The Press Box - Rece Davis on His Long Career at ESPN and the Changing Landscape of College Football

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Bryan is joined by 'College GameDay' host Rece Davis to talk about his 25-plus-year career at ESPN. He talks about how he got his start at ESPN2, using 'Seinfeld' puns on 'SportsCenter,' and the upcoming college football season. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Rece Davis Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the NFL preseason. Check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever get your podcast. And if you need fantasy football rankings, we've got our rankings, we've got our sleepers at Fantasy Football.com. So come listen to Danny Kelly, Greg Horlebeck, and me, Danny Hifitz on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Kaya McMullen, who's sitting in for Erica.

While I'm here on the East Coast, I made one last trip to ESPN headquarters in Bristol. This time I went to see Reese Davis. Reese Davis is the host of ESPN's College Game Day, the show a lot of us college football fans begin our Saturdays with, and the show that's one of two, maybe three, pre- or post-game shows that are essential viewing anywhere on sports television. Today, Davis is such a big part of ESPN that there's actually a Lego mural of him and fellow cast members on the wall in Bristol. But the early parts of his career were very interesting. In the mid-90s, Davis cut his teeth at ESPN 2, aka the deuce.

When he got to Sports Center, he was the guy using Seinfeld catchphrases. And for a time, Davis even wore a judge's robes and banged a gavel in college football segments with Mark May and Lou Holtz. So how do you get from no soup for you to being a host everyone describes as unflappable? Here's Reese Davis.

All right, Reese. You were 13 years old when ESPN started broadcasting in 19, What were your first memories of watching ESPN? Australian Rules Football. I can remember it popping on the cable system when we lived in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and there were various things on. But the Australian Rules football caught my attention.

And when we would play backyard football, we even tried once a group of kids in the neighborhood to try to do the passes where you just knock the football to someone else and stuff. But before long, we reverted back to our, favored brand, but that's the thing I remember the most. And if I still run across it somewhere on cable channel surfing, I still look for the guy in the white suit to come out and do the double point when they score. And I was a little chagrin just a week or two ago. I don't even know

which network it was on. I was surfing through and they were playing. So I watched a little while. And the guys don't wear the full suits, or at least they didn't have it on in this particular game. And I wasn't happy about that. But yeah, I think that Berman early on, you know, just was unlike anyone else you really saw in that era of sportscasting. And I think those are my first memories from the studio standpoint, the early days seeing Chris sort of start to do the nicknames and different things that were really different from what you saw in sports broadcasting at that time. Those are my earliest memories of it.

When you start thinking about careers a few years later, are you thinking I want to be on TV or I want to be on ESPN specifically? I wanted to be probably by high school or college, I wanted to be on ESPN. That's where I wanted to go. I had a very distorted view of the path that you needed to take to get there. I felt like, you know, you probably had to get some big market and get noticed. But I wanted to be on ESPN because it was all sports. And they were dedicated to it and their passion for it.

And obviously, by the time I got out of college, there was a strong connection with college football, which that in college basketball are the two sports that I love the most. So, you know, I always wanted to be involved in those, and that seemed to be the place to do it because they were doing more of it than anyone else. So my goal was to be on ESPN. People at the time, you know, sort of scoffed at that. And, yeah, sort of gave you the little pat on the back, said, yeah, good luck with that kid and hope that works out for you, you know, or they'd say, what is ESPN, even still, you know,

or in some of the earlier days. But, yeah, that was the goal more so than just, be on TV. 1993, you're working as an anchor in Flint, Michigan, not a gigantic market. What did you do there to get noticed by ESPN? The short answer is I don't know exactly because I had been in Columbus, Georgia, prior to that and could not get out to the point to where I was wondering, what is it that I'm doing wrong?

And a man called Jim Bliker was the news director at WJRT and Flint. He was the one who hired me there in a couple of weeks after I'd gotten that job. I went into his office and I said, why did you hire me? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, I've been trying to get out of Columbus forever. Now, it's fortunate that I didn't because I met my wife there and we got married like six weeks after I moved to fled. I went back and got married. But I asked him that.

And he said, well, he said, I don't know. He said, but I suspect. He said, you know, your station wasn't exactly cutting edge technically. Some of the stuff didn't look great. You know, he said, not necessarily performance wise. He said, although you have room to grow. He wasn't saying I was the greatest thing, you know, to ever hit broadcasting. But he said, I imagine that a lot of people didn't watch because they popped it on the set was really, you know, unappealing.

And they probably didn't watch. He said, we thought, how would you look on our set? And so he hired me, and I didn't send a tape out except for ESPN. And I started getting all these calls. Like a month into my job at Flint, I got a call from Milwaukee and Columbus, Ohio, and Oklahoma City. and all of these places. And my wife said to me, where do you really want to go?

The answer was ESPN. And she said, well, why don't we try that instead of, you know, it's like bouncing around? And I ran across a fellow Alabama alumnus in an alumni magazine, Andrea Kirby, who had a terrific career on the air and also as a consultant and I sent her my stuff. And she encouraged me to go ahead and send it to ESPN.

even to the point where she asked me why I hadn't done that yet. And I told her because, as I mentioned earlier, I felt like I had to be in a bigger market. And she said, if you get in a big market. And remember, this was early 90s. She said, you'll never go to ESPN. And I said, why not? And she said, you won't take the pay cut.

Different era of local sportscasting at that time. She said, send it now. And so I did. And it worked out for me a few weeks later. You know, I got the job. I actually had my first conversation with Al Jaff This was pre-cell phones to show how old I am. I was standing in the parking lot of a Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio,

across the street from a station that wanted to interview me for a job there. And I used to pay phone, and I called him, and I said, I don't have any leverage. I'm not trying to snow you or anything, but I'm about to walk in here. And this is a pretty good gig, Buckyes, Columbus, Ohio, you know, and I think I have a good shot. And he said, if you want a shot at this job, don't take that one. and so I was able to maneuver enough to the point where they hired me here.

Do you give Columbus a little bit, let me think about that? Just need a couple of days. Well, fortunately for me, it was sort of like that, but fortunately for me, they had a little bit of a process to go through. And so I was getting, I got a couple of calls along the way from people there, say, hey, just be patient. We're working out some things. And I was like, okay, I'm good, you know. And, you know, in the meantime, I had come here and talk to them and was offered the job. here. You get hired by ESPN 2 in 1995. For people not around in the mid-90s, can you explain what the

deuce was like in those early years? It was supposed to be completely separate. In fact, one of the things that I was told when I was hired is don't come in here trying to talk us into doing Sports Center. Now, everybody wanted to do Sports Center. Everybody knows this. But I was trying to be compliant and a good employee, and I was told, don't do that. And then we were also, denim was big. If we wore a jacket, we weren't to wear a tie. If we wore a jacket, we weren't to wear a tie. a tie, we shouldn't wear a jacket, and more denim seemed to be better. Only Oberman tried the leather, and that didn't work out so well for him, I don't think, or for any of us who had to see that. But they were trying at that time to create a completely different identity for the network.

It was supposed to be, you know, cool or hip or younger, whatever, you know, grunge graphics, the whole thing. And, you know, we had a lot of fun. We had some really, really talented people over there, Stuart and Susie, as Stuart Scott, obviously, Susie Culper, we're hosting, you know, Sports Night, Kenny Mayne and Kenny May and Depp Kaufman were doing the sports smash updates. Bill Pito was part of it. Bill had moved into NHL tonight by then. So it was a good group. And we, there are still a lot of alumni from that group, even one of our researchers, Paul Kenny, who has been here the whole time, is just one of the best people in the company, was part of that, you know, was part of that group in the early days of ESPN 2. So there was a little brother feel to it. Now, you know, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say that all of the established sports center anchors thought that we were the greatest thing ever, you know, but there was a little bit of a, yeah, let the kids over there and do their play TV over there

on that ESPN too, you know, so there was some of the feel, but it was a great way to get a foot in the door and there were a ton of talented people working there. Other than wearing denim, what were you doing that was self-consciously hip? You know, I, the boy, I tell you, every now and then some of those clips will pop up and the fashion is, is a rough look. And I'm like, what was I thinking? You know, you'd go with the shirts and button them all the way to the collar and stuff like that. And, you know, try to pull off this cool hip vibe, I guess. So that was, that was pretty much the whole thing, you know.

And there was obviously a lot of pressure in those days, more so once you transitioned over to Sports Center. but there were still even some back then to say the next funniest thing that would have, you know, that would catch on and be the catchphrase, oh, the week or whatever. So there was some internal pressure that way, I think, that probably from time to time, pull to groin, trying to, you know, trying to get there. So they tell you, don't come in here trying to get to Sports Center. But of course, you want to get to Sports Center. How do you manage that the first time?

Well, they almost fired me first. and they called me in when it was time to reach the option portion of my contract. And first year, I've only been there a few months because they canceled. That was the other thing is they canceled sports night, not long after I arrived. So I was kind of doing, you know, the two to five minute updates, top and bottom of the hour and the occasional NHL hockey intermission. And they asked for an extension, and I sort of questioned why. And, you know, come to find out, well, we're deciding for,

to keep you and i'm like why so you know i kind of did the whole run around a thing throughout the executives trying to get the answer i saw it and finally when i got to uh howard cats and got a meeting he'd you know this was right around christmas too and he'd been out of town and finally we got together and we talked a little bit and he said look all i said was you know what are we going to do with him and so then i said to him no one comes here to do the sports Smash. I said, everybody wants to do Sports Center, but I was asked not to pursue that. And he said, what, do you want to do Sports Center? And I said, well, yeah. And he said, well, then I'll tell Norby to give you a shot at it. So they gave me, they gave me a Saturday night, 2 a.m. show with Brett Haber.

And I, you know, I did the show and I thought it went pretty well. Even to the point where when I came back up to my cubicle, my message light was on. And I assumed it was my, wife or my mother, dad, you know, sister or somebody, and that had stayed up that late to watch a show. And I pushed the message button, and it was Keith Alberman. And Keith had basically said, I don't know why you're not doing this. I assume you want to. I'll make my feelings known on Monday. Oh, this is K.O. As if I didn't know that. And I remember, I didn't really, I didn't have a relationship with him. The only, the only conversation I'd had with Keith in the preceding months was when I was introduced to him when they were showing me around the first day.

And I had great admiration for his riding ability. There's still no one who's ever done in SportsCenter who's a better writer than Keith. And he looked at me and said, run, there's still time to save your career and turned and walked away. And that was the extent of my relationship prior to that. And Keith left the message. And I don't know that he followed up or not. I have no idea whether he did. I've never really asked him.

But I was appreciative of that. And it was validating in a lot of ways to me because I thought, well, whatever decision they make, if this guy thinks I'm good, then I'm pretty good. And, you know, so fortunately for me, they gave me more opportunities and it fell in line. And then eventually I got to do what I really want to do, which is cover college football. This is mid-90s. So SportsCenter is becoming this gigantic cultural institution with Keith Olderman and Dan Patrick at the top. how do you work your way up the pecking order i never really did ryan to be honest with you um i did a ton of sports centers and never really had a regular gig i was always you know i um you know i worked a lot

with uh with rich eisen and then i worked a lot with stewart but then they paired them together uh you know i was always sort of the guy who rotated in and you know i never had i was never the permanent six o'clock host or the permanent sports center a.m. on the weekend's host, you know, I did probably two months of that, you know, in a stretch. And then, you know, you'd move to the next fill-in thing. So I think it was sort of serendipitous in a lot of ways because I think my strongest suit has always been covering the sports that I care the most about. I like them all. I love too. And being able to move from there into studio work and working working with that. and kind of reacting on the fly to what was happening.

You know, because back in the days, we used to have really extensive long studio shows sort of around the programming of games, particularly in Championship Week and basketball. You might, you know, we could be sitting in a studio, much like the one you and I are sitting in here. And it would be Champ Week, and they would say, hey, in the Sunbelt, we've got a game going in the second half. Why don't you guys talk about that game for a while? we're going to show it live for a few minutes. And we basically call the game and talk about the game and the implications and tournament

and all of that kind of stuff. And the same thing would happen on Saturdays and football a lot of times too prior to the advent of sort of wall-to-wall bumping kickoffs right together. And it was what it was right in my wheelhouse. It would be able to sit there and talk about games. Now, I love doing SportsCenter. It was fun. but, I mean, I felt like that was really where I was best suited to be, and I was blessed

to be able to get a chance to go there. You were the Seinfeld catchphrase guy during the late 90s? I don't know. I mean, all of my catchphrases were rip-off catchphrases, you know? I mean, you'd sit there and you'd watch Seinfeld every week and see if you could find the next one with Master, you know, Master of his domain or No Soup for you, or whatever they said that stuck giddy up. You know, it could have been anything, you know.

huge Seinfeld fan. I tried some of the older TV shows because I'm a, I'm a classic TV buff, but they didn't, it didn't resonate quite the way Seinfeld did in the, in the 90s. There was a Beverly Hillbillies one in there, I think,

some Monty Python, some about Elimee Clampets biscuits or cookies or something. I can't remember. Now, I'm going to confess, and I'm not probably, I've tried to put that out of my memory bank, but I don't know that one. The show I'm an expert on is the Andy Griffith show.

I'm an expert on that show. I don't know that outside of Barney Fife's nip it in the bud, if anything, would really be catchphrase worthy from that. But if I tried Ellie Mae, that's one of the examples that I gave you earlier of pulling a groin trying to find the next one. Do you remember what you said when you did a baseball highlight and the Dodgers loaded the bases? Yes. And you can't get away with that in 2022. too. For the folks at home, the bases are like Canada during the Vietnam War full of Dodgers. Oh, man. I thought this was going to be a fun interview instead. It's like, here are all the embarrassing things you've done in your career. A little edgy, you know,

some letters back then. You and I talked about this before. Early morning, July 27, 1996, a bomb goes off in Atlanta's Centennial Park during the Summer Olympics. And you happen to be hosting SportsCenter early that morning with Stuart Scott. What do you remember about that night? I remember that it seemed like a really slow night. We were doing that. Memory serves the show still started at 2 a.m. Then the overnight. And it was about a half hour before that.

And Stewart and I were kind of, you know, going through our shot sheets and stuff like that. And the news came down. And I just sprang it down to the studio. And he did as well. And we just went on TV and started relaying news. and there's nothing at ESPN that happens that's like the old broadcast news movie where they feed you what to say in your ear. But that is one instance because you got to remember the Internet wasn't available at the set right then.

Now, people could get to it, but not necessarily where we were. And Oberman was toplining me messages from things he was watching at home. People were telling me things in the year. They were sending us various message. We had this old basis system where you got top line messages across. where the rundown was and where you typed your scripts. And we were getting messages and updates through that. And you'd sort of relay what you got and you had to have a great deal of trust.

And you also had to be judicious in how you said things. Make sure we are being told. It is being reported. Who is reporting it? And then we had people on the scene that were able to give us some insight and reports. But I just remember, I remember instantly realizing, the gravity of it, not from a career standpoint, but from a responsibility standpoint of what you are the one that's conveying messages to, at least some sports fans. And I realized that a ton of

people went to the news stations for something like that, I'm sure, but we had a certain audience that stayed with us. And, you know, I think for both Stewart and me at that time, I don't know that we would have been, because this is really before he rose to superstardom, if, you'll recall was right around then and i think in a lot of ways that for for both of us it changed the perception of what we could handle you know not that anyone thought we were bad guys or you know untalented or anything but i do think that from a television standpoint it impacted what people thought of us they said okay those guys can sit out there for you know eight nine hours however long we were on tv that that morning and they're not talking about you know making you know making

some vague draft reference or Ellie Mae's Biscuits or, you know, Seinfeld, you know, clips, you know, they're, they're doing their jobs, they're conveying information and they're doing so with insight and perspective, hopefully. I'm sure that we looked, you know, if I looked back at that tape now, I'd probably cringe in some ways, as you often do, as I do almost, almost every Sunday night or Monday morning when I review game day, you know, but I'm sure I would then. But at that time, you felt a great deal of responsibility. You understood what great people you had around you because you had to trust them. You didn't have time to be able to go, are you sure about that? You know, are you sure there, you know, their only X number of people injured? Are you sure that they, you know, that they found this backpack, you know, all of these things, you know, are you had to trust them. If they were telling you this, you know, as long as you attributed it, you had to trust that they were doing their jobs properly to. watching game day tape you do that every week every week the whole show whole show and what are you

looking for is the show interesting enough where did we screw up what did we do well um where can we get better i say every week i will occasionally take a week off if i'm if i get the feeling that i'm just getting through it and i'm and i'm making the same kind of notes you know what i mean that that maybe you may know this as a writer. You know how sometimes when you write something and you let it get cold and then you go back and now you see it, sometimes because of that, make another television reference, because of that George Jets and Treadmill that just keeps going in football season. Occasionally, when I do that, it can't just be to get it done so that I can send out my note to everybody. You know, it has to be beneficial.

But what I'm looking for is, did we cast wide enough net? Did we do things insightfully? Where do we spend too much time? Where was the conversation not as energetic or insightful as it should have been? How good was my writing? I mean, we don't have prompter or anything. But I, you know, I've written notes, outlines of what I want to say. Did I convey that clearly?

did we have good conversations? Did we get in and out quick enough to give an opportunity for people to go back and forth so that everyone's not just staring into the camera delivering a soliloquy, which is something we try to avoid? All of those things that you look for

and everybody's pretty good about taking the feedback. Even to the thing that I think over the last few years, I've gotten a little better about looking at because when I first started doing, I scroll through the bumps. You know, I'm like, okay, whatever.

You know, they, you know, they give you a list of what the bumps are. Now I look at them and go, okay, did we do those well enough? Because with the emphasis on time spent viewing, where people watch you, you want to be interesting in those, and you want to give a good idea of what's coming up. And also, were we spontaneous enough? Did we touch the crowd? Did I react? You don't have to react every single time the director takes a shot of somebody dressed up goofy in the crowd. But there are moments when you should. Did I feel? find the right balance on that. Did we spend too much, did it was I, was I too silly about it? Did I ignore the guy in the, in the weird green hat that I should have acknowledged?

You know, you know, I mean, whatever it is, just stuff like that is what I look for more than anything else. And those go to all the on-air people on the show and the off-air people too? Yeah, there's a core group of us that I, that I share that note with, I share that note with every week, probably, yeah, all of our on-air guys, all of our production team and some of our researchers too. It's interesting when you go back and look at people that started at ESP in the 90s, they almost all had an adjective attached to their name when you get rid about in the press and you were often the unflappable, Reese Davis, were you good with unflappable? Yeah. I want to be the guy that, I mean, I want to be more than this, but the one thing I think, discomfort shows quickly

on camera. And if we have something go wrong, if I was used a preposterous example, if a light falls and crashes on the desk right in front of me. I want to tape my hand, push you to the side and say, we're going to get that cleaned up for you. Meanwhile, Nick Sabin's trying to lead the Crimson Tide, you know, past LSU this afternoon or something like that. Because I don't want the people at home to feel uncomfortable. That's not what they're there for. I mean, there's no reason to cringe when you're watching television unless you're watching the office. And, you know, we don't, I don't want to make them uncomfortable. Challenge them, okay.

I mean, I'm not talking about in terms of subject matter. If subject matter gets them to react, that's great. But I don't want them to go, oh, my gosh, what's going wrong? What's happening there on the TV show? You know, what type of TV emergency are they dealing with? So I like unflappable in that way because I want to be in command of the show and command of the set. Because that breaks a spell when the audience feels uncomfortable or cringy watching people

on television? Most of the time now in our culture, I think a lot of people would love to laugh at us when something goes bad. But I think for the most part, people feel badly for you. And, you know, like if you can't hear. I've found that one of the best things you can do is be honest. And like, for instance, I don't remember where it was, but it seems to me that there was a show at some point this year. It might have been during the pandemic year that I pretty much acknowledged to people at home. they always let me know when we need to go to break here what's going on we've lost communication

here so we're just going to talk football for a while or whatever and I don't know I've found that you know giving them a peek behind that wall if something goes wrong that's you know not catastrophic that was that was the show our producer Jim Gallero I think was they said he was he was in Bristol and we were on site was screaming why is he not listening to me is because I couldn't hear him. You know, the whole feed had dropped or whatever, and so we were kind of out there, you know, floating by ourselves. And so you, you don't want to let that show. People don't need to be made to feel uncomfortable by that. Just keep, keep doing the show, you know, keep entertaining them and keep, you know, keep talking ball. One thing I heard in the late 90s when

you're climbing the ladder here at ESPN is that ESPN, is that ESPN2 wanted to do a motorsport show, which became known as RPM Tonight. And your hand went up and said, I can do that. I can host that show you heard that but you did not hear that correctly oh tell me how you start doing motorsports well kenny maine was doing it first and i was doing NBA tonight with fred carter and having a blast i mean because of my role hosting on NBA tonight i was a radio host for the NBA finals in 97 so i was at the jordan flu game and you know working with kevin lockery and and and quinn buckner and just having a blast i really enjoyed that show it was fun i like the NBA NBA. And Norby Williamson called me. And I think I was going, I think I was going back home to

Alabama. My mother was ill and I was going to check on her. And he called and said, hey, we want you to do RPM tonight. And I remember saying to him, I'll do anything you guys want me to do. I like doing NBA tonight. If you want me to do this, it's fine. I said, but I need to tell you something. I said, if you're thinking, hey, let's get the Southern guy to do the the car racing show. I said, you got the wrong guy. I said, I've been to one race in my life, and that was as a television reporter, not counting maybe when I was five or six, and my dad took me to some dirt track someplace for, you know, once or something. I wasn't a fan. I knew who Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, maybe Rusty Wallace were, and that was about it. You know,

I didn't know much about it, but I pledged to them that I would learn it. And a lot of people helped me to learn it, and, you know, we had a lot of fun with it, Ryan McGee. was great, you know, a fellow son of the South, but unlike me, he was one who was sort of steeped in NASCAR particularly. And so I dove in and tried to learn it and be as versatile as I could be. And it worked out well. I think I enjoyed doing the show. We did a lot of fun, creative things with it. And again, really, really good team around me. But yeah, that was a step of faith, I think, a little bit on both of the parts of management for having me do it and for me accepting it because that certainly was not fastball middle end for me at all. It was change up away in the dirt

and I was trying not to swing. So instead of I'm putting my hand up, I can do that. A qualified I can do that. Yeah, I can do it, but you have to understand that there's going to be a learning curve for me to learn the sport, you know, learn the ends and outs of the sport. And, you know, I certainly wasn't going to be able to build a car like Ray Everingham, who I did not know prior to taking that show, but then I did later. But, you know, I was able to do that and able to learn enough. I certainly not going to pretend to have had the same level of knowledge as, you know, Bill Weber or John Kernan or, you know, other people who were on that show, the part of the show that was based in Charlotte or Ryan or some of the other people. But, you know, I was able to study and work at it

and watch and learn and be able to hopefully lend my expertise in television to that and not be afraid to ask a dumb question or a question that might not be as educated as some of the hardcore fans might have been. You said your career pulls you toward studio pre and post game more than SportsCenter during that period. Was it always studio that you prefer to do more than play by play? It was just what I knew. I think every that wants to do this grew up wanting to do play by play, but just for whatever reason, the way my opportunities had unfolded, I hadn't had a lot of opportunity to do play by play, so I hadn't done a lot of it. I wanted to, but I just hadn't done a lot. So that was why I was

more suited for studio, I think, just simply because that's where my experience was. And so that's kind of how I got started, and then, you know, eventually they let me do, let me do some games here and there. And again, that was something you had to learn as well. I mean, I think one of the biggest things that I learned and probably still have to work on when I call games is you don't need wall-to-wall sound from the announcers when you're calling a game. Studio, no one sits around and just lets the pictures talk, you know, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to fill that or you challenge it or keep something going, learning when not to keep anything going, when calling a game and letting the video on the court or field speak for itself is, you know,

was probably one of the things that jumped out that I had to learn early on when I first started calling games. But I wanted to. I just didn't have any experience doing it. Before we get to game day, I have to ask you about the legendary or semi-legentary perhaps segment on college football final you used to do called the final verdict, which if people don't remember, you had the full Judge Wapner, robes, and gavel. And a gavel. And you adjudicated an argument between Lou Holtz and Mark May. How did that segment come about? Looking for a different way to have a discussion about something pertinent from the Saturday in sports and trying to find a way that people would remember it. They would be memorable.

Now, some people couldn't stand it. A lot of people, somebody posted a clip of one of them on Twitter, like last week, you know, and tagged me in it. So it came about with that because Lou was doing, you know, he was doing some of the pep talks. It sort of played into his ability to kind of go on a rant and make his case. And Mark, who is one of my closest friends in the world, Mark is a guy. He's the nicest, kindest guy you'll ever meet. but if you tell Mark over and over and over again that the skies blue before long he's going to get tired of hearing that and he's going to say well you know there's a lot of gray in there and so he was sort of the perfect you know antagonist for Lou because Lou would keep on and on about Notre Dame or Ohio State or whatever and Mark would go you know what I'm not so sure they're so great and so we came up with this segment because they bantered you know sort of sort of like lawyers the robe that I wore and the gavel that I had, our director at the time, knew an actual judge in New Haven.

And he sent me one of his old robes and gavels and said, I've sent a lot of people to prison with this. So use it wisely. And I don't have the robe anymore. I still have the gavel at my house. So I thought those were a lot of fun. We never decided in advance who would win. I just sort of listened to them. but I was cognizant if someone had gone on a little streak week to week.

I remember Lou had won two or three weeks in a row, maybe four, and I ruled for Mark, and he was pissed. I mean, he legitimately angry. That was the only segment of the show that we taped in advance because of the logistics in the studio. And he kept griping and moaning about it, and I kind of got tired of it. at him and I said, hey, Lou, you can't win every week. And he looked at me, those piercing eyes

through his guys said, the hell I can't, and stormed off the set again. And I just lost it laughing. But I think that's what kind of made it work is like he, he and Mark both, they were into it. They believed what they were, they were arguing, you know. Yeah, they had no shyness about it. No, they didn't. The other one that, um, we did. We did. We did. We did. We did. We did. We did a spoof, I don't know if you remember this one, we did a spoof of Boise State versus the SEC. It was with the old BCS thing. And I wrote it to as a parody of the scene from a few good men. Well, Mark's line, you know, Mark was the Jack Nicholson character because he was more suited to deliver that kind of thing.

And his position on Boise State and the SEC kind of worked too. Lou really hadn't seen the movie and was really, really irritated that he felt like he didn't have as many lines. He was kind of mad at me when he left that night. But by the time he got to the airport on Sunday morning, people had seen it, and they started calling him Tom Cruise because he was in the Tom Cruise character.

And by the time he came back the next week, he was delighted. Because everybody had seen it, and they thought he was great as Tom Cruise, and the whole thing. Yeah, what a compliment. Yeah, exactly. Now, if Lee Fitting says, Reese, we're going to get you a new rope

and we're going to bring back the segment. This fall, we're going to have Pollock and Herbie arguing. Are you in? Yes, only if Herbie does it, though. Because to put Herbie in that role that would make him so uncomfortable would be worth it. So yes, if they decide they want to do that again,

as long as Herbie plays the role of Perry Mason or Hamilton Burger, I'm in, I'm in. There we go. So ESPN's college football judge is a lifetime appointment. I just want to get this on the record. Hope I don't get impeached. No, there you go. By 2015, I was reading an SB Nation profile the other day.

You've been doing lots of college football and college basketball studio. The profile said CBS got interested in hiring you around that time. How close did you ever come to leaving ESPN? Probably not that close at that time. I always wanted to stay here. and while I do think hosting college game day football is the best job in television. But because Chris had done it for so long, that wasn't what I aspired to do. My stated goal with my representative at the time Nick Con was I want the most prominent role possible in college football, wherever that is.

The most prominent role I can get. And to ESPN's credit, I was about a year out. and they called and said, you know, hey, look, I know you're not, you know, not really happy that you don't have either of, you know, either of these big roles right now, but we're going to take care of you. And they lived up to that, you know, every word of it and I was appreciative of it. And so because of that, I don't think it ever really got that close. And I enjoyed my conversations with them of great respect for, you know, for all the people, CVS. Sean, David Burson, and I tell you, even Craig Silver and I've become very friendly over the years. He's just, you know, a tremendous guy. So I was, you know, I was certainly interested because of what they had built that time and the SEC, you know, would have fit me.

But in terms of how close it came, I would say, not very. Because fortunately for me, I think ESPN wanted to find a role that they felt like worked for them and me. And I wanted that role to be here. And we found one that I'm very happy with, and I hope and trust that they are as well. Do you remember how you found out you got the game day, Joe? Yeah, I, boy, I hope Nick doesn't get. Nick Kahn, I changed representatives and changed and went with Nick at that time.

And certainly he wasn't making decisions. here, but he's a remarkably talented guy at getting the lay of the land. And he laid it out to me how he said, I can't guarantee you. He said, I think it's going to go this way, could also go this way, either way we're going to be in really good shape. So it wasn't a huge surprise to me. In fact, I had to keep it under wraps for a while. I knew it was going to happen, but, you know, I hadn't officially signed yet finishing some things, and I'm not privy to what was going on in terms of Chris's negotiations, but I would assume some negotiating was going on there.

But I had to keep it under wraps. I distinctly remember when it got out. I was calling a basketball game in Ann Arbor, and I had my iPad out, and I was doing a sports center hit about the game. and I look over in my phone and my iPad are on the at the broadcast position there and they are exploding. I'm like, what in the world? I go ahead and do my hit.

I don't have, you know, any, you know, any inkling that it's gotten out yet. And then obviously it had. So I thought, okay, who's going to be ticked off at me that I didn't let them know that was coming? You know, because I hardly anyone did. obviously, you know, my wife and kids did, and they proved to be complete vaults. My sister knew, and that was, you know, that was pretty much it. And, you know, so that was, that was when it got out. I don't, I'm not going to lie to you, I don't remember the exact moment of when the agreement was reached, but I do distinctly remember the moment it got out.

When everybody knows. Yeah, when everybody else knows, you get the job, not just you know you got the job. Yeah. You'd substitute it on that show before. I had, yeah. So 2015, you start doing it. When do you feel like this is my chair? This is my show. I feel totally comfortable here now.

I felt pretty comfortable from the beginning. And I don't mean to sound obnoxious or arrogant, but I was confident. And, you know, I knew I knew the sport. So I felt comfortable. And I'd also worked with everybody on that set. But the difference was we hadn't worked together as a year. unit. So I would say that probably took the better part of the first year to working as a unit because I'd done quite a bit with Kirk. Desmond, even early in his days at ESPN, had come into

the studio a few times with Mark and me. So I'd worked with Desmond. Obviously, Pollock and I had done Thursday night games for several years and were very close and I'd done some things with Lee. So, but we, I hadn't done a lot with all of them together. The one show at Texas A&M when I think Chris did the Breeders Cup, if I recall, and I don't think there was anything else other than working with them maybe for segments at national championships or something of that nature. So I think probably it took, I felt like it came pretty quickly, but I do think probably in terms of getting comfortable with all of us as a unit, probably,

probably half season or so the first year. I don't think the shows were bad before that, but I think just sort of finding each other's rhythm, knowing who you can push on what without losing them, how you challenge different people. I'll give you an example, and he may kill me for giving this. As you probably know, Jay Billis and I are really close, and we will crush each other over anything. But I draw the line on one thing. I won't ever tease him about the 86 championship game. I just won't because, you know, it's too much.

You know, he came too close, put too much into it. You've got to know when you work with somebody and you're a good teammate to them, you've got to know what's okay and what's not, you know, to... Now, an opinion, you can always challenge. But if you're going to tease them or take a little jab or try to, you know, try to get a little more out of them, you need to know where the line is so you don't lose them or alienate them

or make them doubt for one second that you're not on their side and that you want them to look the very best they can. So that probably took a little while as a group to understand that dynamic. So there's a personal line you won't cross hitting a button that, you know, is a sore spot in somebody's life. Right. And how do you set them up to make them look good? Like, what's the kind of question you're going to ask to get a good answer from them on television?

The number one thing, and I get killed about this in meetings all the time, I hate it, hate it, when the producer tells me to, you know, hey, tee up Kirk, tee up David, to the point where, speaking of the friendship, is that David will go out of his way to use that phrase about anything in life. I mean, we'll be sitting at a restaurant and he'll go, hey, let's tee up, Reese to order, you know, just, you know, anything. I think the key is is having a conversation to me anyway, at least the way I approach my job, a good host is involved in the conversation. But there is also that dynamic of making sure that your guys say exactly what they mean, that they were clear.

And if they weren't, or if there is something that you sense immediately needs challenging for their own good, or for the good of the show, then you have to do that. So I would say that just being totally engaged in the conversation and then being, making sure your antenna is always up for anything controversial or a great take or tremendous insight. You know, it doesn't always have to be something controversial or bad. It can also be something that's a strong point that either maybe you agree with or maybe you don't, that maybe you go back.

of maybe you play devil's advocate to get them to reemphasize the point or to double down on the point to really, you know, make it emphatic. So to me, it's, you know, it's not so much finding, you know, the perfect John Swatsky, if you know who that is, a great interview guru, the great Swatowski, who I revere as an interview teacher, it's not always just about finding, in that setting, about finding the right question for your analyst. It's about being completely immersed in the conversation, knowing how they think and feel and having a good sense of what needs to be pushed back on or what needs to be jabbed a little bit so that they will put their fist on the table and emphatically say that's what they mean. Among people on TV

who have similar jobs, I think you probably insert more of your own opinion into the show, find spots where I'm going to tell you what I think about this issue, whether it's who should be number one or what should we do at the playoff whatever it is how much do you think the audience wants to hear from you in situations like that it's a fine line and it depends on who's listening i think that the rule of thumb i try to go by is that i will never argue with kirk about the mechanics of rotational throwing i won't argue with david about hand placement or desmond about you know how you should reach the top of your stem when you're running around but we can We can all have different opinions and valid ones about who should be number one, whether a guy should have gone forward on fourth down, whether they should have changed quarterbacks.

But I do think that in the host's role that pulling back is better than going too far, meaning that Kirk or Desmond, for instance, if they have an opinion on something, there's really not any need if someone on the set disagrees with them. for them to concede any ground. Sometimes in the host role, you need to know how far to push. And when it's time, even if they haven't really convinced you, but for the good of the team, the good of the unit,

and for the good of the people first watching it home, maybe you concede a little territory there and let it go. So I would say probably, I will be more apt to let it go than I would expect one of the analysts to be. How do you think about the agenda setting function of game day when it comes to big issues in college football? What do you mean by agenda? Okay, so we have two super conferences as a result of all the moves over the last two summers.

You're going to talk about that. That's obviously big story. It's controversy. We're going to talk about that this fall. What do you want to do on game day to set that issue up? for the audience to hear about it, but also the power brokers in college football to hear about it. Honesty without relation to business, because there's no question that having Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC is good for ESPN's business, good for our business, it's good for, you know,

it's going to be fun to see the games. Same with the USC UCLA move. Those games would be fun. but we shouldn't pretend just because it's a business reality that that comes at no cost, that it's all just seashells and balloons, that you're not losing something with the geographical, the regional pride that has been part of college football, some of the rivalries that have already through previous realignments and some that we potentially will lose with future realignments. We should be honest about that.

And if we don't think that's good, we should say so. But we should also present alternatives because we don't need to be the old man sitting on the porch, firing a shotgun into the clouds and complaining that things aren't the way they used to be. Things change. And college football has always changed. There's been a lot of realignment over the years, you know, way, way, way back. So we need to have in mind the good of the sport. If we think this is a good thing or an inevitable thing

or a thing that is just the way it is and people need to do what's best for their programs and the enterprise will thrive because of it and some may be left in the wake, we should say that. I think honesty is a little cliched, I guess. But I just don't, I don't ever want the show to feel like that we're out there parroting any agenda, whether it's because we like or dislike a person who is involved in any of that, whether it's because ESPN is going to be in great shape.

I mean, who's not looking forward to, you know, Oklahoma, Alabama, you know, and as an SEC game, who's not looking forward to that. But we should be honest about the realities of the things that it's cost. What does it mean for the other schools? Why are the other schools still interesting? We should tell their stories, too. And how this, you know, is this a situation where the proverbial rising tide lifts all the boats? You know, and that maybe right now it looks like this, that people are going to be left behind.

But if it elevates those teams and those conferences, will it pull the others along? Will it demand that wherever Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, eventually why, up or if they stay in the ACC, will it elevate them so that they'll compete and the entire enterprise will get better? There are already divisions at that level. There is no similarity, even as terrific as the Mid-American Conference programs are for those athletes and for those schools and as prideful as the fans are and as entertaining as match and action is during the week. it's not the big tenor of the SEC. It never has been, and this doesn't change that.

So what impact does it have on that level of football? Those types of things we should be willing to talk about and not gloss over, or not just shake our fist at and go back in my day, you know, we played Miami, Ohio, and we liked it. You know, you don't want to do that. What's your early read on whether this will lift all boats or something about college football that we love will be lost?

something will be lost, you're going to have a significant number of the schools at the current FBS level who will be unable to compete at that level. So eventually you're going to have a smaller division. Now, the one thing I do think that could be good for the entire enterprise is I think that college football will govern itself in the not too terribly distant future. Now, what that exactly looks like, whether that's under the jurisdiction of the NCAA, I don't know, though I doubt it, to be honest. There will be collective bargaining, probably with, probably not with unions, because as my friend Rod Gilmore pointed out to me, the one thing you would have with unionization of college athletes is a constant turnover in membership, which unions typically don't love. but trade associations or something like that. And you would have legitimate representation of people who actually have the players' best interest at heart

and not someone appointed, you know, by the NCAA or whoever. Hey, negotiate for the players. Let's decide what we're going to give them. And it's a collectively bargained thing. Players will probably have to give up something, whether that's freedom of movement in certain periods or whatever that might be. that's down the road, but maybe the self-governing enterprise will make the entire sport, at least for those who make the cut.

That would probably 70 or so, maybe, you know, maybe a few more. For those that make the cut, it could be good long term and elevate all of them. And there will still be a place, still be a place for the other. I think that will be enjoyable. It'll be at a price point. Fans will like better. It will still be associated with the school that they love and care about.

So all of those things will be intact. But I do think that some of the things we are losing is we're, I worry, the one thing on the field and from just an entire perspective of the sport, there have always been distinct flavors of the way the game is played and the different ways that the game played. On the field, my primary concern is it becomes very homogenized. I love the NFL,

but it seems to me like 80% of the NFL games are 23 to 20. And whoever gets in the end zone and doesn't kick that third field goal wins the game. And it's all kind of the same. And the offenses look, there are wrinkles that are different, but they look somewhat similar and everything sort of looks the same because the players are so great. So, you know, they outskirts. scheme each other. And that's kind of the only way you can win in the NFL because all of the players are great. In college ball, I think that part of the appeal has always been the distinct flavor of different areas, you know, although it's changed a little bit recently, Big 12, wide open passing league. Pack 12's always been cutting edge passing, though the SEC, as I said,

it's evolved and changed a little bit, SEC defensive lines and, you know, tough running game, stuff like that. And there's a beauty to that. appeal to it, I think, for people. And some of that, some of that is at risk for sure. College game base always had this very democratic element. Colorado State starts 5 and O. There will be something on the show that says, we see you over there, 5 and 0 Colorado State. We're going to put you on this program in somewhere or another. Do you lean more into that as college football changes, do you think? I think you have to. Now, you don't be patronizing about it and pretend it's somebody, you know, hey, they're 5 and 0. I think they're better than

Ohio State. You know, I mean, but I do think that you tell that story, and it's incumbent on us. We kind of try to self-check every week when we're planning. Yes, the big shots carry the day, and you don't want to ignore them, but these other stories deserve to be told, too, and these other teams, and, you know, people love an underdog story. So, you know, when Cincinnati rises upper in the past from Boise State or even UCF, people like that. You know, they want you to tell that story.

And if you think they're not good enough as LC didn't last year, at Cincinnati, you know, they don't belong, then that's okay too. That's part of it. But you're still addressing it and you're not, you're not poo-pooing it

and being dismissive of, you know, of their accomplishment. Last question for you, Reese. What do you still want to do on television that you haven't done already? It's a tough question. I think long-term, I would love to call more games

but as I said earlier, this is the best job in television. I work with great people, the sport that I cherish and love. I get to go to all these great venues and meet all these great people, you know, every week and, you know, meeting fans. And, you know, I can't remember we've talked a while, but, you know, I met two people yesterday. One guy who rented his house out for us to do a promo shoot. And he was using the funds. And look, he's, you know, he's not standing in a cheese line, but he just choosing to use the money that he made from that. And he's financing a family trip to go out to Florida State and LSU, you know, paying for everything based on that.

I ran into a woman later that day who had become a college football fan. I might have shared that with you. And she talked about how to strengthen her marriage. You know, so I think being able to connect with people out there make this very rewarding and fulfilling for me. and you always want to be ambitious and you want to do this job better. But, you know, sometimes I feel a little guilty saying it. But as far as something else out there, you know, I have to host the Olympics. I have to call a Super Bowl.

I have to be the studio host for a Super Bowl. I don't, those things would be great. Don't get me wrong. You know, I don't want any of the bosses. And they go, okay, we don't have to think about him for that. But, you know, in terms of fulfillment and enjoyment, and passion, I love what I do. So I'm very comfortable. Reese Davis, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me.

That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Kaya McMullen. David and Shoemaker and I are back with more lukewarm takes about the media on Monday. See you then.