Chris Myers on new book ‘That Deserves A Wow,’ from fake radio calls to covering Olympic bombing

Speaking of those decisions, Myers said the New Orleans move wasn’t initially smooth for him, especially with Henderson not moving on to network CBS as had been expected and the weekday slot not opening out. He said he even considered going back to Miami at one point.

“And then when I went there, I’ve got to say, I didn’t quite get the position I wanted. It was a great place, but I really missed home. It was like going away to college for the first time, except I was kind of past that. I was kind of like, ‘Wow, should I try to go back [to Miami] and work and build my position there?'”

But Myers persevered, and that time led to a lot of benefits for him. He found many notable stories, including one on horse Risen Star and one on legendary New Orleans race track figure Allen “Black Cat” Lacombe. He did indeed get to go cover major events around the country, including Jack Nicklaus’ famed 1986 Masters win at the age of 46. Two particular stories he did there, on LSU baseball’s first College World Series appearance in 1986 and on the Saints’ coaches who had never played in the NFL but got the team to an unlikely 1987 playoff berth, eventually attracted the attention of ESPN, leading to him becoming that network’s first West Coast reporter in 1988. Myers said his New Orleans time wound up being a great blessing.

“I hung in there and made a lot of friends, and had some great opportunities there. I really did bury myself in my job, work there. And obviously, they weren’t network stories, but the stories and things that I covered, I think, really influenced me about the business and how to go about doing the job.”

Beyond that, New Orleans wound up mattering to Myers personally.

As he relates in That Deserves A Wow, he’d been dating Susan, a woman he met from her volunteer press box work, for several years by 1987, when then-Saints coach Jim Mora invited the two to dinner with him and his wife at the famed Commander’s Palace restaurant.

Mora asked Myers, “When are you guys gonna get married?” Myers responded, “You guys make the playoffs, and we’ll get married,” and they promptly did. This led to Mora sending a registered letter citing that to Susan and to the two getting married in 1989.

Another impact of Myers’ time in New Orleans was his role in creating the WWL football show Fourth Down on Four, which is still going strong. In the book, Myers details how much of a struggle it was to convince WWL to dedicate more time to football coverage in the 1980s and tells AA that it’s far different from today, where local affiliates love doing any football coverage they can.

“Absolutely right, today you’d have no problem. And they wouldn’t care what the team’s record was, they would just put it on, and they would have no problem getting advertisers. And that was the thing: WWL was very successful, so air time was important. So I said, ‘C’mon, even late Sunday night?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, there’s reruns of Trapper John M.D.‘”

But Myers said he was convinced there was a market for more football talk outside of games and nightly newscasts, and he was able to get others at the station on the side with what started as his pet project.

“I’m just a weekend anchor there, but I was able to meet with somebody in sales and meet with somebody in programming. But I made the time for this, along with my job, to say, ‘Hey, you know, what would it take?’ It kind of started out as 15 minutes, and then it was ‘Hey, we are selling this, so how we can get a Saints’ player? We give them something for appearing on the show, from the jewelry store, or a gift certificate.’ And even if the team is losing and people are angry at the ‘same old Saints,’ you know, you can include LSU and Tulane football and how they’re doing.”

“So we had to get resources. And I had a lot of people, again, all along the way, a lot of people behind the scenes, producers and production assistants who enjoyed what they did like I enjoyed what I did, and so we connected to put in the extra time. That really helped to make something like that happen. But I had no idea that it would still be going on, obviously, as I moved on. But again, I’m proud of that because I think that’s again an example of a decision that just worked out.”

He said moments like that showed up throughout his career. One thing that is not in the book is his role in naming Fox’s doubleheader postgame show, The OT.

“We were in New York at an NFL seminar, and [Fox Sports president] David Hill at the time was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to expand our postgame, late doubleheader, go to, to an extra show with highlights or interviews.’ And we need to come up with a name for it.’ We’re in the line in the cafeteria and Barry Landis, the producer, was behind me, and so Hill goes, ‘We need a name. What’s a good name?’

“And I was thinking, at the time, The OC was big. So he said, ‘Well, you can’t just call it Time Out, how about like Overtime?‘, and Barry’s like ‘Yeah, what do you think, Chris?’, and I’m like ‘How about we call it The OT? Everybody’s heard of that show The OC.‘ He loved it, and that’s what they named it and promoted it. It’s one of those things where you’re in the business, you care about it, you think about it, you’re around people who do, and good things come out of that, or at least things that seem to connect with the audience.”

In other decisions, Myers outlines in the book how he wound up playing an unexpectedly important news reporting role around the 1989 earthquake (alongside Bob Ley and Chris Berman) and the 1996 Olympics in particular.

In 1989, part of that was because ESPN’s satellite truck was the only one still up and running shortly after the earthquake, while in 1996, they were one of the only outlets covering the bombing all night thanks to their 24-hour focus (NBC had the Olympics rights, but it took them time to mobilize for live coverage of something that happened long after the day’s sports). Myers said that certainly puts a microscope on what he did in retrospect, but he didn’t feel that then, with his broadcasting experience helping him through it.

“I didn’t think of it as pressure at the moment,” Myers said. “It’s almost like when I talk to athletes. And maybe this is one of the things that helped me without thinking about it: when I talk to young athletes on the job and do interviews, either after games or sit-down interviews, they talk about performing in the moment, and then they look back. It’s kind of like, ‘I played football my whole life, I knew what I was doing.’

“So in those cases, I felt like I was like that in terms of broadcasting: I’ve been at it since I was old enough to push myself on the air.  So I think it was kind of an instinctive feeling of ‘It’s not about me, get the facts, get the information.’ You’ve got to be as accurate as you possibly can with the resources you have. And you get some help back at the home office, checking out what you say or what you said. But if you’re the only one there, you’d better get it right.”

There’s an interesting discussion on the accuracy front, particularly in That Deserves A Wow, around the Olympic broadcast. There, Myers relays how he spoke to a Georgia police officer off camera, who told him, “I was in the village when the bomb went off. A guy right in front of me is killed. I never thought I’d ever see a man die at the Olympics.”

That would have been an incredible story to relay on air, but Myers didn’t do so because they couldn’t confirm it at the time. And, fortunately, they didn’t, as later evidence confirmed only one woman was killed by the bomb directly (a Turkish cameraman later died from a heart attack after running to safety).

As Myers notes, it’s possible the officer thought someone was killed who was only injured, but that speaks to the importance of confirmation, clarity, and sensitivity in that kind of reporting.

“You have to phrase it with some sensitivity for the audience and for the people involved,” he told AA. “In both cases. I mean, after the earthquake, there were more people in and around what happened in the Bay Area that did die, whereas at the Olympic bombing right away, we thought there were more, everybody thought there could have been other losses. …And so we had to, in a rush for information, again, maintain accuracy, but also some sensitivity and awareness of the audience watching and who the people are you’re talking about. So I would say that just as honestly as I could, I put the job first.”

He said his locking in on the job he had to do didn’t feel unique.

“I think people do this in life; they put the job ahead of themselves and their own situation. And with my general curiosity from broadcasting and sports, this shifted from a live sporting event to a live news event, but I would say that those are the kinds of things that when you’re thrown in those spots, you have to react. Otherwise, you don’t do the job very well, and you don’t last long.”

But that locking in can come with a later price. Myers told AA those events, and others, such as the deaths of Gathers and Earnhardt, did have a major emotional impact on him when he thought about them later. And he said some of those memories came back to him when writing about this.

“They were traumatic events. At the moment, I just did the job, but I’ve got to be honest: on the flight home after covering the Olympics or on the ride home after Hank Gathers died, I was in tears. It made me think about my own life and people that I had known or that I’ve lost in my life. It hits you hard because, yeah, there’s a job, but those are, especially Hank Gathers, having to be there on the doorsteps of the medical center, and his family is in there being told that he’s gone.”

Myers said the loss of his son Christopher in a 2012 car wreck made him think about those moments further. He said he decided to address his son’s death in the book despite initial reluctance because of the importance of the support he got from the sports world and because of his desire to pass that on to anyone who needs it.

“I think those were things that obviously hit me harder personally when I lost my own son. And I was very hesitant about writing about that because my family is very private about those things, and I was used to asking the questions and covering the story and not being the story.

“But I thought that was important because people reached out to help me, and there were so many more that I couldn’t mention to help me and my family. And that’s something that I do going forward when I see someone who has lost a child. And I just think you really do need other people, whether just to let them know you’re there or whether they actually do need help to get through it. That’s really the only way I think anybody can get through it. You can’t get through it alone.”

Myers said the times he had to cover deaths in sports had him questioning his career choice at times.

“Those events had me wondering, ‘Boy, I got into this to cover sports because it’s fun, and I end up doing this.’ But I just felt, ‘Because I’m here, I’m supposed to be here, and I’m supposed to deliver this; this is part of my job.'”

He said he definitely didn’t want to pivot to news fully, though.

“I was offered a chance earlier to different times to work in news, one on a local basis and one nationally to go to CNN, or at least to talk to them about that. And I was polite about it, but not, interested in going in that direction. Because I wanted to enjoy it.

“Even in sports here, I know sometimes we have to be critical and ask some questions, but I just don’t want to be in a business where we’re constantly covering those types of things. I had my fair share.”

But he thinks sports and news are still tied together, and there may be another moment like this one when sports networks play crucial roles in news coverage.

“I absolutely think it could happen again. And it’s happened before in different ways, with the terror at the [1972 Munich] Olympics and ABC’s coverage. Those are things, you watch, you read about as a youngster, and then you’re thrown in it.

“Similar or not, it’s a spot where it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is a tragedy for an entire community and country.’ You could have that. And there were some tense times, whether it was through the pandemic through the eyes of sports or security at Super Bowls and how that’s covered. That’s always on the back of my mind, ‘What if something like this happens?’ So it could happen again.”

Read on for Myers’ thoughts on hosting Up Close, leaving ESPN for Fox, the future of interview shows, and more.