One of the more unusual sports media developments in some time comes from the recent return of The Sports Reporters. Before this year, that show last aired on ESPN in 2017; the brand continued as a Compass Media Networks podcast through 2022, but it didn’t seem likely to return to a video form.
But earlier this month, ESPN put out the first version of a new The Sports Reporters. They premiered it on their YouTube channel, and then reran it on their various linear channels. That first episode saw host Jeremy Schaap in conversation with NFL play-by-play voices Joe Buck, Ian Eagle, Kevin Harlan, and Mike Tirico about their work calling games and what that’s like:
Schaap recently spoke to AA after that first episode, and said bringing The Sports Reporters back has long been a goal for him considering his history with it. His father Dick hosted the show from 1988, the year it launched (it began with Gary Thorne as host, but the senior Schaap replaced him later that year) until his death in 2001, and Schaap said growing up around it helped him see the show’s importance. But he said he’s also been thinking for a long while about what it could be in today’s media era.
“It’s fun to be back,” Schaap said. “I’ve always wanted to bring it back. It’s very personal. It’s all personal, right, everything comes back to personal? But for me, I think the show has a tremendous legacy, but I always felt that it should have a tremendous present and future too.”
Schaap said he has a ton of fond memories from being around the original version of the show, and contributing to it at times, and even hosting a similar ESPN Classic show.
“The show’s been around since I was a sophomore in college, and my dad started hosting it when I was a sophomore in college,” he said. “And I would spend too many of my Sunday mornings hanging out with the guys because it was exciting. It was fun to be around them, it was fun to be around the banter and see them put the show together, you know? And I got to spend that time with my dad and those other guys. And, you know, the show is in my blood.
“And I got to do it a lot as a panelist, as a frequent guest host. For a while there, a couple of years, I hosted a show on ESPN Classic called Classic Sports Reporters that was a lot of fun.”
But Schaap said rebooting this isn’t just about his connection to the show, but about how people still relate to the brand, and about his belief it has a role to play in 2024.
“I just feel like it’s a show that should be out there; there’s still so much enthusiasm for it,” he said. “And the reaction that we got after we announced it was coming back was overwhelming. I had no expectations of that. But we put out a trailer the day before it it went live on YouTube, and we got, I think, two million views on my account, more than a million on Adam Schefter’s after he retweeted it, which is always beneficial. And it’s fun to be doing it again, and it’s fun to reimagine it.”
Schaap said he expected some level of positive reaction and excitement from fans, but nowhere near what this produced.
“I am terrible at gauging how people are going to react, I’m sure I’m not the only one,” he said. “But I could spend eight months working on a story thinking it’s going to get really great reaction and then, you know, nobody pays attention. And then you do something and you turn it around in five hours and somehow it takes off and everybody gets excited. I thought it would be like ‘All right, The Sports Reporters is back, that’s nice.'”
He said the reaction makes some more sense on second thought considering the original show’s run and how people connected to it, though.
“I think the show was such a part of people’s lives for so long. I was talking to Bill Rhoden about it, and he had a good point of ‘They miss the show, but they also miss that part of their lives.’ It might be their youth or their middle age, but whatever that was, they associate it with a particular moment in their lives, because it was appointment viewing for a long time. And there was a long time where it was kind of the only show of its kind; it begat so many of these other shows.
“And I always knew, because people would say to me, and if they were saying to me, they were saying it more often to Mike [Lupica] and Bill and Bob [Ryan] and the rest of the regulars, ‘Where’s The Sports Reporters? Bring back The Sports Reporters! So that was a drum I was beating for a while, and a year and a half ago, Norby [Williamson] said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ And I was excited.”
When this reboot was announced, there was plenty of questioning (including here) of why this was coming back as a YouTube-first show rather than a linear one, why it was starting with an episode featuring NFL play-by-play voices rather than the print reporters or columnists who more traditionally appeared on the original The Sports Reporters, and why that first episode featured a video call discussion rather than the original show’s in-person discussion. Schaap said the idea is to do a variety of different formats, though, including some that might look more familiar to the old version.
“It’s one of those things: we want to bring back the show, but obviously it’s a different world now, in 2024 than it was in 2017,” he said. “We have an opportunity to do some reinvention and also do some non-reinvention, doing what it was doing. And I think that’s what’s going to be fun about this; it’s not going to be the same thing every edition.
“My hope is we’re going to have shows that look very much like what the old Sports Reporters looked like, with three panelists and me sitting around a table talking about what’s going on. And there will be other shows that look like that first show where we have four people in boxes.”
As for starting with the NFL announcers, Schaap credited that idea to long-time ESPN executive Andy Tennant (vice president, E:60 and content integration), who thought it would be notable to discuss the craft of NFL play-by-play before the start of the season.
“That idea came from Andy Tennant, the executive in charge of the show, who I’ve been working with for 25 years on Outside The Lines and E:60. And he said ‘Look, you know, we’re bringing back the show, it’s been gone for a long time. We want to premiere in the days leading up to the NFL season kickoff. How about we get these guys, these star commentators, star play-by-play guys? We don’t get to see them outside of the booth very often, talking about not only the league but their craft.’ And everybody said ‘That’s a great idea.'”
Schaap said he understands and somewhat expected the pushback on that debut is different from many people’s expectations for The Sports Reporters, but thinks it was still well worth it given how it turned out and how viewers reacted.
“We’re not naive. We know that if we do it that way coming back, there are people who are going to say ‘That’s not The Sports Reporters.’ And that’s fair. That’s true. That’s exactly what it is. It’s not the old show. But this was a big bang, high-profile way to kick off the reboot; it’s not going to be like this every show. And it was received well.”
Schaap added that while this initial episode certainly wasn’t something you’d see on the old Sports Reporters every week, there were shows even during his father’s tenure that had similar approaches and guests.
“You can certainly make the case, ‘Well, that’s not my grandparents’ Sports Reporters.’ But, this was something that we thought was interesting. And look, the old show, it’s not as if those guys weren’t on The Sports Reporters in the past; they’d bring those guys in. But it wasn’t ever a full panel as far as I can recall.
“I was looking at YouTube, and I saw they did The Sports Reporters from the ’95 World Series, and the whole show’s up on YouTube. There are a few of them up on YouTube. I don’t know why, I don’t know who owns them or whatever. But it’s my dad and [Mike] Lupica and the two guys who were calling the Series, Al Michaels and Bob Costas.”
“So they would do stuff in that era too. They were experimenting with stuff. I remember they used to have the losing quarterback from the conference championship game, they’d have the athletes on sometimes. And if there was a big event like The Masters, Jim Nantz would come around and do the Masters show the week before that.”
Another question some had when this initial episode was announced was why it made sense to talk to these voices under the brand of The Sports Reporters, rather than another ESPN journalism brand such as E:60, Outside The Lines, or SC: Featured. Schaap said the biggest difference here from an interview for one of those other properties was its emphasis on the roundtable, and on the broadcasters interacting with each other and playing off each other.
“It’s a different animal, right? A roundtable show. I said to the guys, and I don’t have to tell them anything, these are the top broadcasters in the world, but it’s about them engaging with each other, having conversations with each other about what they do, what they see.
“So I think the most compelling stuff from the show was that stuff. They obviously have keen insight into what’s going on on the playing field, but when we talked to them about doing their jobs, doing their jobs in the context of football in 2024, with player safety and so on.”
Read on for more on the player safety discussion in the initial episode, the value of talking to these NFL commentators and how they fit into some The Sports Reporters history, the YouTube-originating format, and what Schaap has in mind for the show going forward.
