Those Guys Have All The Fun - Soccer Edition, V

The next to final mention of soccer in the ESPN history book is on page 715, courtesy of writer/personality Bill Simmons.

Now, I can appreciate that Simmons is a new fan to the sport of soccer, but honestly, nothing makes me roll my eyes more than a) Those who act as if Americans, not English, invented the word "soccer" for the game b) Those who act as if the sport needs to change to appeal to Americans.

Anyway, the mention in the book is when Simmons makes a statement about something he said on a podcast done with SNL personality Seth Myers (who is a crush of mine, and not just because he's a trooper for soccer charity matches).

We were talking about soccer and I was talking about how they call exhibition games "friendlies" in soccer, and I had made some sort of joke like, 'Note to soccer: if you want people to think you're a little less gay, don't call exhibition games "friendlies."'

I didn't hear the podcast, but if Myers laughed at a joke this lame from Simmons, I've lost respect for him. (Meanwhile, soccer rolled over, scratched itself, read the memo from Simmons and responded thusly, "Note to Simmons: if you want people to think you're actually funny, stick to Karate Kid jokes instead of stuff about how the oldest game in town has to change to please you or other newbie American soccer fans.")

Turns out this soccer mention in the book isn't really about the beautiful game, but rather, ESPN censorship. Not of the lameness of the Simmons joke, sadly.

The final coverage of soccer in the ESPN tome is where Landon Donovan finally makes a statement. Depressingly, it's on page 719, because yes, that Simmons anecdote actually serves as the lead-in to the tale of ESPN's 2010 World Cup coverage. Before we hear from Donovan, there's some fun stats on the impressive World Cup viewing numbers and a bit from Ian Darke, the English commentator for some of the USA's World Cup games, about how he was asked by ESPN to do the World Cup because he was an EPL announcer. Donovan took the view that ESPN helped promote the USA team, and he was grateful for that.

ESPN has the ability to market and push things just because of their resources, but the passion and the creativity really struck me.

Still, the YouTube video Donovan mentioned as being the memorable result of his goal against Algeria, that was an organic, original moment, and, no disrespect to Darke intended, the emotions of the USA fans in those clips contrasted vividly against his own as a self-described "neutral". We'll never know if the whole thing would have hit another level of emotion if the call had been made by an announcer who personally cared about the USA advancing. Oh, wait, we do - here's Andres Cantor on the call. It's in Spanish, but the feeling transcends language.

So that's it for all the soccer in the book. I'm frankly surprised, given that Donovan gets three paragraphs in the entire 762 pages, that he made the cover.

Those Guys Have All The Fun - Soccer Edition, Part IV

The next mention of soccer in the book on ESPN's history is another indirect reference on page 440, in one of the short narrative prose paragraphs sprinkled intermittently in the book.

ESPN and the Disney Channel together increased Disney's revenues by $427 million, primarily because of subscriber growth at ESPN and increases in ad revenues, thanks to the 1998 soccer World Cup.

Love the way the word "soccer" prefaces World Cup, as if there's any other World Cup that really matters. What's also funny is that there's nothing more on soccer until page 581-3, and then there's a reference to the 2002 World Cup, but only in hindsight. Basically, pages 581-2 detail John Skipper's rise to the top position at ESPN after Mark Shapiro left to earn millions elsewhere. Skipper immediately moved to obtain rights to the 2010 World Cup tournament and nabbed it from under NBC's nose. The reason for his heated pursuit wasn't merely professional - Skipper had personally fallen for the sport, explaining why on page 583.

I started spending a lot of time watching it, including watching the World Cup in 2002, and loved the spectacle of it.

That's as close as the book gets to mentioning that the USA team had a stellar 2002 tournament, advancing to the quarterfinals with a 2-0 win over Mexico and battling mighty Germany to the final minute in a 1-0 loss that might have turned out differently without Oliver Kahn in goal and an uncalled handball on Torsten Frings. That was the furthest USA advance in the World Cup in 80 years, but other than in Skipper's oblique mention of that being the year he really got into the sport, and that being the impetus for fighting hard for future rights when he became ESPN's leader 2005, it's not even covered.

Those Guys Have All The Fun - Part III, Soccer Edition

The next mention of soccer in the book on ESPN's history is on page 373, well, actually the word "soccer" isn't even mentioned, but the 1998 World Cup is, so I'm counting it.

TV exec Geoff Mason related how ABC Sports and ESPN combined for coverage of the event.

It made no sense for us to ship a prouction team from ABC to Paris and to send another production team from ESPN there as well. As long as we weren't on U.S. soil, we could combine forces because the union issues wouldn't come to bear. So they put me in charge of building a team composed of the best that we could find from both ABC Sports and ESPN. I handpicked a group of people that I knew would get along, and we were laughing the whole time. It was great.

What I find interesting, soccer-wise, about that tidbit, was that 1998 was when the USA World Cup team famously imploded, playing badly amid a ton of disharmony. Only years later did it come out that the situation was exacerbated by former captain John Harkes sleeping with star forward Eric Wynalda's wife. ESPN apparently doesn't mind all that - Harkes is now one of their main soccer announcers, which would be easier to stomach if he was good at it. He's not.

Those Guys Have All The Fun - Part II Soccer Edition

Read the book if you're interested in the politics and power struggles of SportsCenter, about how Tony Kornheiser feels about Mike Tirico (and vice-versa) and random stories about how females at ESPN are treated badly - (although Michelle Beadle is lauded mightily by the authors).

But if you're interested in how the ESPN book intersects with soccer (do they reveal the conspiracy against the sport?), Sideline Views covers every mention of the game.

So after the first 300 pages or so, other than Chris Berman reminiscing about how he played high school soccer, there's no mention of the sport again until 316, when then-remote producer Jed Drake describes covering the 1994 World Cup.

It was the 1994 World Cup. I was in charge of the project, and the short of it is that because it is soccer, you don't run commercials and hence you have to have commercial sponsorship come off the miniboard, the scoreboard. The first game was at Soldier Field and we had all kinds of miniboard problems.

The upshot of Drake's story is that with the technical problems going on in the remote truck, he lost it and punched the side of the truck, breaking bones in his hand. It might be a nice anecdote about the intensity of the man and his determination to get the score up for the fans out there, except that nowhere in the story does Drake even mention the teams playing (Germany v Bolivia) let alone the score when the technical problems arose (Final score was 1-0). Plus, Drake seems less upset about the score not showing than he does about the commercial banners on the scoreboard not showing.

Yet 1994 wouldn't be Drake's last involvement with soccer. He's now senior vice-president and executive producer of event production at ESPN, by the way. His vote was apparently instrumental in the decision to block out American announcers from the televised coverage of the 2010 World Cup. From Drake's bio page:

Another difference between ESPN's 2006 and 2010 coverage is that Jed Drake is hiring predominantly non-American game announcers. Jed Drake believes that greater expertise will be a more important asset for ESPN soccer announcers than nationality. Some of the announcers hired by Jed Drake include Briton Martin Tyler of Sky Sports and retired soccer players Ruud Gullit, from the Netherlands, and Steve McManaman, from the United Kingdom.

So if you liked the fact that the announcers knew practically nothing about American soccer or its players, you have Drake to thank.

Those Guys Have All The Fun - Soccer Edition

So, what to do with my review copy of the new book about ESPN, Those Guys Have All The Fun?

First off, I have to confess I did once work for ESPN - at least the website. I wrote for the soccer section of the site during the period when John Skipper, now the head honcho of the whole ESPN shebang, was running the website, but as a freelancer, I never had any inside contact with ESPN culture.

I've never been to Bristol, the hub of all things ESPNish. My checks did come with a little Disney logo of Mickey Mouse, though.

Funny thing was, I only met Skipper when Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated introduced me to him at the 2007 MLS All Star Game.

As a soccer writer, my take on the book comes from that angle. Though Landon Donovan made the cover montage (he's in the "S"), it's pretty sparse. The first mention of the beautiful game is on page 40.

Let me explain that the book consists almost entirely of printed excerpts of interviews from people involved with ESPN. There's not really a cohesive narrative thread. It's a bit like reading a transcript from a huge roundtable discussion on the company.

On page 40, Chris Berman (aka Boomer, the Swami, Mr. NFL Primetime, "You're with me, Leather") is explaining a bit of his history and arrival to ESPN.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was fourteen. Although I played varsity basketball and varsity soccer, I didn't play football. Big boy, but didn't play football. I was tall and skinny. Varsity bowling. I played some soccer, which was barbaric in the early seventies. Played basketball. We had a little radio station and I announced the football games to two hundred people on Friday afternoons. I was loud, probably too loud. We didn't really need a transmitter.

That's the soccer mention in the one paragraph. My first thought was - varsity bowling in high school?

My second thought was surprise that Berman, basically known as the king of American football, actually played soccer as a youngster. I thought then about Aldo Donelli, the soccer player who helped the USA get to the 1934 World Cup (scored four times in his debut match!), but worked for years coaching American football on the college and professional level.

Then again, the seventies were the heyday of the NASL. Pele was playing for the Cosmos, and the game was pretty popular, at least among young players. However, it's telling that even when ESPN was desperate for programming and showing random sports like rugby, Berman's short mention is the only time soccer registers in the history of the World Leader in Sports, at least in this book's version of it, for the first 300 pages.