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Those Guys Have All the Fun  By  cover art

Those Guys Have All the Fun

By: James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales
Narrated by: James Andrew Miller, Matt McCarthy, Joan Baker
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Publisher's summary

ESPN began as an outrageous gamble with a lineup that included Australian Rules Football, rodeo, and a rinky-dinky clip show called Sports Center. Today the empire stretches far beyond television into radio, magazines, mobile phones, restaurants, video games, and more, while ESPN's personalities have become global superstars to rival the sports icons they cover.

Chris Berman, Robin Roberts, Keith Olbermann, Hannah Storm, Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Stuart Scott, Erin Andrews, Mike Ditka, Bob Knight, and scores of others speak openly about the games, shows, scandals, gambling addictions, bitter rivalries, and sudden suspensions that make up the network's soaring and stormy history. The result is a wild, smart, effervescent story of triumph, genius, ego, and the rise of an empire unlike any television had ever seen.

©2011 Tom Shales, James Andrew Miller (P)2011 Hachette

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What listeners say about Those Guys Have All the Fun

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Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Like Hanging Out At A Cocktail Party

What made the experience of listening to Those Guys Have All the Fun the most enjoyable?

I liked getting the inside scoop on all of the prominent ESPN personalities from behind the scenes. You get to see the human and flawed side of these people that put on the polished act in front of the screen.

What other book might you compare Those Guys Have All the Fun to and why?

I have not read many books related to sports, so I don't have a good comparison. Most of the text consisted of first person quoted accounts as opposed to a third person narrative. Felt more like an in depth conversation at cocktail party.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have not listed to these narrators before. I liked the fact that they had a man and a woman to do the voices depending on who was being quoted in the book.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The book did not have a crescendo that moved me in particular. I am a big ESPN fan and sports fan in general, so I was interested in the historical evolution of the station that paralleled the evolution of sports in general.

Any additional comments?

If you are a sports fan, you will love this book. It brought back many sports memories through the eyes of ESPN.

There was a lot of name dropping of ESPN behind the scenes executives. It was a little hard to keep up with all of them and what their role was in the organization.

The fact that the sports backdrop was always woven into the anecdotes helped to keep the book entertaining.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting Story, Awful Narration

Interesting story about the meteoric rise of ESPN from the early, concept/entrepreneurial days to its current status as a behemoth in the entertainment industry. Reveals a lot of the "unique" culture behind the company.

Atrocious narration, though. I've never written a review but this caused me to do so. I presume reading the book would be significantly better and I recognize the difficulty in narrating a book that is largely made up of quotations. However each of these narrators was awful. Their inflection on many of the quotes was clearly incorrect from how the primary speaker had intended. These small shifts are not only annoying to listen to, they can actually change how we perceive someone's entire opinion in certain situations. With so many different personalities I recognize that it would be impossible to get them to each narrate their own quotes, but we could at least have narrators that put some time and thought into what the original speaker might be saying before they record their lines.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Endless, Lazy, and Not Very Interesting

What would have made Those Guys Have All the Fun better?

An editor would have been helpful. As it was, it was an endless and seemingly random stream of quotes from various participants in ESPN's rise to glory.

What could James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

It was as if the authors emailed everyone who ever worked at ESPN, gathered the responses, and cut-and-pasted everything into a giant tome -- no real insights, not much of interest, and no flow.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

One of the narrators was decent, although it was challenging because so many of the voices of the players in the book are so familiar. The narrator who read the few, brief connecting pieces (the blurbs between the stream of quotes) sounded as if he were put off to have to read his parts. The woman's role was so over-the-top, "Well, golly!" that it subconsciously made all the female characters sound like ditzes.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I did learn more about the rise of ESPN, but ultimately, I guess, to what end?

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Very "Inside Baseball"

This "oral history" is the utter definition of "Inside Baseball". If you are very interested in ESPN, and or the TV/media business you'll enjoy this book. If you're only a casual fan this may no be the book for you.

The first "part" is a slow burn because it's mainly about the very early days of ESPN. Literally stuff like how they bought the satellite time and cable operator negations. Once it got to more modern times and talked about people I actually had heard of I started to enjoy it more.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Story is ok; performance not very good

This book had a lot of interesting content and background. It got a bit long and rambling towards the end, where they spent more time on more minute details from recent activities vs. the early days (which were more interesting). The performance, particularly parts read by the author, were not very good. The author's voice is very scratchy and hard to listen to. Also annoying was that they couldn't be troubled to pronounce many sports figures' names correctly.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Strong story hindered by structure & performance

I am a big fan of ESPN and have watched it from the very beginning. The birth and growth of this network was intriguing to me. I was expecting a sports book. But surprisingly we get a lot of insight into corporate America, contract negotiations, and company politics. For insight into executive management of a high growth company, this book delivered a surprising result.

Unfortunately, the writers were lazy by just citing interview after interview. The content was solid, and the access they received was unprecedented. But there was no insight, perspective, nor conclusions on the events that occurred over the 30 years. Plus, some quotes and conversations appeared to come out of nowhere and provided little overall insight.

The two male actors performed fine. However, the female voice was WAY over the top. I cannot imagine Michelle Tafoya, Erin Andrews, Linda Cohn, or Robin Roberts acting SO over-dramatically when giving their perspectives. In fact, this is the first time that I think the performance of audio book could actual change what a person was trying to say. My guess is the actor reading the female parts probably over emphasized words in sentences that could change what the person was trying to say.

If you can put these distractions aside, and are a big fan of ESPN, this is still worth the buy . The insight into the growth of a sports empire, and the insight into corporate boardroom, is worth the investment.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Fun if you're fascinated by ESPN

I loved hearing about the cast of characters and incredible twists of fate that created and sustained ESPN, complete with off-the-wall anecdotes and behind-the-scenes looks at so many people I've only known on-camera. The book has a very personal voice, as it consists mostly of material pulled from interviews the author conducted with everybody connected with ESPN over the years. The narration is uneven - ranging from Matt McCarthy's sturdy, archetypal SportsCenter anchor tone for the male voices that dominate the story to Joan Baker's ill-fitting, semi-cloying tone for the women - with some jarringly mispronounced names late in the book. Still, if you've watched a ton of ESPN over the years or you're interested in the business of sports/entertainment, this is a fun, thorough, and revelatory exploration of the company's history.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Enjoyed Parts 1 & 2, 3&4 written by ESPN

the first 2 parts that dealt with the origin and establishment of ESPN were excellent. The insider view of the various complex negotiations regarding; venture capital, broadcasting rights, production, talent, etc, were fascinating. Part 3 was basically a pointless run down of every show idea ESPN put on the air. Part 4 seemed to be ESPN's chance to address (unchallenged) any negative situations that had arisen over the years and put thier spin on it. The female voice on this audiobook was terrible and made the women sound juvenile and naive.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

People calling themselves genuises

I listened to the first 30 chapters and couldn't take it anymore. These guys talk about how great and smart they are and how they could drink as they spent millions of dollars of Getty Oil money. Let's see, does it take a genius to know that people like to watch sports? I think it would have been more tolerable if they had examples where they showed some creativity or broke down barriers. But to me, it seems like they would have to be idiots to fail with that much money at their disposal.

They talk like they were the only ones that could have accomplished this but I think that it could have been done quicker and better with a different approach.

ESPN had some great anchors and did think about putting drafts on TV but the behind the scenes people have the biggest egos and I quickly tired hearing their self-important comments.

Stuff like the intoxicated Getty Oil guy repeatedly opening up a helicopter door forcing the helicopter to land multiple times. They all just sound so narcissistic.

This is coming from a huge sports fan and I enjoy watching ESPN. Maybe it gets better but after hours of people continuing to talk about how amazing they are without any example of a particular accomplishment other than they were at ESPN, I had enough. I have listened to about 50 audiobooks and this is the first I could not finish.

One star is too many. Can I give it 0 stars?

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

marathon listen

Much like a real marathon I can't finish this one either. Not sure if it's the subject or the content but I can't get into either, and I grew up watching SportsCenter 3x a day.

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