The Press Box - Interviewing O.J., Covering the Olympic Bombing, and Hosting 'SportsCenter' in Its Golden Age With Fox's Chris Myers

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving media consumers, Bryan has a bonus episode for you on this holiday. He speaks with Fox’s Chris Myers, who takes us through his career. He discusses the following: Interviewing Muhammad Ali (6:40) Joining ESPN and hosting ‘SportsCenter’ (11:56) Hosting ‘Up Close’ and having the nickname the Velvet Hammer (19:48) His infamous interview with O.J. Simpson (23:07) Interviewing Mike Tyson two years after Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear (29:04) Moving from ESPN to FOX (34:54) Mind-blowing sports moment he was present for (37:44) Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Chris Myers Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the summer of 1999, thousands attended what would be the final iteration of the Woodstock Music Festivals. But unlike its namesake, Woodstock 99 was not about peace and love. Joining me as I dive deep into this story about music, mud, violence, and tragedy. From Spotify and the Ringar Podcast Network, I'm Stephen Hayden. And this is Breakstuff, the story of Woodstock 99. Available Tuesday, August 27th. Happy Thanksgiving media consumers, and welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer, Brian Waters.

I talked to you about how I wanted to do more interview shows on this podcast. And well, I got one for you to listen to over the holidays. It's a great one. If you're a sports fan, you certainly know the name of Fox's Chris Myers. If you're not a sports fan, let me introduce Chris to you. Chris Myers grew up in Miami. where as a kid, he was a ferocious caller to the local sports radio station. That particular biographical detail spoke to me because I was that same kid in Texas once

upon a time. Chris started his career in Miami. He went to local television. And then he went to ESPN in the Golden Age of Sports Center, where he was part of the anchor rotation with Chris Berman and Dan and Keith and Bob Lee and Charlie Steiner. He also hosted the interview program up close. at ESPN where he had a memorable confrontation with OJ Simpson.

You're going to hear all about that. From ESPN, Chris went to Fox, where he's done everything from call NFL games to work the sidelines during the Super Bowl to hosting NASCAR. He's been around for some amazing moments in sports, including the 1989 earthquake world series in San Francisco and the bombing of Centennial Park during the 96 Olympics. All of this is detailed in a new book called That Deserted. a wow, untold stories of legends and champions, their wins and heartbreaks. Chris, I should add, is part of the small but enlightened faction of sports anchors that lives

here in California. So on a sunny winter day, we sat in a backyard and talked about Chris's career, his life, and his friendship with Bill Murray. Here's Chris Myers. All right, with Chris Myers. My favorite part of your book is the part about your childhood in Miami because you got your first job in the broadcasting business by being a crazy sports radio station caller. What form did your craziness take? It took a dishonest course that I had to learn and faced the music because I loved calling in and talking on a two-hour radio show called Sportsline.

Although it was local, in Miami, we had a lot of the national. Flair. People from New York, Boston, and the host would get guests. And I was a fan of not only South Florida sports, but Rams and Dodgers out west. Anyway, I would go be Chris from Miami. I was supposed to call just once a night, even really once every few nights, wasn't caller ID. So I had callback, disguised my voice. And it was a, you know, it was a bad, you know, John Wayne sounding deeper, older voice, Duke from North Miami. And I would call in and agree with my earlier call. And I had this going for like a long time, but they had fan night where they invited some of their regular callers, either come down to the studio or call in. And that's

what my father had to drive me. I didn't have a driver's license, young teenager. I had to tell my father and he said, you got to be, you know, got to be honest with him that you were not telling the truth here. They made up what I ever let you call again, but I'm going to take you down there since they invited you. And they're like, hey, kid, you want to work part time. Just, you know, he's more straightforward with this. You're Chris from Miami now. You know, let's go with that. And that was the, And then I got my license and worked weekends and broke into the business through school, help pay my way through college.

That was the door. That was the entrance of getting into sports radio and then the media. Just by calling in and having opinions, they're like, Chris from Miami, you work for us now. Well, they were kind of like you're going to be the weekend guy. You can run copy. You're behind the scenes. You're not on the air yet. But you got a good voice.

You know sports. You could help us out. And it was an old fill-in on a Saturday college football scoreboard. talk show kind of thing where somebody was sick and you know that old story hey chris can you step in fill in and don't know you have to tell them your age but don't lie about it you got a deep voice we think you know that you can handle it and so i did and they were after hey you can fill in more often and then eventually got a weekend uh radio gig and then eventually became the sports director when it was about 19 so i was still in still in high school but i would run out and do

interviews from my class for our show and even when pat summerall had his CBS radio network show and we were a CBS affiliate on WKAT radio and Miami Beach, Cat with a K, Arthur Godfrey Boulevard down there near Wolfies, if anybody's been down in that part. And I would, I'd be a stringer. I'd go out and do some interviews and then they'd use the clips or they would say, hey, Chris Myers was down there and asked, and the Super Bowl, Steelers, Cowboys. I did, I had left my humanities class. There's a couple of different stories, but this one, I think was geometry, actually, and drove over to Fort Lauderdale Stadium where the Cowboys and the Steelers were getting ready for the Super Bowl and I had to do an interview with

Sawback and Landry and then send it in and Summerall would use it and so there was that kind of growth into the job while I was still trying to graduate from high school. This is pretty consuming. You did not go to the prom because you were too busy. Right. Learning the ropes of media. I missed a few proms.

I missed some of the hangouts with my. Actually, again, I tried playing sports high school but I was the backup quarterback, the sixth guy on the basketball team, you know, the backup second basement. And I never, and I That was not my dream, but I loved sports. And as I mentioned in the book, Brian, I, you know, my father had a different view of the world growing up.

My family saw I was about news and current events and politics. So sports, I was almost embarrassed in the third or fourth grade when kids were talking about the MVP and the, you know, I didn't know what that meant and the teams involved. And so I was embarrassed. And so I had to cut. Then I swung and become a fanatic, became a fanatic, excuse me, studying sports, but enjoying it. Whether it was baseball cards, whatever information I could get in the radio was, was one, way to consume that along with whatever was televised at the time. When you were 16, the station dispatched you to interview Mohammed Ali.

How did that go? Not a bad first interview in terms of one of the first. Yeah. Started at the top. After that, well, first of all, he was such a, I mean, a chiseled, Adonnas kind of he talked about charisma, but the looks of a guy. And I didn't realize the magnitude of who he was at the time. and all of went around.

I was just there to kind of get some sound bites to ask him about a fight. Fifth Street, Jim, Miami Beach would train with Angelo Dundee. And so I drove down to the Fountain Blue Hotel, beat up car kind of thing, you know, couldn't really afford ballet parking, you know, all that kind of stuff. But when I walked in, I, you know, was 70s. My hair was long and I had the big tape recorder, you know, kind of like this, although you have the mini pack right now, which is progress. And so, yeah, I went in.

I just tried to get the questions in. And I, you know, it was like a scene from a moment. movie with the old school writers and, you know, hats and cigar smoke and what's this kid doing here. That's kind of what Ali, and I don't remember, I wish I still had the reel-to-reel tape or the cassette, but, you know, so he said he was very, whatever I had asked about, I said, you know, hey, you're not as dumb as you look, kid, you know, with the hair thing. I got a laugh, of course, and then he played off, you know, don't be a fool stay in school, but eventually he did, you know, he did answer the question. And so that kind of, when I left there, I was like,

Yeah, you know, I'll eat. He says he's the greatest. And then the more I read and learned about him, you know, and again, I tried to prepare for that interview between homework. But then I was like, wow, that was, you know, that was pretty special. And then I always remembered, you know, that moment after that. You got your deep resonant broadcasting voice, I read, by sleeping next to an air conditioner. People question that. Yes, you responded from the books like, really the Hot Wheel tracks in the,

in where the vents go. And yes, my brothers will attest to this. We had to share a room in South Florida, where we didn't have central air at the time. My three brothers and my sisters were in a different room, parents had a different room. And I just didn't like the heat, but he couldn't sleep.

So a room air conditioner, and I slept on that side, keeping it cold. My brothers were like, you're always freezing us out here. I'm like, I'll aim the vents. They wouldn't stay down towards where I was

so I could be covered up to sleep in the cold when it was 80 or 90 degrees at night with humidity. That's Florida. And so I took the little connectors from a hot wheel track, those purple slide in things, if you remember, hot wheels back at the day. And I stuck it into where the edge of the vent was so that I could push, you know, would hold aiming in my area. So it wouldn't freeze my brothers out, but so that I could be cold and sleep. And I would wake up with this kind of people like, you have a cold or a salt. No, it was like a post nasal drip or something. And it would cause my voice to deepen.

Now, again, it could have been naturally, but I think the timing of this pushed it along where I was younger and had, before I even thought about calling into a radio station, this voice that I have now. I never really took like speech therapy lessons or announcing and that kind of stuff. And so that's, you know, at least the family said, well, you know, that may have worked. I don't suggest that for other people, but it kind of worked for me.

They don't teach that at Syracuse. It was one of those things. No, I don't know that we would ever want to teach that, but a true story over time that really did kind of. And as I was talking, that's just how I thought, you know, I should sound. And it didn't bother me. And it stayed with me even after the vent and we got central air. It's funny because whenever I've asked sports announcers, usually who are a generation older than you, how did you get your deep resonant broadcast voice? They say, smoking cigarettes.

Right. You've got yours from an air conditioner. Yes, everything. It never smoked, right. But Steve may be from the air conditioning. The cigarettes went right to the deep voice. Everybody who gets into this business has a couple of people who they point at and say, I want to be like him or I want to be like her.

Who was on your list when you were a kid? No offense to the sportscasters. And I studied and read about them all from Musburger and Al Michaels and Costas, who I got to meet over time and really appreciatable. But I was Johnny Carson. The late night, the king of late night was my idol. I thought it was an outstanding interviewer. First of all, talented and funny.

It was the show. And so that's, and I studied him a lot, read a lot of his books, and I love the way that he could make everybody feel comfortable in an interview. You knew when to get people to laugh, when to keep it serious, when to speed it up, slow it down, where there was an, you know, 80-year-old grandmother, a 10-year-old kid, a superstar, you know, model type thing or a big-name actor, actress. So that was kind of, I was drawn to that, to who he, he was and what he did on television and from radio to TV.

That was kind of my, you know, without wanting to be necessarily a comedian. And I dabbled in a little bit of that in college and I, but I knew that wasn't the life for me. A sense of humor is important. It came from a big family so you couldn't exist without having a sense of humor and taking verbal barbs. But Johnny Carson was my guy. I had an opportunity later to meet him, which I talked about before.

You were at radio host in Miami, TV in Miami and New Orleans. you go to ESP in in 1988. Within three years, you're in Connecticut in the Sports Center rotation. Why did every funny 90s sports center, sports anchor want to be on Sports Center? Well, because I think after years in local television, which thankfully still serves a purpose. And as a sportscaster, I mean this, you just, when there were news stories that were more important, sports got squeezed. So you couldn't, you know, they had to cut your highlights. So you'd work hard on a feature and interview.

And it was like, yeah, instead of your four minutes or three, I have whatever it was, whether you're Miami, New Orleans, you're going to, you get to, some nights you're not on, you got to. So, yeah, that was, I was like, once we got there, boy, a 24-hour sports channel where that's all they do is talk about sports. I think that's where, if you want to cover sports, other than the networks, which is always the network, the network with something in my head, you know, working for a CBS affiliate, get to CBS, you know, the standard, or before Fox came along in the 90s. So that, yet I was hired really as a, uh,

It was a little bit of a gamble, a West Coast reporter for a couple of years, won the first Emmy, really, the reporting Emmy that Sports Center. I think they got an Emmy for auto racing right around that time, that adoption story of a pitcher who leaves the All-Star game and comes back and pitches for his team and successfully him and his wife adopted child. But anyway, that helped. They said, do you want to come back? And I, you know, to Connecticut, sports center. So I'm like, all right, we're going to go for it and start a family there as well and loved the sports center atmosphere. but, you know, I was a warm weather guy and not used to, not used to Connecticut. So it had something to do with our lifestyle, but great experiences back there doing the,

a variety of sports centers filling in and baseball tonight, but primarily the late sports center where I got to work, you know, with Linda Cohen, Mike Tariko, some of those that we enjoyed, that they re-ran in the morning instead of exercise shows. And people thought those were, we picked up a whole new audience. There was a genius by the part. I think was Steve Bornstein's idea of the president, and people thought we did those. alive sometimes because they had us just changed the very ending of each sports center. And that became very successful.

But it was really fun time. Growth of the, I call that the golden years of ESPN through the 90s. I mean, they really, you know, they were the only game in town. And people got to the point where everybody knew ESPN. It wasn't just college crowds or cable people. It was everybody knew. You gave me a quote one time.

You said, those were the golden years because we weren't so big that people rooted against us like U.S. steel. Yes. people liked ESPN in an uncomplicated way yes you said that just the way I think that I felt it and it's not that they did anything wrong but

they become bigger stronger and there's ESPN 2 and there's ESPN Plus and companies get bigger and so there's and there's competition from sports leagues sports channels and so it changes sometimes the view of a company or the way something operates but look there's still

the 24 hour sports channel and I remember people saying, oh, it'll never have, it'll never last, you know, that kind of thing, just like what they said in the earlier years of CNN before we had, you know, 24-hour news channels on a regular basis. There was a sports center hierarchy. Dan Patrick and Keith Olderman at 11 o'clock. How did one move up or down the sports center hierarchy? Yeah, that was tough. And there was, I would say, I got to admit that most of the people that came in, we all wanted, you know, it's like any competitive athlete, you all want to be on the best show and get the best stories. But once you had an early gig, whether it was Bob Lee, on the early show with Charlie Steiner,

the late Tom E's was a terrific person, died way too early, it was very nice to me and my family when we first moved out there. I mean, you had to just do the best you could with the slot you had and fill in, whether it was weekends. But look, if you were doing a sports center, weekends where a lot of things happen, I mean, the hours were a little crazy sometimes, but you took the show you could get.

And I was fortunate enough when I moved in there, John Walsh, who was running things, overseeing things at the time. And he let me, hey, you can fill in on the 6 o'clock. And we'll, you can fill in on the 11 with Dan or with Chris Barman when he does that. But the late show developed. And that's where he said, hey, you know,

you like these West Coast. teams. You worked out there as West Coast Report. So going on at two in the morning in Connecticut in the winter two to three. But good things happened there. It was fun. It was different hours. And we had to adjust. But yeah, you were hoping for your opportunity to fill in and then show that you could do it. But I would say we had a number of talented people that could work in any show. It was just maybe who you worked with, right, and who you played off of who you were comfortable in working with. Who were the anchors in that sports center pool that you looked at and said, wow, he does that part of the job really well.

Well, I was, my view was, and I thought, you know, like, Bob Lee is the journalist sports guy, and Chris Berman is the fun highlight sports guy. And, you know, some people gravitated to one side or the other. It wasn't necessarily personal with him. He's too serious about sports. Oh, he doesn't take sports serious enough. So I kind of really enjoyed both of them. I mean, and Dan got to work with not as much.

Mike Tarrico came along. We had the late show where we developed some chemistry there in a short amount of time, actually. But yeah, in terms of the hierarchy, yeah, I mean, I would say Berman and Lee, to me, were the standard. There was kind of a catchphrase arms race in that era of SportsCenter. That's a good way. You know, boy, it is, yeah, and there's still, they still, they still, they're still some cheesy ways to think. But what I mentioned in the Bork, too, right, was important because I didn't want people to think, like, I'm going to work on this as a catch raise that those don't work. You know, I think what happened is I, you know, you try to find

after, you know, so many different highlights of different games and on the fly and ad living. And back then we wrote our own stuff. I don't know if they still do. But, but, you know, you just wanted to say things differently and how a guy strikes out or, you know, with a three ball or a three pointer. You know, you just got tired of three point shot, three point shot, home run, whatever. So at other reaction, you know, we had this great little area in, in sports set of the assignment desk and all the monitors around, we all would kind of share where we were writing these little cubicles that we're watching. We all would react for different shows, you know, when highlights coming up or what we were doing. And so if somebody said something

that caught our attention or you got our reaction, you know, like, hey, wow, wow, you know, I don't think people realize how much they use the word wow, especially in sports, but in life, you know, wow is a great thing to be like, you know, or it could be like, whoa, wow, you know, like that's shocking. But anyway, so that deserves a wow. kind of the name of the book and how they can, but say something like that. Like, that deserves a while, and some people start using it. And it's like, okay, well, then that's acceptable, you know, kind of a thing. I kid because I care was another one, which I think I mentioned, I don't if that's in the book

or not, because we did some editing. But it was late Sports Center where I may have overused, which I was, you know, younger at Sports Center. And it's like, three, 30 in the morning after phone rings back at the desk. And I pick it up. And I got, like, hey, is this Chris Myers? I'm like, yeah, he's like, you know, I watched you guys. The show is good.

But you stop kidding. stop carrying, he slams the phone down. You know, it's like, okay, I got the message. That's an overused. This is just a random person calling through. Yeah, it's a regular caller. This is not John Walsh. Right.

It's not the boss, although they sometimes would tell you certain things. Hey, you're over, you know, whatever. And obviously Dan, Dan had, you know, Chris Berman different. So, but my thing was they had to happen, trendy words, organically. But naturally, it had to work and fit the moment, as if we were all sitting around watching a game. And you said, wow, or you offended, you tease somebody. I kick as I care, whatever else. However, those things, however they develop.

But yes, we were trying to outdo each other, but it was a way of, as you say, I would say separating yourself or creating your own identity within the realm of being a sports center. Beginning in 1995, you come back out here to L.A. and you become the host of Up Close, the interview show. Now, there's going to be some people who are too young to remember Golden Age Up Close.

So what was up close? It was a half-hour one-on-one interview for the most part that Roy Firestone created. It was Sports Look before it became up close, Mazda Sports Look, that he created out here kind of on his own, worked with it into ESPN when they were looking for programming. And as he was stepping away from that role, I think we're still going to do something through ESPN. They were looking for somebody. And I had filled in a few times for him when he couldn't do a show because I had been out West

and really enjoyed. That was always a thing I enjoyed about Johnny Carson, you know, one of the way. watching sports, the interview, the people, how they're thinking, how they react. And this was a cool, really special format. And there was nothing else like it and still very rare. I almost picture, you know, Charlie Rose, Barbara Walters, that kind of thing. But in a half-hour sports, and it would come on in around the early sports center and would be done usually live to tape.

At least that's when I came out to do it. That's what I wanted. And I pushed to try to do some interviews live when we could. And it's one of the most favorite things that I've ever done. Later, I did something called CMI, Chris Myers, interview with Fox and Fox Sportsnet or FS1, which I enjoyed. But those for me were for some really special years. I wanted to get back to California, warm weather and the environment here.

But to have a show to do like that, then the opportunity came up. It was a tough call. I was enjoying, you know, sports center working back there. And they debated like, hey, do you really want to, you know, this is not necessarily a promotion? no, I want to do it and went for it and really enjoyed the time. You got the nickname the Velvet Hammer because you could nicely ask a tough question that needed to be asked. What is the technique for doing that?

Dave Coelho, who has worked with in radio and works as a guest at Booker for the network, gave me that. He's a friend of mine. The technique is, I would say, making people feel comfortable, but making sure you're guiding them in an area where they're going to at least, I think when people are comfortable, they reveal things. Where we're sitting here, talk to you, it's comfortable. We're going to reveal more than we would if it was kind of a, you know, Q&A, less of a conversation. You got to know the person, read the person. But the first thing is if they're not comfortable with you, you know, and part of that is when people watch your other interviews or your other show, you know,

hey, how did he treat that guy when Warren Moon had a domestic violence situation and he came on, talked about that but also was talking about his quarterback play or you know when this guy when pete rose did this how did he handle that with still asking the questions again i'm always thinking about what people want to ask and and and not be fanboy here but and also appreciate you know i'm talking to the value of their of their talent and respect that so i would say you know comfortability uh relating a little bit to being aware and read the signals and look if somebody says hey i really don't want to talk about that then we don't want to talk about it i mean i didn't do a lot of pre interview, that kind of stuff. There weren't questions ahead of time. But if somebody was coming on and said, look, I'm just, I'm not comfortable talking about this. If it wasn't a major story, we respected that and we moved on. That brings us right to your 1998 interview with O.J. Simpson. He had been exonerated by this point for two murders in his criminal trial, been found liable in his civil trial. How did you get O.J. Simpson into the up-close chair?

Well, we were trying to get him on before this ever happened on the show. And he watched- Before the murder. Yes, before he was ever charged, yes, because he was an entertaining sports personality and out in Southern California quite a bit. Todd Fritz, who works at the Dan Patrick Radio Show, was our guest coordinator and had a really good relationship helping to set things up. But after all this, we were like, wow, would he still come on? And he reached out and away to us as we stayed with it after all this. I thought we'd never hear from again. And he, through his representative, he's like, hey, I think I watched the show. Chris is fair.

We talked about it before. You know, I'll come on. I'd like to come on. Of course, we would want him. I'd said, but just understand, we're not going to be talking football that changed what we were trying to get before. This is going to be Emmett Smith or Barry Sanders. We've got some business to conduct you.

Exactly. This is, we're talking because it's the first, it's the first live interview with him immediately after that trial. And that was, he told me, Barbara Walters was going to do it, but she would only tape it, or him at his representative and said, no, it. had to be live. He didn't want somebody editing his answers to make him look guilty. He wanted to do, as people warned me, he knew the lies better than anybody or whatever story he was spitting, and so he would make you look stupid if it's live. But that was one of his requests. The other

request was, I just can't ask about my kids. And I like, that's fair. And he said, otherwise, go ahead, ask whenever you want. And so he said he would do the show. We were going to do it live for a half hour. I ended up being 50 minutes or whatever. We, on the fly, the headquarters, at ESPN said, let's stay with this. It was compelling enough to go through it and do it. There were announcers at ESPN who did not think you should put OJ Simpson on the air. Yes, yes. There were other, when they promoted it, there were other people who said, you shouldn't, you know,

why put a, as they were, why put a killer, you know, he's disgusting, why put it? I, you know, that's their opinion. And I had some doubts maybe about going ahead to do the interview, Bill Murray, who, you know, I referenced before in recommending a book I read was, you know, a friend of mine, I talked to him a little bit. So, of course, you got to do it. This is something, you know, you just have to do your homework. And so, and there were some people kind of threatening about, you know,

leaving messages about why would you do this? But ESPN backed me on, hey, we should go for it. We should do it. This is a little out of the realm of sports. It's sports news, in a sense. But I don't think people, and I don't blame of it first for hesitated. because I think they thought, well, he's going to go on there and talk about his career and, you know, and charm. He's a charming guy or at least he was in terms of his persona.

And so he's going to, you know, he's going to try. And maybe O.J. thought that. I never really asked him. But I think he felt he believed his own, his own story and ego so much. I think he felt I can come on and I can convince people that I'm the same old OJ and I'm, you know, I'm great. Whatever they throw at me, I can handle it, which is a line he said after the first segment off the air when we hit his, his policy. woman came running out of the green room and it's like the questions I was asking about, you know, beating his wife and she's like, oh, you can't talk about this. And he's like,

no, no, I got this. Go back in there. No problem. And that's when he also asked me in the break, you know, tea time to play golf at Riviera when I want to join him the next week after we just showed pictures of his wife being beat up in the middle of the night. So that was a little unnerving. So you've just been asking about the murders and then go to commercially. He says, would you like to play golf with me? Right. He turns in the break. The two minute, I think two minute, two and a half minute break. Yeah, because we were doing it live. I got room in my foresight, Chris, if you'd like to join me. I don't think, I don't think that's the force of I want to be in, which is, which that was

cut, and I don't know, was that a tactic, but I don't think about, at the time, I'm just thinking about doing the interview, but when I look back on it, and I've never watched, I've ever gone back and watched the entire review, which is kind of strange. I still feel like I miss some, there's some things I could. Why haven't you watched it? Because you watched all your interviews from that. Yeah, I always, yeah, I always would, even my local sports show, I would grade them, watch them in detail. This one, I just felt, and I wanted to, I guess I wanted to be fair, even though when I studied everything and had great access that maybe even people in the jury

didn't have beforehand. I'm talking about with attorneys, with photos, with police, with, anyway, it was no way he didn't do it in my eyes, but I just didn't want to come across as, you know, a prosecutor, you know, in that regard. And so I, and maybe in hindsight, I wish I had, more of, done more of that, maybe. That's maybe one of the reasons I didn't want, you know, haven't watched it back. Anyway, you do the best you can at the time. If people want to watch it, it's all on YouTube. And OJ's performance in this interview is incredibly strange.

You ask him, would you kill for Nicole? And he brings up the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in World War II later compares himself to Job in this interview. Yeah. I forgot how I reacted to that, but I didn't react well. I don't think. I don't know if they took a shot of you after that or not. that would have been an interesting expression.

And then the interview ends, and OJ gives this big smile straight out of the Hertz commercial and says, nice talking sports with you. Sarcasm. Yeah. Sarcasmusic. Yeah, sarcastic. Like, well, you didn't ask me any questions about football in my career at USC. Just one time.

Sorry. I don't think it was appropriate to go to that. Not when we covered and we expanded to 50, but which I was, it's the only guess I never shook his hand. And often interviewing a player after a game and a rush. Super Bowl World Series. I usually will thank somebody didn't shake their hand, even if we're off camera. I just, but that

was his sarcastic view. I don't think in 50 minutes, I mean, but we still had more things I wanted to cover, but we ran out of time. I never misled him and said we were going to talk about his career. Remember, he said you can ask anything you want, and we stayed away from those two items that he requested. Other memorable

interview was Mike Tyson in 1999. You were at Fox by this point. This is two years after Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Hoyfield's ear. How did that encounter? Well, I almost got beat up by Mike Tyson. It was scary. I was more afraid of him there in his backyard with him, you know, inches from my face that I was from OJ Simpson.

And that was the Fox CMI, Chris Myers, interview with Fox FS1 and the National Sports Report. It was after he had gotten out of prison, right? And so it was one and working his way back in a fight. And we had trying to set up the interview. And he said, I want you to come out, watch it. We'll do it at the gym. And then we get there with our crew. And then he says, no, why don't you, you know, follow us.

from the from the from the, it was someplace out in the desert. A bunch of followers, we'll sit and do it at the house. So it's like, all right, so the crew, we all had to drive along. I'll keep it a little shorter for you, but it was,

we set up outside by the pool, you know, and, uh, we're going through the interview. I mean, a few, a few lines,

few funny lines that were different. I think, I don't know if I said in the book yet, remember he had the tigers, the, yeah, in his yard. And I said,

well, hey, I was a little concern. It's a concern. Like, where are the tigers that I think you said, said, if I had to get rid of them, they don't like white people. So I thought, like, okay, well, it's going to be a fun ride here.

So we sit out and I'm showing him covers of sports illustrators, a good idea by the producer here to, and then get his reaction through his career. You know, hey, your first heavyweight fight at this age, you win the title here, you, you know, and then it's like we get to the holy field. You know, he's responding to all these rather reasonably. So I'm closer to him. Well, maybe as close as you and I are sitting now. And I said, here, you know, this is you bit off, you know, Holyfield's ear.

And before I could even finish, he yelling up sentities and the spit was flying as he lunges just towards me saying I'm trying to provoke him. And it's a good thing. His, and I producer tried to step over, but one of it had one of his bodyguards standing by assistant what he wanted to call him. It's good thing he was, you know, who had trained with. A big guy, just like him kind of hooked his arm. They held it back a little as he got, I mean, literally into my, right into my face. in the chair and I'm you know I'm flat my life's flashing like I have no shot here so uh I'm thinking maybe I'll jump in the pool which was right you're set out I'll try to out swim him

so he sits back down and I say you know that was nothing funny here Mike if you don't want to answer the question you know just just say so and we'll move on in fact even the interview we could we can wrap it up right now if you if you and he's like no no no no let's let's it was just a snap. Let's stay. Let's finish. No, no, no, no. So he answers the question. After that, I just wanted to get through the other items. Hey, thanks. We're going to, no, no, I don't leave. Let's, let me give you a tour around the house. After getting in your face, he wants to give you a tour the entire place. Yeah, and I'm like, I hope the other guy comes with us, too, just in case. But anyway, he was very polite. And then, hey, you want

a bottle of water. You need something like the house. It's great. Thanks, Mike. But the sad part, what came out of the interview. And again, they, his team, I don't know where those tapes are. They didn't want that to make error. But the two things that came out of it were that he felt the two places he felt most comfortable in life, in prison and in the ring. I mean, that was kind of it. And a sad part that happiness, the word, or what that meant, he could not relate to that. Again, this was back during those years. Hopefully things have changed for him over time. But that's more what came out of that, what I left that interview with. which athletes sat in the chair across from you and just gave you nothing?

Wow. There were some guys with one-word answers that were not. Usually if you came on the show, you knew athletes wanted to come on. It was their platform. So you knew you were going to be talked to. Some of them, I think they either froze up, got shy, or their agent was like, hey, can you get them on? Ken Caminiti, may he rest in peace, the former baseball player.

head. And at the time, maybe we didn't realize maybe some of the personal things going on and around his life, but he had a terrific career at this point. They were just kind of one word, frozen answers that, and I'm like, you know, does he not want to be here? Does he, you know, so you have to dance around those and you end up telling more stories about their life than they do. And, you know, I'm sure anybody's done interviews as had, and this was, you know, live to tape, so we couldn't, you know, we can't really, we have to turn it around. He's the guests on the show. You know, this is not something we can change. So that was one.

There were a few others that I think were more just shy. And so you know, you do the best you can with them. But you never want to embarrass anybody. And you just struggle through it. You know, but that's where your preparation research is you're still, I'm still thinking, okay, they're not, if this, they're not willing to tell the audience, we still have a show to do. I got to tell more about them.

They don't tell the story from their childhood that I'm going to tell them. Right. Yes, and sometimes I'll even like purposely maybe not tell the whole story or mess the story up so they'll correct me to get them a little bit involved. It was a tactic that I didn't like to go to, but I just want to give me something. I would try some humor sometimes and sometimes that doesn't work. I remember I had Brian Cox on a, you know, and he wore like the linebacker for the Dolphins. Yes, right. I later did a radio.

He wore like a vest, like it wasn't stylish, but a vest without a shirt on the show. And so I opened the show and he was a little, you know, he's a tense. And I was like, oh, hey, well, I guess you forgot your shirt today. I'm trying to lose it. And he just looked at me like a blitzing linebacker. He was going to bury me. And I was like, I, we're moving on. That tactic's not working.

But later became friends and did a radio show together. So he's in wild personality. 98, you moved from ESPN to Fox. What was the biggest difference between Fox and ESPN? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I hit them both at a time where they were not, it wasn't their first year in what they were doing, but it was the early years of Fox Sports and the early years of ESPN through the 90s, because they'd obviously been around through the 80s. They were just established. So I kind of

was fortunate at hitting it at the right stride. I don't know about the difference. They both over time, I mean, I enjoyed the fun sports atmosphere. I would say Fox Sports is, you know, it's a more, even though it's serious about sports, it's a more casual, fun, creative, looser kind of from the boss's management down. And maybe that's because at the time going through that change, it was not, you didn't have as many layers of management. It wasn't as big, you know, as what ESPN Disney became with, again, ESPN 2, ESPNU and the entire growth and ABC sports or ABC Disney kind of merging.

That's probably what stood out the most. I mean, there's good people in both. There's always somebody you don't care for along the way, but you just try to avoid them. You hit both when they were still being created in a sense, when they were coming up with the grammar, with the rules of what they were going to be. Yeah, I would say, and so they, yeah, maybe if I came to Fox a little later, I might have a different view or ESPN a little later. But I was glad that I hit it when I did. And it wasn't easy to leave in ESPN.

Again, that was my choice. I thought, you know, I was going to be there forever. I mean, I was kind of thinking, hey, just grow with the network and there's different roles you could do. But at the time, they were not allowing, ESPN had this view of your sports center anchor. You're not a play-by-play guy. Or you're not a, you know, they allowed me from the up-close interview show to go out and do some reporting on NFL games or different events, which I really appreciated because I still liked that. And it helped me preparing for interviews. So Fox, I'm thinking, okay, well, they have, you know, they got the NFL that puts them on the map.

Oh, and then they're getting baseball. And then they had NASCAR. And then so this is like there's there's some room there to do some other things, like to work to be on the on the broadcast of a Super Bowl, you know, to be part of that or at a World Series. You know, the network covering the games that that's the high point of if you're a sports fan growing up and you're interested in this business. That's what you really, you know, want to be a part of if you can. And so I was able to do that with Fox that opportunity. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't easy to leave. But Fox, it was really a great.

Let me ask you about a few of the mind-blowing sports moments that you were present for. 1989, you are in the auxiliary press box at Candlestick Park at the World Series. What do you remember about the earthquake that followed? Sitting with Chris Berman, Bob Lee, and Joe Torrey was our guest analyst of all people. And we were up high, getting ready. We weren't obviously the network broadcasting it, but Sports Center we did before and after highlights and coverage. The Rumble had our crew ready. the rumble.

And I had gone through as a West Coast reporter a little earlier, a minor earthquake. I didn't grow up out in the West Coast, again, originally from Florida. But anyway, this jolt hit. And at first, the way it sounded, it shook the ground. I mean, it looked like the field was like rippling almost, you know, like waves. Visually, it necessarily didn't, but it kind of glanced because we were moving, felt like that. And it seemed like it lasted longer than it did. But the noise, too, I thought maybe like a plane, a small plane,

had hit the back of Candlestick Park, the stadium at the time. At least that was my first reaction. And probably right away went into journalist mode and Chris Burma went into, hey, this is a fun. What a wild time. I hope everybody's all right, you know, kind of a thing. So we rush. Everybody on brand during the earthquake.

Exactly. We stayed in our lane. And then we rushed down and got to the trucks because we had, and at the time, not that I'm a technical whiz here, but our satellite trucks were there. And so we were able to stay on the air, even if power went out or those types of things, generators actually helped, I think the ABC broadcasts with,

I think it was ABC without, that's correct. They were able to stay on the air because of ESPN. Yes, and so it allowed us, even though we weren't necessarily on ABC at that point, was part of the same. So we, or at least we're getting on ESPN 24-hour sports channels,

so we're on right away on our own channel, meaning us, and I was dispatched to report a role. Bob Lee was kind of hosting, Burma was going to lean on some people. So at the time, again, this is often these things, these things that become bigger than sports, we didn't realize, it was serious, but we didn't realize the damage and the casualties across the entire Bay Area. And so the game becomes a secondary thing. But the quick, I could see the families jumps out Mark McGuire, Terry Steinbach, the catcher, Tony LaRouza, just from the stands, them rushing to go as things unfolded.

towards their families and the fear and the concern. And so eventually got to LaRouca and was there covering that. But the first thing for all of us was let's get on the air and tell people whatever we can tell them. And the communication, we didn't have the kind of communication you have now with cell phones, that type of thing. So it wasn't as easy, but we did talk to people to gather information, at least in and around the stadium and with the game. And obviously it's not going to play it. but that was, yeah, that was a jolting, no pun intended. It was really a jolting moment that kind of stayed with me.

And I didn't know that it'd be the first of many things that would go far beyond sports in the coverage that I was doing. Yeah, here's another one. Seven years later, you're hosting ESPN's Olympics coverage in Atlanta in the wee hours of the morning when a bomb goes off in Centennial Park. Where were you and what did you do from there? I was above the Olympic Village, the second story of the, chamber of commerce building where we had been taping up close

Charles Barkley was with us earlier I think we had Tom Broca had actually been on too because NBC had the Olympics and we were I was just helping out because it was the late sports center and so I was doing an update on the coverage boxing was there and we couldn't show video of that but we could do results and then talk about something and then get ready for the for the next day of taping up close so right away sirens you're trained to like roll through noise you know you've seen people live shots still do your job. I'm going through the boxing.

I hear this boom. And I'm thinking it's fireworks because for the time of night that it was. And there were, you know, there's people at all hours still going below it towards the Olympic Village, some entertainment areas. And then we stop. And I like, hold on a guy. You know, see sirens and I'm hearing things. I'm watching people rush.

I actually had a pretty good view from up there. But I didn't know what it was about. And so, producer said, hey, this is pretty serious. I said, yeah, let's, you know, why don't we stay on this? this. I know we're taping for a sports center, but we'll, we'll get some information. I don't if we can. I said, oh, yeah, we can. I said, so let me find out what's going on, and we'll stay on this. And at first, they wouldn't, they didn't want us to stay. They wanted everybody out of the building. They thought they were, when I say, they, security came in, police,

law enforcement, and then later we saw some people with the bomb squad or, you know, National Guard that were there. And I was just trying to convince him to let me stay so that I could get a view in reporting. Eventually, we had to get out of there. But it gave me good access and then I was able to gather some information and stay on through the night all the way through to like 6 or 7 a.m. the next morning. And the guys back in the studio were gathering information from the wire services, but I would do cut-ins and talk to different people. And that was again that moment where you just react to what's happening. It's a sports moment that becomes bigger than sports. And we all thought even people that were on the scene that there was a greater threat for,

either terrorism or more bombs. And it was an exhausting experience, but again, our coverage just showed that, you know, because we were live and we were on the scene, you know, we could bring people up to date. And I think the overnight news services, ABC News or whatever, picked it up and put it on in different places, because people had talked about that afterwards. You were doing an old anchorman trick that night where you were wearing your suit up top and then Bermuda shorts on the bottom, business up top, party on the bottom. Yes, because it was so.

hot during the day and we had this outdoor platform. And so, yeah, wandering around the streets of Atlanta gathering news. I never had time to change. And in these shorts, and a few of the shots, actually, when the cameraman was live, but it would show that. People like, what the heck? You know, and so I wasn't, but, you know, going through the night, I had planned on doing all this. I was hungry. I was thirsty. It was hard to find a bathroom to, you know, to wander through the streets where things were closed because, again, they're blocking roads off. They're shutting things down. And then, yeah, so, but at least I was comfortable in the Bermuda shorts.

and it cooled off that night. Last moment for you, 2001, this is Dale Earnhardt's death. You were hosting the Daytona 500 Fox that just got in the NASCAR rides. You were doing pre-and-post-race coverage. Earnhardt gets in a crash on the final lap, winds up dying. Are you off the air when all this happens? You know, the timeline of the evening. Yeah, we're our play-by-play crew with Darrell Waltrip, Mike Joy, calling it,

Larry McReynolds, in the booth. We're on the Daytona 500. above the track there, but we're coming on after the race ends. You'll talk about the winner. Recap, I have an analyst, Jeff Hammond, with me, former crew chief who had worked with Earnhardt. And so they're calling and reacting. They see something awkward. They see a driver run towards him and then run away, and they don't want to say it,

but they're like, they've lived that as drivers, oh, this is bad. You know, at first the crash away hit into the wall, it was like, we've seen worse. I mean, usually guys walk away. from that type of thing or they might be injured. But this time, no, there wasn't that. So right away, we knew this was more serious. And I hadn't, this was Fox's first broadcast of the Daytona 500. I'd done some interviews with NASCAR drivers covered it somewhat,

but not at this, you know, not at this level, like football, baseball, or even the NBA and some of those kinds of things. And so they kind of hand it off to us. We get the information but can't release that he has passed. passed away because they have to notify the family. He's taken to the hospital, but pretty much the people in the NASCAR world, those that were in our broadcasting, they knew it. But out of respect to the situation, we all had to wait a NASCAR president,

Mike Helton had to later announce, we've lost Dale Earnhardt. So we, as a network, it was interesting. We didn't stay on the air to do that. I mean, you know, because we had primetime programming in it. So we had to leave the area. Obviously, the irony is that, you know, Michael Walter, running for the Dale Earnhardt Incorporated race team wins the Daytona 500, and then he has he has this. But what we covered afterwards certainly was when we did report on it in the funeral service

and the NASCAR role the next time we came back to racing was a very, very difficult experience. Got a moving and lovely chapter in this book about your son, Christopher, who died in a car accident in 2012. When do you find yourself thinking about Christopher these days? Pretty much every day. Yeah, always. It never leaves you. And that you will. You I wish, I wish I had spent more time with them as a parent or any parent out there. You know, we have the challenges of providing for our family and living life as best we can from our kids when we have them. I have a son, Alex, as well, two years younger than him as younger brother. And, you know, sports worked weekends.

You travel. It allowed me the opportunity to be around them during the week. But you don't know how long, and he was 19. I mean, I'm thinking, okay, we're going to get through college. He had plans if he became a sports fan, a sports fanatic. It's funny, he was not as much. In fact, both of my sons were not as much a sports fan younger. I mean, they played some sports, but I think they viewed it as sports has taken my dad away again,

at least at the youth part. Then once they understood and got to spend some time. But yeah, no, I think about Chris Offen, I wish I had more time. I'm glad at least the minutes I had, I tried to make the most of them. And I encourage any and every parent to do that because you don't know how much time you have. What was the experience like writing down all those memories? That was hard to do. And I didn't want to, in the book, I didn't really want to go there.

But I think it was important to, if I want to tell about covering sports and from my view, from the inside out and the people that, you know, there's some interesting stories with and the interviews, the good and the bad and the fun. And I had to kind of tell my story. And I always tried to make it, you know, it's like the Shakespeare, the play is the thing. So the game is the thing. The interview is the thing. The player, you know, we're on TV and we're in a sense part of that, but it's not about us. You know, so and then this part, I saw the not only my own family and then Fox Sports, the people there just do whatever they could to help me through it, but special people from the sports world that I knew from working, but was not as close to like family or my coworkers at Fox really step up in ways I couldn't imagine for me. my family to kind of help me through that. And so I thought that was important to put to show that,

you know, in the, in, and write that so that people that might go through something like that, don't give up hope because you do. You reach a point where like, you know, it's hard to understand when your, when your child is taken away from you. And, and you start to doubt a lot of things. And bad things could, you know, you can go down a, you can go down a dark path. And you have to have people that are willing to just be there. And as long as you know they're there when you need them, makes a difference. Rick Hendrick, who I talk about the race car owner and NASCAR. I mean, other people that reach, I don't want to leave anybody out, but Eric Shanks and Fox Sports for going above and beyond not just how much time you need and what your family needs, but personal

things to check on you. Even strangers touched by fans when I did come back from NASCAR fans that were very supportive. So yeah, I don't really, I don't like talking about it. I do think about it. because I have to. It's part of who I am, as I said, every day, almost every minute that I'm not focused on something else work-wise. But, yeah, it was, I think it was important to kind of share not a lot of the details of the loss, but I think dealing with it and what do you want to call it recovery, handling it because you owe it, I think, to yourself, to the other members of your family and the people that matter to you. Before we go, I've got to ask you about Bill Murray.

He wrote the forward to this book. you met him at the 1994 Espies. How did you and Bill Murray become pals? Well, it was an usual story. Dan Patrick and I got a call. We're doing SportsCenter at that point filling in on the 11 and they're doing the

USPs first year of the year. I think it was not the first year, maybe the second or third, but it was gaining popularity and Bill Murray's going to do a segment. John Walsh had a relationship with him from his Rolling Stone days as a magazine writer. And so they said take a car down from Connecticut and

Bill's going to write some stuff and that you guys are going to be wrapped into the open or he's going to do something for some segment. And so we drive down there and we come into this room and there's all these comedy writers. Bill, you know, Dan and I committed a bill and I paraphrated. But he's kind of like, hey, thanks, you guys. We don't need you guys. These guys write their own stuff for SportsCenter. We'll be fine.

So they were a little offended. It makes you feel good. So, yeah, but see, there's a guy from Saturday Night Live. I mean, really talented comedy writers. We got the pros here. We don't need you. Well, I was like, Bill, we're not comedy writers. He goes, no, I watch SportsCenter.

Are you a dad or, you know, you guys? So that connection. And then after that, hanging out with that, he comes from a big family. I come up from a big family. He started talking a little bit after, you know, a very astute sports fan, which is, I mean, he could step in almost any role if he was serious enough about it and do analysts work for golf or football or baseball. I mean, he loves baseball. But anyway, so that's kind of how we connected. And he said, hey, if you ever want to go to a game, a couple of months later, he called, said, you know,

hey, I got tickets for the Cubs are in town to play the Mets in New York. You want to come down. So, you know, I think I talk about a little bit of that experience with him. So just over time, there was a comfort level with him. Obviously, he's, you know, he's funny. He's Bill Murray, but he's very intelligent. He's very, you know, somebody who I kind of respected, almost like a, like, and I have an older brother, a younger brother, but I, like a bigger brother kind of a thing.

And I saw him interact with his brothers, got to know his brothers, Ryan Doyle Murray, John Murray, you know, Andy, there's, they're all over. There's Murray's everywhere. different, but he could also, he's very funny, but you, you, you, but he's all, you got to pay attention. You don't know where he's going sometimes, what he's going to do. So, you know, I always appreciate what I did, you know, up close later, and I asked him to come on. He says he's going to do it. He'll do it. It's just a matter of when and how you make it happen. But there was, yeah, it was kind of a friendship. He'd been over to the house. And, and, and I'd been out to his,

his, his charity golf event, that doesn't get a lot of attention, you know, TV coverage, but he does it for charity. Kind of a low profile. I was glad to help out. But a really unique person. And even if he wasn't the actor comedian, I really, you know,

I would be a friend of his and enjoy company. I might say, hey, you know, I don't see enough, whatever, that kind of thing. But I'm thankful for that

because there were some key moments that I felt like I could ask him things and talk to him about things. And he would be honest about it. In Hollywood, he was always such an elusive figure. I think the story was that if you wanted Bill Murray to be in your movie,

you called and left a message on this. answering machine. And then at some point, Bill Murray would call you back or not call you back. Or not call you back. And he, that's the thing, just, you know, his phone number. And I forget how I got it because he had a phone and then a phone, home phone, excuse me, then later a cell. But and then later he became quite a texter kind of thing. So, hey, my kids, that's the only way I operate with texting with them. So that's how I operate here. But yeah, even if you, you might call him and he might call you out of the blue and you don't hear from, he'd call the house, talk to

my son and, you know, my wife about things. And just out of, out of the, you know, out of the blues. You know, how's everything going there? If I'm, you know, if I'm in town, let's go try to play golf,

you know, that type of thing. But yet not, not easy to get a hold of. You never know. And maybe that's what, what he enjoys about, where his life is gone.

He's, uh, he likes being on the move and going in different directions. The book is that deserves a while, which is available at fine bookstores everywhere and also low grade bookstores everywhere. Chris Myers, thank you for coming on the press box.

Oh, it's always a pleasure talking to you, Brian. Thank you. That is a, Press Box, I'm Brian Curtis. But I'm Brian Waters. If you're listening to this over Thanksgiving, right now, I am at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, watching the god-awful Dallas Cowboys play the god-awful New York Giants.

Please spare a thought for your humble podcast host at a time like this. One social media announcement before we go. Some of you've heard this, but we're no longer just on Twitter at the Press Box Pod. now on Blue Sky, also at the Pressbox Pod. If you've been wanting to make the leap from one service to the other, this is a great time. Please join us over there. We'd love to have you as a follower and fellow media consumer. All right.

I'm back Monday with David, then back Thursday with Joel. You know there will be more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving, and I will talk to you then.