Small Markets Turn Into Big Opportunities Do you know where Hazard, Ky., is? Jay Crawford, the host of ESPN 2’s Cold Pizza, most certainly does. The first four years of his 18-year broadcasting career were spent at WYMT-TV in a town with roughly 5,500 residents. Quite a humble start for the Bowling Green State University pitcher whose face is now shown on ESPN 2 for 4.5 hours each weekday.
Cold Pizza invited Planet Blacksburg to their show on Monday, March 6 to view their program before interviewing Crawford afterwards. Headlining their guest list that day was former Atlanta Braves pitcher, John Rocker. For those who don’t remember, Rocker is famous for his comments made about New York City’s subway patrons during the 1999 National League Championship Series against the New York Mets. Before Rocker was about to go on air, he removed his microphone and stormed out of the studio, possibly toward Penn Station to catch the 7 Train to Shea Stadium. Apparently Rocker was not into discussing his past remarks. Once this crisis was averted, the show finished smoothly and Planet Blacksburg was able to chat with Crawford about his experience with Cold Pizza, Rocker’s exit and Crawford’s own rise to the top. Below are selected excerpts from an interview with Jay Crawford done March 6, 2006. Q: John Rocker bolted on you. Why did he do that? I said, “Yeah, that’s who you are.” He wouldn’t be on this Joes vs. Pros … anything, if it wasn’t for his comments. If you look at his body of work for a career, he was a dominant guy for maybe 1.5 seasons. Q: I think the comments contributed to that. It didn’t really help him. Q: Did he actually do that? Q: I was confused that maybe he turned over a new leaf. But now, he never came on the show. We’re not going to get any free publicity out of it, he’s not, the network’s not. What it did was hurt the network that’s putting it on the air, but it also hurt him, because anyone who wants him to be on their team, television show, the answer is going to be a clear-cut no … Q: What kind of student media did you do at Bowling Green State University? You said you were a pitcher? So from there I did an internship before my senior year at the NBC station in Syracuse, N.Y. I got to see how the wheels of the machine really turn. I worked on a demo tape the whole summer, came back and sent the tape out. And just before I graduated I got a call from a station I had never heard of in Hazard, Ky. They said they didn’t have anything in sports but they asked if I wanted to do something in news. I said, “Yeah, I love news!” I started reading every newspaper I could get, because I had no desire to do news. It was the first station that called, and I was ready to go… Q: You’ve got to take what you can get early on. Q: Too many people quit early on. I tell people this: If they call you, and you have a job offer for you, consider yourself lucky. Go in a heartbeat. Don’t second guess it, go. Because you have to get the skills you need in Hazard, Ky., before you work at ESPN. You have to learn the way its done in different places, take what works for you in each of those places and whether it ends up at ESPN or not, I say that anybody practicing anything. I say it’s like baseball: Nobody rolls out of bed, unless you’re Alex Rodriguez, and falls into a major league uniform. You’ve got to play (Class) A ball: for me that was Hazard. And then AA: and for me that was Columbus. Then AAA ball: for me that was Tampa. To look at your final goal don’t just look at that. You have to look where to start early on. Q: Were you encouraged by such a small market to work harder, or were you ever overwhelmed thinking, “I don’t know if this is going to work out.” My job function was a news reporter for three weeks, then we had this change in general management, which I thought was bad for me because the guy that hired me was leaving and we were all interviewed again. They said, “I want your passion on my sports desk. You’re the new sports director.” I don’t know anything about being sports director but three weeks in I’m the new sports director. I asked if there was a raise that went along with that, and the answer was no. I said, “Ok, I’ll take it.” What happened was, I was a photographer, editor, writer, producer, and oh by the way, the cherry on the desert was to go present it. Even though my title was sports director-anchor, I would go out to football games, basketball games, previews. I was constantly driving, covering all these events by myself. I was holding the microphone, shooting my own video and then editing my footage… Q: ESPN calls you in August of 2003, what is your first reaction to that? Q: Did you always want to be in a big market? But to elevate it up to where you aren’t covering high school—you’re covering the best athletes in the world. Obviously that’s a lot more fun. But really I never was a guy that had a list on a piece of paper and said I want to be here, I want to be there at this age. If it’s a good fit and it feels right, then I go. Q: Your success was measured on whether you enjoyed it, not necessarily how much money you made. I’ve done this for going on 18 years and I’ve always loved what I do and where I do it and for the most part, who I do it for. Q: What’s the difference between TV now and when you started in the late 80s?
Q: What about when the idea bank runs dry? Do you guys panic about that sometimes? Q: You’ve gone from level to level; you’re at ESPN right now. In your experience, what did you find that’s always pushed you to that next level, that’s always made you keep climbing? I think for me, obviously you want to do whatever you do at a high level, and it just so happens that ESPN in our industry is considered the highest level of sports television. So even though that’s the Mecca, it wasn’t like I ever set out to achieve that. For me I just … anytime I’ve played a sport, anything I’ve ever done: If I’m going to do it I want to be good at it. I want to work hard at it even if I’m not good. I’m going to outwork the next guy in preparation or whatever. Q: You say you never wanted to come to ESPN. How did you decide, “I know its time for me to move on?” Because, I know when you worked at Hazard, Ky., you knew you had to move on because it wasn’t going to sustain you. When you were in Hartford, Conn., how do you know, “Jay, its time for me to move to something else?” For me it’s always been about where will I live? When I was in Hazard, I was going to take the first big offer that came and it happened to be Hartford. I could’ve been patient and found a more favorable city for me. When I got there I realized I don’t like the Northeast and I was there for two years and moved. So I went back to Ohio, which is where I was born and raised and covered Ohio State Buckeyes. I love Ohio State athletics. So for me it was always: Where am I going to be? What am I going to be covering? With Tampa it was a big, big pay increase and it was 80-degrees and sunny everyday, play golf everyday. It was like, oh, well that lifestyle won’t suck. Twist my arm, I’ll go. With New York it was a lifestyle change because the money was different and it was living in New York City, which I had never done before, working on a network show with quality names like Woody Paige and Skip Bayless and having a bigger more profound impact that anything I had ever done in my career from a sheer numbers standpoint and viewers standpoint. Q: Do you find that because you work at ESPN in New York City, do you find that you have a hard time going out in public? Is that an issue? Q: If you’re going to dinner with your family and you’re trying to sit down, then someone comes up and is like, “Hey Jay! Hey Jay! Hey Jay!” You feel inadequate because you don’t have anything to give them. You don’t know who they are. They know you, they know everything about you, or they live what they see. It’s a little different. But, here at ESPN no one is what I call a mega-star; someone that crosses every single realm of society… Q: Like a Michael Jordan character.
|
The native of Sandusky, Ohio, had stints at television stations in Hartford, Conn., Columbus, Ohio, and Tampa, Fla., before finally landing in New York City. During Cold Pizza’s popular segment, “1st and 10”, Crawford serves as the “umpire” when sports columnists Woody Paige and Skip Bayless match wits and discuss the 10 biggest sports stories of the day.