports in the year, only the seventh worst,
we were grateful, and I then scurried back to Sports
(27:39):
Center and we all pretended like ESPN two had never happened,
and we almost never mentioned it again. But the saga
of why it went so desperately and immediately wrong is
worth telling in brief, and if you will listen to it,
I will tell you something I have never admitted publicly before.
Why when they asked me to leave Sports Center after
(28:02):
a very first successful year on Sports Center to go
do this cockamamie new network thing. Why on earth given
the choice, I actually said, yes, nobody knows this, you
will in a few minutes. But first, by the time
(28:22):
I went to work there in ESPN had finally moved
out of its perennial status of near bankruptcy and near
irrelevancy to profit and prominence. From a launch in nineteen
seventy nine through the mid nineteen eighties, the place had
always either had a new owner, or a new schedule,
or a new plan to avert bankruptcy. When I joined
the fledgling sports department at CNN in I used to
(28:44):
watch my high school classmate Chris Berman do his show
called Sports Center from what was obviously a closet with
one light, no air conditioning, and no teleprompter. Sometimes it
would be twenty minutes long. Sometimes it would be two
minutes long. Each time I'd look at poor Chris sch
fitzing and looking a little claustrophobic, and I'd say, well,
(29:05):
hooray for CNN Sports. We're not the worst. But by
ESPN had begun to be willing to spend a little
money to bring in a prominent local sportscaster from Los
Angeles me and give him the keys to the eleven
o'clock Sports Center. And this company, which did not have
any merchandise, did not sell anything with its logo on it,
(29:27):
finally decided to expand and launch an all sports radio
network and When those plans did not go very well,
they spent a little extra money and they talked me
into moving to Connecticut three months earlier than planned to
launch the radio network, and it was an instantaneous hit
by early n Then there were rumblings and then rumors,
and finally an announcement that they would build upon the
(29:49):
radio success by starting a second television network, ESPN and
ESPN two. But and from the beginning, this was the point.
It was not going to be just another ESPN or
the ESPN spillover channel, or the channel for when there's
a great basketball game and a great football game at
the same time and we want to cover both. It
(30:11):
was going to be different. There'd be live broadcasts of games,
just like ESPN. There'd be a studio sports show just
like Sports Center, but it be hip, you know, for
kids in the Sports Center newsroom. The assumption was the
face of ESPN two was going to be Mike Tariko.
Mike had had a very tough Nino and it seemed
(30:34):
like something that could re establish him in the company,
or if he had a tough nineteen something he could
be jettison from. If the whole thing went up in flames,
I heard Robin Robert's name mentioned once or twice, and
I don't know if they ever approached Robin, and I
think Tariko told me once they had mentioned it to him,
but never seriously. So when they called me into my
boss's office in the spring of nine, I just assumed
(30:56):
they were yelling at me for something I said, since
that's what they usually called me in for, or called
me and Dan Patrick in four or called Danny just
yell at him for something I had said. Instead, they
offered me ESPN two. We want you to be to
ESPN two, said John Walsh, who basically ran everything ESPN
(31:17):
did that was not a ball game. We want you
to be for ESPN to what Chris Berman is to ESPN.
They explained that there would be younger sports on their
X games stuff and mountain biking. They kept talking about
mountain biking and a lot of stuff with trees, but
that the flagship program would match my sense of humor exactly,
(31:37):
that it would be snarky and flip and with it
and hip and cool, you know, for kids. They said
they would let me continue on Sports Center until August
and then have me work for two months helping them
design and rehearse the new show. They actually wanted my opinion,
and they offered to give me like a raise. Understand,
(31:59):
the ESPN would fight you over an eleven dollar cab
ride on an exper report. They would call you into
a meeting, they would spend thirty minutes on this. They
would then offer you eight dollars. A twenty five percent
raise was the n ESPN equivalent of eternal life. Still,
(32:22):
I had my doubts for one thing. As it was,
we seemed to be pretty hip and cool on Sports Center.
As it was, Dan Patrick and I had an on
air relationship that you could not practice, nor design, nor cast.
It was just there or it wasn't. We were the
two guys in the World War One bunker who knew
that the Jerry's would eventually get us right in the psalm.
(32:43):
So all we could do was first take out as
many of them as we could and sing and laugh
while we did it. But I had two reasons for
saying yes anyway, and I'll save the one I've never
told anybody at all for the end of this recollection.
The other reason was believe it or not, I'm I'm
(33:06):
a team player. I am not the guy who will
come in and lie on behalf of the team. And
I am not the guy who will turn away and
say nothing when the coach is slapping the crap out
of one of my teammates. But if you say, we
are management, we have thought this through. We want you
to leave Sports Center to go do ESPN two and
be hip and cool, you know for kids, I will
(33:28):
say yes, plus money. Only they had not thought it through,
as it proved. The first problem was the new network
that was supposed to be different from ESPN, and the
new show that was supposed to be different from ESPN.
Sports Center was going to be run by John Walsh,
the guy who ran Sports Center and basically created what
(33:51):
you saw then and what you see now, And to
actually produce the show, he chose Mike Bogad, who was
the coordinating producer of the eleven o'clock Sports Center that
I was doing with Dan Patrick, and Norby Williamson, who
was the line producer of the eleven o'clock Sports Center
with me and Dan Patrick. And although they would not
give me a title other than anchor, the other guy
running it was me the co host of the eleven
(34:12):
o'clock Sports Center. To add to this, crowd of rebellious, innovative,
anti establishment thinkers who yesterday had been the establishment. John
Walsh hired the sports editor of the Boston Globe, Vince Doria.
To my mind, Vince would cover himself in glory at
ESPN two by once proposing a really bad idea, a
(34:34):
laugh track for the Nick mackay comedy segments. And when
I said, that's a really bad idea, it's still a newscast.
What if we have a laugh track someday when some
teams plane crashes, he said, you're right. I'm thinking maybe
I don't know as much about this TV stuff as
I thought I did. Will you tell me the next
time I have an idea that's that bad. But at
(34:55):
this point, Vince was thinking maybe we could defferentiate ESPN
two from ESPN by showing baseball and basketball box scores overnight.
There was an opinion and Inns held it that we
should be the Christian science monitor of sportscasts on ESPN two,
which was definitely not, you know, for kids. The show
producers they brought in were also mainstream. My friend and
(35:17):
producer Ron Growning came in from Los Angeles. He actually
thought they met the stuff about younger sports. He bought
a magazine rack and subscribed us to all kinds of
biking magazines and hiking magazines, and nobody ever read them.
They hired producers from Madison Square Garden Network. They hired
associate producers from Sports Center and made them producers to
(35:37):
join me on the anchor desk. They hired a newspaper
columnist from Detroit named Mitch Album, and they hired all
the local sportscasters they did not have room for on
Sports Center, and among them was a guy named Stu
Stu Scott, and Stu was great, but Stu and everybody
else just came in and did regular sportscasts just as
if they'd been on regular flavor ESPN. Finally to be
(35:59):
my real co host, they were going to hire, well,
we never found out who they were going to hire,
because one day the word came through that the chairman
of ABC Cap Cities, which owned ESPN and everything else,
had seen this weekend sportscaster in West Palm Beach doing
a tennis tournament of some sort or raindelay during a
tennis tournament or something, and thought she was great, And
(36:20):
overnight there was a bidding war for her, and we
had just hired her to be my co host in
Her name was Susie Colder. Everybody on this renegade network,
including me, was thoroughly non renegade. It became rather apparent,
rather quickly that management's understanding what made something cool and hip,
you know, for kids, was you're ready, what clothing we wore.
(36:47):
This is the story of the infamous leather jacket I
wore the first night, which you will hear when countdown continues.
After this, back to the number one story on the
countdown and things I promised not to tell on Saturday's
twenty ninth anniversary of the launch of ESPN two, or
(37:08):
as I described it to Kenny Maine for his podcast yesterday,
the Titanic Only It's on fire first, as I said,
the organizing principle was forced hipness, and the organizing principle
of forced hipness was the clothing we war. And that
brings us to the primary image that still appears whenever
(37:30):
the launch of ESPN two is broached or googled. My
infamous brown leather bomber jacket. Fall comes early to Bristol, Connecticut,
and if it were not cold enough there at the
end of September, there was also something wrong with our
new ESPN two studio. No matter what they did to
(37:50):
the air conditioning system in there, it was like forty
eight degrees all the time. So I was standing outside
one day trying to get warm, contemplating the succession of
train wrecks that had been our first five verse pilot
shows and dry runs, and I was wearing my brown
leather bomber jacket because it was cold. When another of
(38:10):
the many executive producers, John Lack, came over to say hi,
and he was in mid sentence when he looked at
the jacket and went stone cold, silent. Wait. He finally
said the word eureka forming over his head. Would you
could you? If I asked you, would you wear that
jacket on the show? I pretended to hesitate. I realized
(38:36):
only the jacket could save me from freezing to death
in our winter on the TV version of The Donner Party,
And so I said, I suppose, And that's why I
was wearing that jacket. It was called in the studio.
Why they gave Steve Buckley from the Boston Herald a
baseball cap to wear on the air for his segments
and where backwards why they put other guys in football
(38:58):
helmets and insisted that nobody wear a tie ever, not
even former Boston College football coach Jack mcnell. That should
be obvious, you know, for kids. It became rapidly apparent
that all ESPN two was ESPN dressed up differently. I
had a leather coach, the on screen graphics were in
(39:18):
lower case letters only. The camera was not on a tripod.
It was carried around by a cameraman who soon had
a bad back. The other problem was exemplified by that fellow,
John Lack. I liked him. He had run MTV News
and he actually had some ideas about differentiating presentation and
content for younger audiences. But by the time he suggested
(39:40):
the jacket, he also had a second message for me. Listen,
he said, I can't get through to these people. They
tell me I'm in charge, and then they tell me
our first new hip revolutionary story is going to be
a profile of Doug Flutey, the quarterback. And I say,
how's that different from Sports Center? And they look at
me like I'm crazy, and they say, he's playing in Canada.
What we're doing a story about Canada? Who would believe
(40:01):
we're gonna do a story about Canada. But I know
you get it, Keith. So when we're actually on the air,
you have to keep it different. You have to be
in charge. When we're on you are the executive producer.
This was extremely bad news because by my account, this
(40:23):
would have made me the fifteenth or sixteen different person
who believed they were in charge. There was John Lack,
There was Walsh. There was a new vice president named
Howard Katz. There was Vince Doria. There were the two
Sports center guys, Norby and Bogey. There were the line producers.
There were a couple of consultants. There was the president
of ESPN, Steve Bornstein. There was the chairman of ABC
who had discovered Susy Colbert. There was the guy who
(40:45):
put in the state of the art air conditioning system
in the studio. There was the other guy, Walter Cronkites
lighting director. As he kept telling us who put in
the state of the art lighting system. All of us
individually in charge, so nobody was in charge. The night
before the premier's September, John Walsh, the Sports Center man,
(41:08):
saw me in the hallway and said, listen, I just
got some amazing information from audience research. Do you know
which show in all of television has the highest percentage
of viewers who are aged eighteen to twenty four. This
was an important question, a relevant question, because these were
the kids, you know, for kids. ESPN two had been
(41:30):
created to get that eighteen to twenty four year old audience.
So I guess the answer was, I don't know some
show on MTV. No, Walsh said, gleefully, it's Sports Center.
And I froze, and I said, wait, John, if if
we already have the eighteen to twenty four year old audience,
(41:51):
why are we starting a new network to get the
eighteen to twenty four year old audience. Do you really
think they're gonna give up the show they like and
and move to a news show on a new channel
just cause? And Walsh laughed and shrugged and shuffled down
the hallway, and I called a cab to take me
(42:11):
to the Hartford Airport so I could leave the country.
Only at the last minute I chickened out. The premiere
October one began with me, I swear this is true,
going to shave in my house and instead dropping and
breaking a mirror. The network signed on at seven pm
with the national anthem and some sort of statement from
(42:32):
Chris Berman blessing it, and then a very long sketch
parody of the then hit film The Fugitive, in which
I was the fugitive from Sports Center. Get at the
Fugitive from Sports Center, you get it. Then the lights
came on. The poor guy with the camera staggered in
and I said, good evening, and welcome to the end
of our careers. The television sportswriter of the Associated Press,
(42:53):
John Nelson, was there in the studio. He immediately flashed
that quote to a not waiting world, and ESPN two
and Sports Night were born, you know, for kids. The
first night seemed okay, largely because ESPN threw a party
in the parking lot under a gigantic tent, free food
(43:15):
and booze, hundreds of staffers and guests and celebrities and
free booze. That place later became known as the Tent
of Consent. Don't ask me. I was on the air
and three hours I had nothing to do with this.
Later that night, near the tent, the network president stumbled
(43:37):
crossing a little bridge over a stream and wound up
in the water. And he still had a better night
than we did. The show's bounced from topic to topic
and mood to mood once with Bill Pito anchoring with me.
Sports Night ran a mini documentary on a high school
basketball star who chose which college to go to to
play ball at entirely by letter and telephone. Only when
(44:01):
he arrived did he discover he was the only white
guy in an entirely black conference. We showed the first
ten minutes of this extraordinary story, then we promised to
show you the rest of it, and then we welcomed
to live studio guest, Eddie Layton, the organist from Yankee Stadium.
(44:21):
He played a few tunes, and then we went back
to part two of this very grim documentary about this
very dim basketball player, and that hour was kind of
good compared to the rest of them. Eventually, we moved
Sports Night from Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights to Monday
through Friday at five pm, so Sports Night was on
(44:42):
in the afternoons. Though it was December, the limitless air
conditioning continued. Susie Colbert began to wear a blanket on
her lap just out of camera view. I begged to
be returned to Sports Center, and they agreed provided I
gave back the Rays and extended my contract for a
year and gave back a little bit more. Sports Illustrated
(45:03):
at that point, still the lead and most influential sports
media outlet in the world, warned us it was going
to list in its year end issue the worst things
to happen in sports in nine and we ESPN two
we're gonna be on it. And when the magazine came out,
there on the list, behind the stabbing of the tennis
star Monica Sellis by a fan of her rival, stephie Groff,
and behind Michael Jordan's retirement, and behind a college football
(45:25):
player suing his coach because somebody else became the starting quarterback.
There we were Sports Illustrated's choice as the seventh worst
thing in sports for ninetee And the reaction of the
anchors and the staff and even the management and all
eighteen people were in charge of ESPN two Sports Night
was unanimous, Hooray, We're not the worst. We're not the worst.
(45:45):
We're not the worst. In my last week anchoring the show,
we discovered that Walter Cronkites lighting guy had never spoken
to the guy who put in the air conditioning system.
Walter Cronkites lighting guy had focused the principal backlight in
his state of the art lighting system directly onto the
(46:07):
principal monitor for the other guys state of the art
air conditioning system, so the state of the art air
conditioning system had spent six months thinking the temperature in
the studio was two ordered seventeen degrees. They let me
go back to Sports Center, providing I gave back all
the extra money, and I happily did it and a
little more. Sports Night staggered on for a few more
(46:29):
weeks before being canceled, and all the talent Stuart Scott,
Susie Calbert Bilpedo, and the guy they hired to replace
me when I escaped back to Sports Center, Kenny, Maine.
They all went on to do Sports Center. As to
ESPN two. We all pretended that never happened, just a
bad dream. And then there was that other reason I
(46:51):
had agreed to try it. I have not told anybody this.
I don't even think I told the other person involved this.
But the night before ESPN management called me and said
we'd like you to leave Sports Center and become the
face of ESPN two. A woman I worked with at
ESPN said yes, she would like to go out with me,
(47:13):
but that doing that while we worked together would be
a disaster. So after management's offer, I asked her if
my new schedule, which took me away from her department,
was sufficient professional distance so that she'd feel comfortable dating.
And she said yes. So I said yes, and and
we started dating. And that didn't work out either. A
(47:50):
part of life's rich pageants have done all the damage
I can do here. Help me out. Give this thing
a good review, or rating her heart or a smiley
emoji or whatever. Forward it to somebody, Tell somebody about it.
The Countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth Arrange, produced and performed
by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. Guitarist,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, all orchestration and keyboards
(48:11):
by John Philip Chanelle. Produced by t k O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed Our sports music. The Olderman ESPN
two theme, not from the original shows, from the two
thousand thirteen show that was written by Mitch Warren Davis,
and it appears courtesy of ESPN Incorporated. Musical comments throughout
(48:32):
by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organists of all time,
and our announced you today was Larry David. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. Let's countdown for this the
six thirty second day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. A new episode tomorrow
(48:53):
till then on Keith Alderman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith al Reman is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(49:14):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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