So USA Today did an piece on ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb that kind of blew my mind. He and Bob Wischusen let the paper follow him around for a week or so and here are some of the highlights….

– There are days when he’s on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, ESPN.com and ESPN Radio. In between are appearances — via cellphone — on other radio shows, calls he makes while checking into a hotel, eating lunch, waiting in line for coffee or driving home.

-“Anybody ever had a bulldog?” he asks while a mascot performs during a timeout in another game. “Most gaseous dog ever, right?”

-His recall so acute that ESPN College GameDay host Scott Reiss and ESPN “bracketologist” Joe Lunardi refer to him as “Rain Man.”

-“I am the way I am because I would watch guys (while growing up) and think, ‘Why don’t they just say what they are really thinking?'”

– “Sometimes I badly strive not to come across as the know-it-all,” he says. “And yet I’m in a job in which you are supposed to be a know-it-all. How do you relate what is happening without coming off as the pain-in-the-(rear) know-it-all.”

I don’t know how and when the USA Today became ESPN The Newspaper, but these pieces illustrate how perfectly the ESPN PR machine operates. How do they get the largest paper in the Country to do a 1,600 word feature story on an analyst!? And not even a top-tier analyst (even though he should be). It’s just amazing what that paper does for ESPN.

Other than that it’s a pretty good read if you’re an announcing nerd like me.

ESPN personality Doug Gottlieb: Wired for candor (USA Today)

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