Sports Junkies Rejoice : The Birth of ESPN Review

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(More customer reviews)"As a fan who has never known the world without ESPN, I was both fascinated and amazed to learn that it all began just over 20 years ago. I thought it had been around forever! Apparently there wasn't much to cable television back then. Guys like Rasmussen and other cable pioneers were real believers and thanks to their efforts we have 24 hour sports, news and movies today. Reading about the people who made the decisions, the people who didn't believe it would work and the frantic efforts to get ESPN up and running is not only informative, but entertaining.
A look at the September 1979 program schedule in the book is a real eye-opener. No NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL back then. Irish Hurling, Austrailian Rules Football and Kick Boxing were regular fare. The NCAA was a somewhat tentative partner with tape-delayed football games every night of the football season. Wow, how the world of TV sports has changed over these last 20 years.
If you enjoy reading a good tale this is your kind of book. Adversity, disappointment, joy, frustration, anxiety and elation all come through. This book is a must read for anyone who claims to be an avid ESPN fan."

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Entrepreneurial daring, irrepressible enthusiasm and a dash of good luck gave America its first 24 hour sports network in 1979,This book is about the agony and the ecstasy, the excitement, effort and frustration that led to the launch of the Worldwide Leader in Sports.A $9,000 credit card advance, a landfill in Bristol, CT, new satellite technology and a father and son's unshakeable belief in the insatiable appetite of America's sports fans came together to fuel an incredible journey....a journeythat culminated in ESPN's inaugural show at 7:00 PM (EDT) Friday, September 7, 1979.

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Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad Review

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(More customer reviews)I really enjoy listening to Mike Greenberg on the radio and looked forward to reading this book quite a bit. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though it was not exactly what I expected.
The book consists of journal entries he wrote while struggling through some difficult times in his life, mostly revolving around his wife and children. He is very open about his personal life and his feelings about the people that populate it. I found myself often thinking, "He's going to get in trouble when his wife/aunt/neighbor reads this." And I can't help wondering if he did!
This book, I think, is more geared toward parents-to-be and married couples than to hard-core sports fans. There is some discussion of sports, but it is more in the sense of how it affects his personal life. Still, the book is entertaining, Greenberg writes well, and I had a hard time putting it down.
This is a good read for "Mike and Mike" fans, but be prepared to learn a lot more about Greeny's wife and kids than about his radio show and Golic.

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Sports Junkies Rejoice: The Birth of ESPN Review

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(More customer reviews)"Sports Junkies Rejoice! The Birth of ESPN" is the definitive insider's account of the origin of the Worldwide Leader in Sports. As someone who was 17 years old when ESPN first went on the air on September 7, 1979, my sports life (and in many ways, my professional career) has been personally impacted by Bill Rasmussen's creation. His book reveals what the situation was with television in the late 1970s, his career up to that point in sports, the entrepreneurial leap of faith he made when his career with the New England Whalers was suddenly over, and how he, his son Scott, and a small band of believers got ESPN on the air for the very first time. If you are a sports fan, and you are old enough to remember a time before ESPN, this story will amaze you. Rasmussen's audacity, enthusiasm, and persistence carried the day, and it's not only an inspiration to sports fans but to small business owners and entrepreneurs of any stripe. If you are a sports fan but have no recollection of any time before ESPN, then prepare to be shocked at a world with no cable TV, no CNN, no MTV, only a few select sports broadcast on three major broadcast networks before Rasmussen and his small band of pioneers forged a new way of looking at sports on TV. The new paperback edition, published in the summer of 2010, contains some updates to Rasmussen's story and new comparisons of ESPN then and now. I've read it several times now, given it as a gift to others, and highly recommend it to anyone who loves sports, loves ESPN, and wants to know what really happened."


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If you pride yourself on knowing everything there is to know about ESPN, you'll need to own this book to cover all the bases. Do you know about the $9,000 credit card advance, the first advertiser on ESPN, or the cost of ESPN's first satellite transponder? Or why ESPN is based in Bristol, Connecticut? All that and more about the early days is covered by Bill Rasmussen in "Sports Junkies Rejoice! The Birth of ESPN."

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