Even ESPN itself has a recognizable slogan: The Worldwide Leader in Sports. There is an undeniable hint of hubris there — influential ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons hit the mark when, in making a programming pitch to his bosses, he noted that “ESPN loves celebrating ourselves.’’ But considering that the multimedia behemoth televises 65 sports in 16 languages in 200 countries, the statement is also true, self-proclaimed or not.
Upon completing James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’s “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,’’ a rollicking oral history of the network, chances are the reader will be left with a lingering thought: These guys had to be among the worldwide leaders in other categories. Debauchery, for instance. Egotism, for sure.
As much as ESPN loves celebrating itself, it’s no surprise that its personnel love talking about themselves too, and it’s the candor of the more than 550 people interviewed — in the oral-history format that parallels the authors’ 2002 gem “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live’’ — that makes the book a breezy read despite its daunting length.
Not that all of the nearly 800 pages of this book are essential. It stalls on dull minutiae about transponders and satellites and the technical and internal structure of ESPN, and it’s fair to presume that much was not lost in the 350 pages Miller says were cut from the early drafts. “These Guys Have All The Fun’’ is really a melding of two stories: A business saga, beginning with the tale of how founder Bill Rasmussen, with little more than a $9,000 cash advance on a credit card and a wisp of an idea that a 24-hour sports network could catch on, launched ESPN in Bristol, Conn., in 1979.
