X-Nico

20 unusual facts about ESPN


Alpines

Their song "Empire" which was released as a video in May 2012 was used by Sky Atlantic for the trailer of the new series of Boardwalk Empire season 3 Autumn 2012 and by ESPN for US Barclays Center Classic in November 2012.

AnnMaria De Mars

She is the mother of Ronda Rousey, an Olympic bronze medalist judoka and mixed martial arts Bantamweight world champion; and of María Burns Ortiz, a sports journalist who serves as the social media columnist for ESPN.com and as a contributor to Fox News Latino.

AWA International Television Championship

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

Bill Konigsberg

In May 2001, while working for ESPN.com, he came out on the front page of the website in an article entitled "Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays".

Brian Windhorst

Brian Windhorst, also known as "Windy" or "Scoop", (born January 29, 1978) is an American sportswriter for ESPN.com who covers the National Basketball Association (NBA).

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.

College Hoops 2K6

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

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.

Herschel Walker trade

For this reason, ESPN.com lists it as the 8th most lopsided trade in sports history.

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.

Mayo Civic Center

The American Wrestling Association held a weekly television broadcast for both syndication, and cable on ESPN, from 1989-1990.

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.

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.

STATS LLC

In 1987, STATS developed a reporter network for Major League Baseball and provided research for NBC's postseason baseball coverage, and by 1989 was doing the same for ESPN's broadcasts.

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy

Simmons has written under the name “The Sports Guy” for 12 years, 9 of them with ESPN, and currently receives 1.4 million page views per month.


2008 College Football All-America Team

The 2008 College Football All-America Team is composed of the following All-American first teams: American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), Associated Press (AP), Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), Walter Camp Football Foundation, The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Pro Football Weekly, ESPN, CBS Sports, College Football News, Rivals.com, and Scout.com.

Alex Alben

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

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.

Anne Marie Anderson

Following graduation from Hofstra, Anderson relocated to Bristol, CT and worked as a production assistant, assignment editor and associate producer on ESPN staples such as SportsCenter, NFL Gameday and Outside the Lines.

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.

Ari Wolfe

Wolfe's impressive resume lead ESPN to hire him as the play-by-play man for the Madden Challenge in 2007, shown on Superbowl Sunday on ESPN2.

Armed Forces Foundation

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

Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 metres

In the ESPN documentary 9.79*, eventual silver medallist Christie states, and footage of the race shows, that Lewis "ran out of his lane... two or three times" during the race, which should have resulted in Lewis' automatic disqualification.

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.

Brad Childress

ESPN reported that Childress did not consider consulting with team owner Zygi Wilf on this decision.

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.

Craig Minervini

He also has done play-by-play for various other sports include Notre Dame football on NBC, CBS Sports Spectacular, College World Series on ESPN, Major League Soccer, XFL on TNN, boxing on TNN, mixed martial arts on TNN, Syracuse Chiefs AAA baseball, and Syracuse Orange football, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer.

Daniel Brailovsky

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

Danny Perez Ramírez

He holds wins over contender Julio César García, the 2006 winner of ESPN's The Contender Grady Brewer, and former IBA Middleweight Champion Jose Luis Zertuche.

Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place

“We Owe This to Ourselves,” another track from the album, was the main song used for the 2010 ESPN’s X-Games, Shift 2: Unleashed, and as part of Tony Hawk: Shred soundtrack.

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.

Doug Gottlieb

Gottlieb was also a frequent guest on other ESPN television shows, including SportsCenter and also on College Basketball Gameday Final.

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 Deportes

ESPN Deportes is available on some cable systems including Comcast, AT&T, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Brighthouse Networks, as well as on Dish Network and DirecTV.

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.

Fisher Field

the 2006 edition was televised nationally on ESPN2 as part of the High School Showcase (it was the last Thanksgiving high school football game ESPN has aired to date).

Frank Tanana

He was given the nickname "Frank Tanana Daiquiri" by broadcaster Chris Berman of ESPN.

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.

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.

Henry Lundy

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.

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.

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.

Jim Wacker

After the season, Wacker was named as National Coach of the Year by ESPN, the UPI, and The Sporting News.

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.

Mike Durbin

In 1996, Marshall Holman became the new color analyst for ESPN's coverage, while Durbin took over play-by-play duties.

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.

Norris Division

As part of his shtick, ESPN's Chris Berman often refers to the National Football League's NFC North division (previously the NFC Central division) as the Norris Division or "NFC Norris" since the two divisions included teams from three of the same cities: Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis–St. Paul.

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.

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.

Proposed Major League Baseball franchises in Portland, Oregon

ESPN.com reported that the Portland metropolitan area was a bigger location then the ones that house the Cincinnati Reds, the Kansas City Royals and the Milwaukee Brewers.

Rob Paternostro

Whilst recovering from injury in 1999, Paternostro worked at ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut putting together highlight packages for SportsCenter and NBA Tonight.

Shaun Weiss

Most recently, he is seen in a commercial for Captain Morgan's ("Maxi-Mixers are going fast! How about a demo, Phil?"), Castrol, and ESPN Mobile MVP as Mike 'Big Grunz' Grunski.

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.

SportsChannel

The network obtained the National Hockey League rights from ESPN in 1988 by offering the NHL almost triple the amount of money that ESPN was offering (a move not unlike the 2005 NHL rights grab by Comcast/OLN over ESPN).

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.

The Doug Gottlieb Show

Since joining ESPN Radio in September 2003, Gottlieb had co-hosted GameNight along with personalities such as Chuck Wilson, Jeff Rickard, John Seibel and Freddie Coleman.

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.