Book Review: Those Guys Have All the Fun

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,the internet, video games and more, while ESPN’s personalities have become global superstars to rival the sports icons they cover.

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside The World Of ESPN tells for the first time the complete, unauthorized story of ESPN’s founding and extraordinary growth, as told to bestselling authors James A. Miller and Tom Shales by the people who lived it.

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.

In Those Guys Have All the Fun, you’ll find sports, celebrities, atheletes, sex, parties, friendships, rivalries, fights, money, racism, sexism, big business, gambling, and more sports. It’s all here in the words of the people who lived it. For example:

• Rush Limbaugh on the controversy surrounding his comments about Donavan McNabb.
• Jimmy Kimmel on the ESPY’s and being banned from MNF.
• Keith Olbermann on leaving and then returning to ESPN.
• Tony Hawk on the creation and impact of the X Games.
• Erin and Steve Andrews on Erin’s stalker.
• Dana Jacobsen on being suspended after a drunken appearance at an ESPN roast.
• Bob Iger and Dick Ebersol on negotiating broadcasting rights with the NFL in 2005.
• Hannah Storm and Tony Kornheiser on his suspension after his on-air comments about her clothing.

It’s a MASSIVE book, coming in at 763 pages! There’s a ton of material here, but I felt that the book was padded with too many historical footnotes and dull anecdotes. They could have cut out about 200 pages and no one would have been the wiser.

Nonetheless, Those Guys is a must-read for the ESPN enthusiast, offering up all the juicy tidbits and sure to keep you reading from cover to cover!

Those Guys Have All the Fun is currently on sale at Amazon.com for just $14.91, so be sure to pick up your copy today!