Those Guys Have All the Fun

Inside the World of ESPN

By: James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales

Narrated by: James Andrew Miller, Matt McCarthy, Joan Baker

Length: 27 hrs and 56 mins

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

Narrators completely killed the experience...

Should've used the actual interviews instead. not recommended in audio form...narrators seemed disconnected and hurts when don't pronounce names correctly. Who was producing this?

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.

Eye opening and hard to put down

Really enjoyed the book mostly because I am of an age that I remember when it launched. With Boomer and Lee and then The Big Show was literally as popular on campus as David Letterman. I am still a huge fan of Dan and Keith no matter where Keith is. If you came of age in the 80's this is your book. When the paperback comes out do we get the updated version?

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.

Let Down

Was expecting much more from this book. Seemed like the author couldn't get off his knees from servicing the ego maniacs at ESPN to tell a better behind the scenes story. Audio folks are horrible at pronouncing names.

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?

Couldn't wait for it to end

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

People who like to nearly every detail about ESPN - those who really enjoy "inside baseball" talk about sports TV

Would you ever listen to anything by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales again?

no

What three words best describe the narrators’s performance?

Disjointed, Boring, NotSmooth

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

Some of the stores were entertaining about the early years of ESPN and how it got going

Any additional comments?

More like a he-said she-said book that gives different perspective on events and decisions made to grow ESPN not a summary or smooth, interesting narrative about how ESPN grew. Too much swearing.

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?

Not a lot of information

As "inside stories" go, this is trailing the pack. I suppose it is a nice thing to have all of one's suspicions about the disfunctionality of the world wide leader affirmed with out of context quotes and anecdotes, but this book could have been ten times the "expose" it claims to be. Disappointing.

Meh Story, rough narration

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

The narration suffered from stiff timing and over pronunciation. The female narrator was the most trying of the bunch but they were all poor.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Those Guys Have All the Fun?

Too much time spent on the business side and not enough on the on-air or even production staff. I really was looking forward to this and the whole execution of the idea left me more glad to be done with it. Several times I wanted to abandon it but plowed ahead anyways in some masochistic stupor