Chris Myers has worn many hats throughout his lengthy career in sports media – ESPN anchor, NFL play-by-play announcer, sideline reporter, NASCAR host, and much more. Myers has spent time in five decades working nationally for ESPN and Fox Sports and covered everything from the Super Bowl to the World Series to the Daytona 500. But arguably one of his most notable moments from his career came all the way back in 1998 when he was the host of ESPN’s interview series Up Close.
Up Close was a product of a much different time in sports and media when you could actually sit down and talk to a person for an extended period of time on a television program and it meant something. These were the days when Larry King Live was still the first cable news show that came to mind. But in 1998, Myers landed his and ESPN’s most controversial guest – O.J. Simpson.
The 1998 interview came not only after his famous criminal trial in which he was found not guilty of killing his former wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, but also after he was found liable for their deaths in February 1997 in a civil trial to the tune of $33.5 million in damages.
Simpson then appeared on Up Close with Myers in January 1998. But as Myers said, it was done with two conditions. That it would be held live and that no questions would be asked about his children. Myers looked back on the interview with Brandon Contes on this week’s episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast.
“It was controversial not from the sense that I was going to do it when we had the opportunity, but I think some people even at ESPN, even at our own company, were like ‘Why do you want to put that guy on the air?’ You know what I mean? And I was like, well, we’re certainly not going to talk football,” Myers recalled.
The Up Close interview is most remembered for Myers asking Simpson if he was capable of killing someone, calling the interview one of the greatest challenges of his career.
“I figured he wasn’t going to come on and say, ‘Hey I did it!’… I wanted to have a question, it’s not a gotcha question, but where people at home could see his reaction of what he said,” Myers said. “Again, I was surprised as you said, it was chilling, some of the things he said. I went in saying ‘I’m going to work that question in somewhere, I think it’s important, are you capable of killing.’ Watching some of the things he had done and what went on in the court documents, his stories, like searching for the real killers. I asked him, could you give us the name of a detective, private eye, whoever, a check you wrote, something that would prove you were really searching and not out on a golf course.”
The full interview lives on YouTube for posterity as it is definitely a trip to a different time in sports and society. Even though the live interview was only scheduled for 30 minutes, Myers and Simpson went almost an hour.
Myers will be in the booth on Sunday for Fox Sports opening the NFL season calling Bryce Young’s first start with the Carolina Panthers as they face the Atlanta Falcons. He shares his thoughts on calling that game and other highlights from his career on this week’s Awful Announcing Podcast.
The full episode with Chris Myers will be available Friday. You can find the Awful Announcing Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
