15 sportscasters who made it to the big leagues. 15 different paths to success. 15 unique, unbelievable, and previously untold stories.
"This is fascinating stuff." -Bob Costas, Hall of Fame broadcaster
"Hilarious... impossible-to-believe stories." -Darren Rovell, Sports Business Writer, ESPN, CNBC, The Action Network
"A fun and insightful read..." -Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic gold medalist, author
Where They Were Then: Sportscasters features first-person narratives of the early career paths of some of America's most popular sports broadcasters, including Scott Van Pelt, Trey Wingo, Kenny Mayne, John Buccigross, Heidi Watney, and Stan Verrett.
Each story is captivating, but here are some of the highlights:
*Which famous sportscaster...
-Did an entire TV segment with an IV in his arm?
-Was chased down the streets of Las Vegas while working on a prostitution story?
-Helped launch Shaquille O'Neal's rap career?
They may be covering the world's biggest sporting events today, but when you read "Where They Were Then" you'll learn that's not what they covered at their first jobs. Instead, they reported on: Ostrich racing, ice fishing, mountainside furniture racing, high school volleyball, rookie league baseball, and whatever was going on at the local rodeo.
Author - and former ESPN anchor - Scott Reiss provides a unique backdrop to it all, having anchored sports at the national, regional, and local levels. He shares highly-entertaining, personal tales of life in the formative stages of TV sports, and ties together these individual accounts with commentary and additional insight.
Whether you just love sports, want to know more about your favorite sportscasters, or want to learn what it takes to start at the bottom and work your way to the top, reading the stories in "Where They Were Then" will be time well spent.
Reiss, Scott: - Scott Reiss is an Emmy Award-winning sports broadcaster who has spent the last quarter-century living the TV dream, while honing his craft at the local, regional, and national levels of television.Scott's journey began at Beverly Hills High School, where he stumbled upon a broadcast journalism class during his senior year. He became the sports anchor on a class-produced weekly news broadcast that aired on local cable access TV, and he was hooked.Scott later graduated with honors from Stanford University, having earned a bachelor's degree in communication and a master's degree in sociology. After a year of job hunting and soul searching, he moved 2,200 miles east to begin his TV career in Panama City, Florida. That career path led him through Utica, New York and Santa Maria, California before his "big break" at age 29, when he was hired as an anchor at ESPN.During his eight years in Bristol, Scott hosted pretty much every show on the network, including SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, NFL Live, and College Gamenight. He also hosted ESPN Radio's College Gameday, which taught him that if you can execute seven straight hours of live radio on a college football Saturday, you can handle pretty much anything in the broadcasting world.The ESPN experience was as educational as it was humbling, as it allowed Scott to learn from the best TV professionals in the business-both in front of and behind the camera. It also put him in position to make another "dream" come true, returning home to California to work in major-market television.In 2008, Scott was hired as the lead anchor for the Comcast SportsNet Bay Area startup in San Francisco. The timing couldn't have been better, as he was tasked with hosting pregame and postgame shows for the Giants as they won three World Series in five years. Some of his greatest professional memories stem from those shows, both in San Francisco and in the various American League cities.After five years at CSN, Scott was offered still another "dream" opportunity: to become the radio play-by-play voice of his alma mater. He has been calling Stanford football and basketball games since 2013, while spending much of that time also working as a sports anchor/reporter at KTVU, the FOX affiliate in the Bay Area.Scott currently lives in Walnut Creek, California, with his beautiful wife, Jennifer, and their two wonderful boys, Lucas and Cody.
