X-Nico

23 unusual facts about ESPN


Alex Alben

At Starwave, Alben worked on pioneering CD-ROM products and helped launch popular web sites such as ABCNews.com and ESPN.com.

AWA International Television Championship

It was filled with a several months long tournament and was defended on their television broadcast on ESPN.

Chute Boxe Academy

He was quoted in an ESPN article as stating that friendships formed with his former rivals helped to save his career upon his departure from Chute Boxe.

ESPN College Hoops

It is the sequel to the debut game of the series, NCAA College Basketball 2K3, and the first game in the series to feature the ESPN license.

ESPN College Hoops 2K5

The game features an ESPN "broadcast", where the ESPN commentators and logos are seen throughout the season, with an authentic ESPN broadcast during the game.

Fiction Reform

Their song "Small Silhouette" was featured on ESPN's SportsCenter LA in October 2009 and was the first public exposure of the song.

GWF Light Heavyweight Championship

The title was defended on the promotion's show that aired nationally on ESPN.

GWF North American Heavyweight Championship

The title was featured on the promotion's show that aired nationally on ESPN.

Human Dog Sled Competition

In past years, ESPN has given brief coverage to the final matchups of the event.

Isidore Newman School

In May 2010, ESPN.com ranked Newman at the top of a survey of which high schools produce the best NFL players—even though the school has produced only three NFL players—because of the success of the Manning brothers.

Jerry Crasnick

Jerry Crasnick (Born May 24, 1958) is a sports writer, currently covering baseball for the sports website ESPN.com.

Joe Dean

He coined the phrase "String Music" and is also known for other phrases such as, "Stufferino" and "Lexington, K-Y." During his run, he worked with NBC, TBS, ESPN, TVS and Jefferson Pilot.

John Hollinger

He left Sports Illustrated to write for ESPN.com in the summer of 2005, and his weekly columns are available through their "insider" subscription service.

Pumpkin roll

Footage from the 2004 Pumpkin Roll shot by former student Ryan Luby appeared on ESPN as number eight on the “Not Top 10 Plays of the Week”.

Refugio Independent School District

In 2011, ESPN's Outside the Lines program highlighted Jason Herring and the Refugio High School football team's preparation for the state playoffs, where they routinely could not avoid running up the score.

Sarah Burke

She won ESPN's 2001 Award for female skier of the year and was voted 2007's Best Female Action Sports Athlete at the ESPY awards.

Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing

After the race, Fisher told ESPN's Jamie Little she was unsure if the team would be able to make it to Kentucky and Chicago because of the crash.

Seven Days in Sunny June

The original jersey was used by the Peruvian team during the 70s and was awarded by ESPN as the "Best World Cup jersey of all time".

Shane Theriot

He has performed with many influential musicians, authored guitar instruction books and DVDs, and composed and produced music for MTV and ESPN, among others.

Sportsnet Magazine

On June 9, 2011, Rogers executive Ken Whyte announced plans for a new sports magazine as a brand extension of Rogers' Sportsnet television channel, modeled off a similar magazine produced by ESPN.

Swin Cash

In the off-season, Cash has appeared as a studio analyst on ESPN's NBA Fastbreak (according to ESPN.com) and during the 2008 Beijing Olympic games, she alternated with Teresa Edwards in presenting in-game commentary for NBC's presentation of the women's basketball tournament from the network's New York broadcast studios.

Vaughan Mills

An ESPN X Games Skatepark was also planned as the main entertainment venue on the site.

Wins Above Replacement

ESPN publishes the Baseball Reference version of WAR on its statistics pages for position players and pitchers.


2007 International Bowl

The on-air ESPN crew included John Saunders, who was born and raised in Toronto and graduated from WMU; and Doug Flutie, who played two seasons with the Toronto Argonauts, both of which ended in Grey Cup championships.

Andre Aldridge

During his three years at ESPN, Aldridge reported and anchored for various shows on the network, including NBA Tonight, NBA Matchup, and Friday Night Fights.

Anthony Sperduti

Trained as an art director, he has worked as creative director at advertising agencies Wieden & Kennedy (Portland, New York, and London offices), TBWA\Chiat\Day, Modernista and with brands like Nike, The Gap, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, ESPN, MTV, Volvo, and Heineken.

Armed Forces Foundation

The program has received recognition from Congressional leaders, ESPN, ESPN2, Outdoor Channel, The Sportsman Channel, Pentagon Channel, and Fox News.

Boxing After Dark

Replacing them were Fran Charles, former ESPN and Fox Sports Net analyst Max Kellerman who receives "something in the neighborhood of $10,000 for each Boxing After Dark telecast" (Thomas Hauser) and former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis.

Carolyn Peck

Peck was not out of basketball for long, however: ESPN hired her as a basketball analyst within months.

Chris Duncan

Since October 2, 2011, Duncan has been a host for "Stully and Duncan," a nightly radio program on the St. Louis ESPN Radio Affiliate, WXOS.

College Hoops 2K6

It also marked the first time since the original NCAA College Basketball 2K3 that the series was without an ESPN license.

Daniel Brailovsky

He was then a correspondent for SportsCenter and Fútbol Picante, as well as the radio/TV show ESPN Radio Formula.

Dave Strader

Following the death of longtime ESPN broadcaster Tom Mees in 1996, Strader was hired by the cable network to take the vacant play-by-play spot on National Hockey Night broadcasts.

Don Hasselbeck

Hasselbeck's second son Tim Hasselbeck was an NFL backup quarterback who currently works for ESPN as a Fantasy Football analyst and is married to Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Doris Burke

In 2003, Burke was named to ESPN's top men's basketball team working with Dick Vitale on the men's games and working the sidelines for ESPN and ABC for their coverage of the NBA.

ESPN College Football Saturday Primetime

Some notable voices of ESPN College Football Primetime over the years have been Ron Franklin, Mike Gottfried and Adrian Karsten, but all have gone on to different assignments, except for Karsten, who died in 2005.

ESPN Goal Line

The channel is active during three college sports seasons; during college football season as Goal Line, college basketball season as ESPN Buzzer Beater, and through the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship as ESPN Bases Loaded, providing live look-ins and analysis of games in progress.

ESPN Major League Soccer

On August 4, 2006, ESPN reached a comprehensive multimedia agreement with Soccer United Marketing (SUM) for the rights to Major League Soccer through 2014.

Fred Christenson

Christenson left ESPN after nearly 20 years of service in 2006 and went to work for Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder’s newly acquired company Six Flags, Inc. (SIX) as Regional Vice President of Parks Strategy and Management.

Gary Hoey

As writer, producer, and guitar player, Hoey's clients have included Disney, ESPN, and No Fear, and he has performed the National Anthem for the New England Patriots, San Diego Padres, and the Boston Red Sox.

Georgie Bingham

During her time at ESPN, she participated in broadcasts from Wimbledon, The Open, the US open golf and tennis, The ESPYs, and interviewed Pele, David Beckham, Tracy McGrady, Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant among others.

Gianluca Pagliuca

In the 1997 book The Big Show: Inside ESPN's SportsCenter, Olbermann remarked, "We'll spare you which expletive."

Henry Lundy

Lundy returned to the ring five weeks later, again on ESPN, with a unanimous decision win over Omri Lowther in Montreal, Quebec – a fight Lundy agreed to take on just three days’ notice.

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Three months after winning the title, Lundy made his first defense against John Molina Jr. in the main event of ESPN’s Friday Night Fights at Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island on July 9, 2010.

Herman Ngoudjo

He defeated Randall Bailey in a split decision June 8 on ESPN to set up a fight for the IBF title.

Holly Rowe

Other broadcasts that Rowe has been a part of with her time at ESPN include play-by-play for Women's World Cup matches, coverage of the Running of the Bulls, coverage of swimming, and broadcasts of track & field events.

J. C. Pearson

Pearson left Fox following the 2008 season to return to ESPN to call college football games on ESPN2 and ESPN with Dave Lamont.

Jeff Allison

ESPN's Peter Gammons made mentions of the similarities between the two players during his commentary at the 2008 MLB All Star Game.

Jemele Hill

Hill also makes regular appearances on television, including SportsCenter and several ESPN programs, including ESPN First Take, Outside the Lines and The Sports Reporters.

Kristi Lee

Lee was also featured on ESPN and ESPN2 as a side line reporter, covering events like lacrosse, auto racing, and the first three X Games on ESPN2.

Lamont Pearson

After four wins he was held to a draw in 1999 when he fought Philadelphia lightweight Anthony Washington (also 4-0 and an experienced amateur) in a six-round bout on an ESPN2 Friday Night Fights but received glowing remarks from ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas, who scored the fight for Pearson 57-56.

Larry Nuber

During a 1989 "Thunder" broadcast, Nuber and fellow announcer/former racer Steve Chassey got involved in a heated dispute over Rich Vogler which eventually caused both men to be let go by ESPN.

Lexington Legends

The event received coverate on various television programs including NBC's The Tonight Show, ESPN's Pardon the Interruption and SportsCenter, and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Linda Cohn

Cohn returned to the East Coast in 1992, when she was hired by ESPN to work on SportsCenter, and has since become a familiar face among SportsCenter viewers.

Mock draft

Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay of ESPN and Mike Mayock of the NFL Network are considered television experts on the NFL Draft.

Ocoee High School

The Marching Band has performed in the Cotton Bowl Music Festival, the Florida Citrus Parade, the Ikea Thanksgiving Parade, multiple Under Armour Football All-American Games that were broadcast on Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), multiple Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades at Universal Studios Florida, and the New York City Veteran's Day Parade.

Olu Famutimi

In Michigan, he played for the Flint Northwestern Wildcats where he climbed the national ranks as the 7th best player in the country according to ESPN.com.

Omri Lowther

In August 2006, on ESPN's Friday Night Fights he would go onto lose a ten round decision to title contender Henry Lundy.

Pete Rose, Jr.

As a teenager, on September 11, 1985, he made an emotional on-field appearance live on ESPN to celebrate with his father after Rose Sr. broke Ty Cobb's record for most career hits.

Playmakers

Although the ratings were very high for ESPN—Playmakers was the highest-rated show on the network other than its Sunday night NFL and Saturday college football games—ESPN eventually canceled the series under pressure from the National Football League, who thought professional football was being negatively portrayed.

Skills competitions

The Home Run Derby was first held in 1985 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was won by Cal Ripken, Jr. Today, the Derby usually sells out the all-star stadium and millions watch the event live on ESPN.

Solomon Wilcots

During this time he spent spent three seasons (1998–2000) as a sideline reporter for ESPN's Sunday Night football, for which he received an Emmy Award in 2000 for sideline reporting.

Spurs–Suns rivalry

In May 2008, ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger named the Spurs Hack-a-Shaq use as the "Best Tactic" of the first two rounds of the 2008 NBA Playoffs.

Steve Bunin

Prior to ESPN, Bunin served as sports anchor/director at five different local news stations: WOTV-TV in Battle Creek, Michigan, from 2002-2003, WLAJ-TV in Lansing, Michigan, from 2000-2001, KNAZ-TV in Flagstaff, Arizona, from 1998-2000, WICZ-TV in Binghamton, New York, in 1997 and WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York, in 1995-1996, where he worked alongside future CNN anchor Christopher Lawrence and future ABC anchor David Muir.

Taurian Fontenette

Video clips of the feat have been shown on ESPN's SportsCenter and also have been widely distributed over the internet.

Texas Fight

Another version used at the annual Texas-OU game is "Give 'em hell, give 'em hell! OU sucks!" In a commercial for ESPN's College GameDay, Kirk Herbstreit improvised "Yeah, we're Texas, just north of Mexico. Home of the armadillo, black gold and El Arroyo..." before Longhorns coach Mack Brown says, "we don't freestyle 'Texas Fight', Big Boy."

The Wildbirds

The song "421 (Everybody Loves You)" was featured in ESPN's commercials leading up to the event, and "Hard on Me" was played during a feature on Levi LaVallee.

This Is Home

The song was also featured on ESPN SportsCenters "Titletown" segment which ran throughout July 2008.

Tommy Smyth

In 2007 he joined ESPN's MLS broadcast team and has also done a few World Cups for ESPN, including 2006, where he partnered with Adrian Healey.

Yankees Classics

In 2007, YES and Major League Baseball acquired rights to games that aired on ABC as part of MLB's then-TV deal with ESPN, including Bobby Murcer's five runs batted in during the game the night of Thurman Munson's funeral.