Over the years at ESPN, Chris Berman has had the opportunity to cover numerous events in many different sports. So, which event for him was the toughest to cover?
He recently revealed on the Trey Wingo Presents: Half-Forgotten History podcast with that the toughest event to cover was the NFL Draft, which he hosted for ESPN from 1985-2016. However, it’s not the actual event itself that was the toughest, but the prep for the event.
“It’s the 3 weeks leading up to it where I don’t follow college football,” Boomer said. “Saturday is a prep day for us. I am aware of who won and lost games. I couldn’t tell you this guy is the best or second-best center.”
Berman gave a lot of credit to the GMs who would help him in his prep by giving some insight as to what they were thinking. He knew that despite not having a lot of prep time, that wasn’t an excuse to ace covering the event:
“It reminded me of why I never went to grad school. It’s a course you have to ace and you are doing it the last 3 weeks. If you talk to these GMs in March, their grades are completely different on April 15. I didn’t do that knowing I wasted everyone’s time. I got to ace this test and I’ve done none of the work, but I can’t get a B on it. That sounds like grad school to me.”
Both Berman and Wingo reflected on when the NFL Draft first moved to primetime in 2010 and they were not sure it was going to work, but the NFL proved them both wrong:
“I’ll give the NFL credit on this. I thought it was a dumb idea,” said Wingo. “I was like this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I can’t believe they are going to try to compete against primetime television. This is going to be a disaster. It turned out to be the exact opposite and a massive home run.”
“I don’t know if I thought it would be a massive disaster, but I went oh, really pushing the envelope. I still wondered if we are just going to make the first round and just do that and celebrate it like it’s the coronation of Queen Elizabeth III,” said Berman. “But, it worked.”
This podcast is a good trip down memory lane of past NFL Drafts from two men who were hosts of the event. Berman knew in his early years of hosting the NFL Draft that there was major potential for it to grow into the spectacle it is now.
“This was an oasis from Groundhog Day until the beginning of August. All football fans gathered with us and I felt an obligation, as did all of our folks behind the scenes, we are sponsoring/hosting a gathering place for football fans in America in April and it’s pretty cool.”
