Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World Of ESPN (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
ESPN is one of my two favorite channels. It's a default tune-in whenever I go to a hotel or someplace new. I've watched SportsCenter with breakfast for longer than I can remember. So, I was super-excited to listen to this book and it was terrific. This wasn't just a behind-the-scenes peek. This was full pull up the curtains, get the entire backstage tour type of book. I loved the fact that you get to hear from all the individuals who make up and have made up ESPN over the years. I like that all the juicy details, dirty secrets, and scandals get aired out and people contradict each other's version of events mere paragraphs apart. But surprisingly, what I learned the most from this book was lessons in business and office relationships. I'm fairly new to working in an office environment and this book helped me immensely in understanding how to handle egos, personality conflicts and inter-office politics. Fascinating stuff. My favorite part was listening to the origins of the classic "This Is SportsCenter" commercials. A lot of language in here - that's why I didn't give it 5 stars. Otherwise, it's really excellent and any sports fan would love it. Overall an excellent read. Slightly too long at a shade under 800 pages, but reading on a Kindle or iPad makes it a lot easier to skim through (lugging an 800 page book around is totally impractical).I'd say 20% of the text could have been shaved, because a lot of the interviews overlapped with what had been said already. Reading this book was a bit like shopping at a flea market, you had to sift through a lot of ordinary content to find a gem. Acerbic quotes from Kornheiser, Olberman, Simmons and a few others were the real guts of the book.A lot of mud was tossed at power hungry upstart Mark Shapiro, but his energy and brains clearly had a lot to do with the meteoric rise of the cable network. Not to be left out, is an appreciation for the incredible amount of work that had to be put into this project. Interviewing over 100 people (including President Obama), not to mention doing a ton of research must have taken an inordinate amount of time. A book on the creation of this book is probably in order. For anyone addicted to ESPN, this is a must read. Don't be afraid to skim through the first quarter of the book to fast forward to the parts where it really gets going.
What do You think about Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World Of ESPN (2011)?
I loved the format, which largely pulls the narrative from interviews.
—cornpoplady
Good book. Seemed to take a a while to finish though...
—alyssa
Really interesting, enjoyed the way the book was read.
—Sylvs
