Chris Berman has always felt like ESPN was home for him.
There have been a couple of instances throughout his more than four-decade career at The Worldwide Leader where Berman was entertaining offers to leave. But Berman told Jimmy Traina on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast he always knew ESPN was where he needed to be.
One instance came in 1989 when ESPN was still somewhat a single fledgling sports channel. Berman at the time was weighing leaving Bristol for NBC.
“ESPN was a different place,” Berman said. “We were only one channel then, remember.”
“(NBC) put an offer out there that was times three or four,” he added. “Which — ok — that took a while to get resolved.”
Berman said in terms of his career, deciding to remain at ESPN turned out to be the right choice.
“My God it’s the greatest move I never made,” he said. “At the time I was gonna be the number two guy behind Bob Costas doing football.
“Just job-wise, forget money and this – I’m not in it for that anyway,” Berman added. “I started at 16 thousand bucks.”
Chris talked about the coverage the potential move received. He said the decision was about something bigger than money. He loved getting to cover sports every day.
“That was not the point,” he said. “I wasn’t leveraging anything, and again thank God I’ve been here 43 years.”
