Tom Rinaldi is one of the better, more captivating storytellers in sports media. One of the many roles that Rinaldi had at ESPN for 19 years was the main voice for features on College GameDay.
Now, in addition to working the sidelines on big games for FOX, Rinaldi is telling feature stories on their college football pregame show, Big Noon Kickoff, a show that is rising in popularity. This week, Rinaldi was a guest on The Ryen Russillo Podcast to discuss his time at ESPN.
During the interview, Russillo threw out a theory about College GameDay since he used to host the radio version of the show on ESPN Radio. He said he felt the show has been pushing for longer-form storytelling and that it “veers towards sadness” a lot. He wondered if there was research by programmers that showed people wanted to see more redemption in stories.
“It’s a fascinating theory,” Rinaldi answered. “That was never brought up. Features were brought up. If you actually took a season’s worth of storytelling content, whether it’s Big Noon Kickoff or on Gameday, you would see that there’s a balance of he’s good, she’s good, the lighter story, and the heavier story.
“I would submit that what people perhaps fail to recognize is that it is the heavier story that is more memorable. Even though by volume there’s an equality, there is a disproportion of meaning and memorability to those stories.”
While Rinaldi isn’t on any form of social media, but he does hear what some critics think of the amount of stories that air on a two or three-hour show. That doesn’t mean he is fazed by the criticism.
“I think there is at times a thought that these stories are wrong to tell or there are too many of them or I hear terrible terms suggested to me like tragedy porn or things of that nature. I would just suggest you always have the right not to watch. You always have the right to look away.”
As for how Big Noon Kickoff is doing, Rinaldi feels that while GameDay is set in stone for what it is, the FOX college football pregame show is still establishing its identity.
When asked to compare the two networks, Rinaldi had nothing but good things to say about both. He said the decision to move on from ESPN was not an easy one to make.
“It’s difficult to leave a place that you love and you’ve been for 19 years. I’ll always love ESPN. I’m grateful for the next. There is so many wonderful things I got to do during my time at ESPN. Now, the chance to do not only Saturdays, but Sundays, the chance to do the World Cup, some features for the World Series, I’m just so grateful and I’ll always love ESPN, but so far, things have been tremendous on FOX.”
