A standout element of Fox broadcaster Chris Myers’ newly released book (with Travis Thrasher) That Deserves A Wow is the number of remarkable sports moments Myers has been involved in.
His first major interview came in May 1975 when he was just 16 when he interviewed Muhammad Ali for a Miami radio station (where, strangely enough, Myers had gotten a job partly thanks to the skills he showed off pretending to be two different callers to the station). And that was just the start of decades of being around an extensive roster of athletes, coaches, and other sports figures and being there for incredible moments in sports and beyond.
Myers has been involved in the coverage of an unbelievable litany of events.
Some of those have had impacts beyond sports. Those include his coverage of Hank Gathers’ death after a Loyola Marymount game in 1990, his work on early live coverage of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake during the World Series and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, the way he conducted O.J. Simpson’s first sit-down interview since the former athlete and broadcaster was found civilly liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and his work on Fox’s coverage of Dale Earnhardt’s death at the 2001 Daytona 500.
But Myers has also been there for many indelible moments within the realm of sports. He was there for the Boston Red Sox’s 2004 comeback from a 3-0 ALCS deficit and their subsequent World Series sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. He interviewed Tom Brady after the New England Patriots’ 28-3 Super Bowl LI comeback. On short notice, he and a crew flew with Expos pitcher Tim Burke as Burke adopted a child from Guatemala.
And Myers even helped Boise State RB Ian Johnson propose to his girlfriend on live TV after the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.
In a recent interview with AA, Myers said this book and his sports life felt like a cross between two prominent movies. Those would be 2000’s Almost Famous (particularly for the young music journalist played by Patrick Fugit) and 1994’s Forrest Gump (for the way the title character, played by Tom Hanks (whom Myers discusses interviewing during that 2004 World Series), winds up present for so many critical historical events).
“If you took those two movies and blended them together, I can see kind of what my life in sports, that’s what this book is, is kind of about,” he said. “I landed in some unusual spots like Forrest Gump, not quite that far, and I was covering sports as a kid. It was my passion. And my family helped shape me to go along the way for this ride in sports, as did people in the business.”
On the Forrest Gump front, Myers said it is remarkable how many key things he’s been around, and he’s received some jibes from coworkers to that effect. But he’s careful to point out to them that that’s included happy sports moments and tragic ones.
“That’s what people have said to me, ‘We’ve got to be careful where Chris goes next.’ I mean, they joke about that, but I don’t. I’m like, ‘Hey, it also could be a great Super Bowl. Let’s stick to the good things. Or the good Red Sox turnaround, at least for the Red Sox fans, not for Yankee fans, but the fact that they rallied from down 0-3 and then go win that World Series and lift the curse. Or Tom Brady and 28-3.
“And there’s so many other little things, like even the Tim Burke story or Ian Johnson. How do I feel about it? I just feel like that’s life. And I think other people can relate, maybe not in the world of sports but in their own life with their job or their family or their friends or their moves that they make. And a lot of it is the decisions that you make, right?
Myers said the book (out now from HarperCollins imprint William Morrow) grew out of several developments during the COVID-19 pandemic, including his work on the FS1 sports celebrity trivia show The Home Game.
“During the pandemic, I was like most of us in sports, in the world, I think: we were freaking out. So we put together a quiz show on FS1 that we did just to do something from home while we were looking for other things. So I started just keeping notes because I would ask some of the people to come on, and I was just thinking, ‘Oh, I interviewed them, I talked to them.'”
“And then I got a call from somebody at the Fedd Agency; they put books together, and they said, ‘We noticed in your bio all of these unusual things in the past that you were part of in sports,’ they rattled them off, and said ‘Would you be interested in doing a book?’ And I said, ‘Well, I usually don’t have the time. …I don’t see myself as a book writer; I’m more of a TV writer.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’d really like to do something.’ So I said, ‘Okay, let me think about it.'”
What convinced Myers was the idea that this wouldn’t be primarily an autobiography but rather an inside look at what it was like to report on key sports moments.
“I started thinking and putting some notes together, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, there’s, there’s some stuff here that I think people would really be interested in, from not only the events that happened but from the inside out, from someone that covered was there to cover sports and these other events of what went on. We use ‘Behind the scenes’ a lot when we talk about these, but there’s much more involved in this from the side of the person reporting on it; why you think and react the way you do.”
Myers stated that the book developed further over time, incorporating some behind-the-scenes insights into ESPN and Fox during his network tenure.
“And so some of that when I started writing this came out. And they said ‘We want more of why you came from this direction, why you asked these questions. Why you reacted this way in the earthquake at the World Series or the Olympic bombing or when you had to get to Brady after the great comeback, what are you thinking?’ … And they liked the idea of a decade of ESPN through the growth in the nineties, and then the growth years, 20 years and counting still at Fox. We have two of the biggest sports networks running today that are dominant for sports viewers, for live sports.”
Myers credits Thrasher for helping to draw out some of those behind-the-scenes insights, including about breaking down insider terminology and relaying what he was thinking during key reporting moments.
“I had some help from Travis Thrasher, who was a ghostwriter/researcher. I would sit on Zooms with him, and I would read the things I jotted down about the events that I covered, and he would say, ‘Well, wait a minute, I think some people know what that means in sports, but in TV, what do you mean by this?’ So I’d explain.
“And he would bring up things like, ‘Okay, you said you reacted this way, why did you react that way?’ So he would help me kind of think about that and phrase things. But he said as I was writing, ‘This is your book, these are your words, your writing, this has to sound like you.'”
Myers mentioned that it was challenging to learn this writing style, as it was very different from the work he had done writing intros and pieces for television.
“You’re not writing a novel here, but you’re also not writing for television. For television, you’re usually writing; it’s a 10 or 15-second lead-in when I was doing SportsCenter. We all wrote our own stuff back then; I don’t know if they do that now. And when I did, you know, feature stories, whether it was with ESPN or Fox covering NFL, NASCAR, that type of thing, if you’re writing a TV show, you’re usually writing a lead-in to a piece. Or if you’re doing the feature story, you have to hit certain times. It’s two or three minutes of television; they don’t want this long drawn-out novel.”
He said he also wanted to ensure he didn’t go too far into literary flourishes.
“That was the challenge, to not get too flowery. Because it’s not some novel, right, some Dickens novel? But it also has to be me talking to the reader in kind of a sports TV or radio kind of way.”
In the book’s development, Myers said one surprise for him was how much he opened up about some of his thoughts. That came with a section on the personal tragedy of the loss of his son in a car accident and the support he received from the sports world, as well as the multiple sports tragedies he covered.
“I must admit it became a little more personal than I would have hoped,” Myers said. “But I thought that was important to relate, to make it not just another book about sports, you know, to understand people covering sports.
“And sports, you know, nothing brings people together like sports. And I’ve experienced that through good times and bad, through happy moments and tragic moments for myself, along with some fascinating people in sports that are so great at what they do. We know their names and we see what they are on the outside. And this gets us to know a little more inside about them, without revealing anything too personal that they would be uncomfortable about.”
One particularly interesting part of the book discusses how Myers’ sports broadcasting career began in Miami. As a 15-year-old high school sophomore, he regularly called into WKAT’s Sportsline nighttime sports radio show hosted by Sonny Hirsch. He used two different personas for his calls: “Chris from Miami,” where he tried to sound relatively normal but a bit older, and “Duke from North Miami,” where he employed a John Wayne-inspired voice.
Myers maintained this charade for over a year, and it all came to light when both Chris and Duke were invited to participate in a roundtable with some of the station’s biggest fans. When the truth was revealed, Myers admitted who he really was. Station producer John Harper then offered him a part-time weekend job, which eventually led to conducting interviews, including one with Ali. From there, he got the opportunity to expand his role at WKAT, and eventually parlayed that into work in Miami television as well.
Myers has discussed his caller impersonations only a little over the years. But he felt it was important to include this story as a reflection of his past choices.
“When I had to admit to them and my dad that I was not telling the truth about this, for a year…I think that’s part of who I was growing up. I had to stretch the truth, so to speak. But then, at some point, you know, you’ve got to face the music. And I really thought when I told them they would say, ‘Sorry, we’re not interested, don’t call again,’ or ‘Only call us as Chris, or as the guy you’re imitating.’ But I thought it was important to tell that, because I think as we are all growing up that there’s some decisions you make.”
He said he never expected his calls to WKAT to become a sports career, but he’s glad they did.
“When I was doing it as a young kid, I thought, ‘This is kind of fun; I’m talking sports.’ I didn’t know that it would lead to this for me. It was just an extra chance when I was supposed to be doing my homework to get on the radio and talk sports and imitate a guy. You know, I watched a lot of comedians and impersonators that imitated actors and comedians, so I think that’s kind of where that came from.”
On the decision front, Myers discusses it in other ways throughout the book. One notable one is his role in covering that 1996 Olympic bombing for ESPN, where he and his team broadcasted from a rooftop vantage point for an hour after a security guard initially told them to leave.
“They tell us to get off that building for safety reasons, and we probably should have. But I just felt, you know, I saw what was going on; I had a judgment call that it was important for us since we were the only ones with the cameras there to at least stay a little longer, to kind of bring what information we could to the audience and to the broadcast.”
He said having to make split-second decisions is a key part of live TV. Another example is how he stayed on air longer than planned with Johnson and cued up his proposal (Johnson had previously mentioned wanting to do that on air but then didn’t get into it, leading to Myers’ prompt).
“People get on my case about, ‘Oh, you moved the proposal.’ But I had a split-second decision, and he didn’t go there in the interview, and they’re wrapping me to end it up. And he thanked me later. He would have missed his one chance that was important to him, and there’s never a chance like that again.”
In his book, Myers shares the significant risk he took by leaving Miami.
After high school, he worked at WKAT during the week and did weekend TV at WCIX and CBS affiliate WTV. At 21, in 1982, he decided to move to CBS affiliate WWL in New Orleans, attracted by its reputation for covering major national events. Unsure about the move, he asked the station’s general manager for double his salary, and when they agreed, he felt reassured that leaving his hometown was the right choice.
“That was a critical six years,” Myers said. “I think a lot of that came out in the book because as you’re putting it together, you realize how things shape you for what’s coming next. So that kind of naturally came out.”
“I wasn’t really planning on leaving Miami, but I wanted to do more. I was driven to. It was like, ‘Okay, I’ve done this; I need to do more.’ And so WWL, that powerhouse station, they would send their local reporter, at the time Jim Henderson, they would send their guys to big events. They had the resources and ties. And they would look for a local story. So I was like, ‘Well, I’m not just gonna cover what’s right there.’
“Miami was a great place to work because you had great big names coming in, you had big events going on, but the station didn’t get you to do a lot of travel on them to cover other events. But when [WWL] offered, they said, ‘Well, we’re going to replace our weekday guy.’ And I really wasn’t interested. I mean, I wasn’t planning on leaving. So I just threw out that dollar figure, doubling, as a young 21-year-old thinking, ‘Well, they’re going to tell me no.’ And all of a sudden, they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do a three-year deal.’ I was like, ‘Oh, you know, I’ve got to really think about this.’ And then I’m like, ‘It’s just meant to be,’ like a lot of these things.”
Another movie that comes to mind for Myers is 1989’s Field of Dreams, particularly Moonlight Graham’s (Burt Lancaster) discussion of not knowing his one major league at-bat would be his only one.
“I think this is important for all of us in life, which is why I wanted to write the book and share that with people,” Myers said. “I think things happen and we have to realize, that’s why I talk about Moonlight Graham. The significance at the time, we sometimes don’t think about that. We move on; we think there’ll be other days. And that’s the only day. It brushes by us like a stranger in a crowd. And that still sticks with me. And so when those moments come along, I realized I’d better capture them so there’s no regrets.”
Read on for Myers’ further thoughts on his work in New Orleans, his move to ESPN, and the specific challenges of covering big news events like the San Francisco earthquake and the Atlanta bombing.
