Suzy Kolber reveals Joe Namath was her first call for new Scripps Sports show

Of all the people Suzy Kolber could have called first for her new interview show, she dialed Joe Namath.

Speaking with Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast, Kolber revealed that Namath was the first person she contacted when she began sketching out The Originals, the six-episode series she hosts and executive produces for the Scripps Sports Network. The show, which premiered Sept. 15, centers on figures who broke the mold, with a lineup that includes Jon Gruden, Steve Young, Lisa Salters, Hilary Knight, flag football star Diana Flores, and Savannah Bananas founder Jesse Cole.

In Kolber’s eyes, no athlete fit that description earlier than Broadway Joe.

“I thought, who signified that athlete as a brand better before anybody else ever did?” Kolber said. “He was the original to do that.”

The two, of course, are indelibly linked by a December 2003 night on the Giants Stadium sideline, when a visibly inebriated Namath leaned into Kolber’s live ESPN interview and declared that he wanted to kiss her. The clip has been replayed so often that it remains one of the most recognizable moments in sideline reporting history, and the prevailing narrative has cast Kolber as its uncomfortable victim. She has never subscribed to that interpretation. Kolber said she’s long sensed that people view the exchange negatively, particularly from her side of it, but that she never has, and she doesn’t believe Namath does either.

Reuniting with him on camera, she explained, would have offered a chance to present them in a warm, joyful light and to showcase a Namath who, by her account, is doing wonderfully today.

But Namath proved more elusive than she’d anticipated. Her overtures went unanswered for several weeks, leaving Kolber in a perpetual cycle of waiting by the phone, so much so that she’d started keeping it close during workouts, something she never does. When it finally rang at the gym, she rushed over to find Namath’s number flashing on the screen. He confessed he’d been slow to respond because he felt torn, reluctant to disappoint her but equally hesitant to sit for yet another interview and revisit stories he’d recounted more times than he could count.

“He was saying to me, ‘You know, I’m a Gemini, and Geminis don’t like to say no,'” Kolber said. “And I was actually convincing him it was okay to say no.”

Rather than press the issue, Kolber proposed a far more casual reunion, pledging to swing by for a visit the next time she’s in Florida. She hasn’t closed the door, though, and should The Originals get a second season, she said she might call Namath again.

What still catches Kolber off guard is that, across a career spanning nearly four decades, a few unscripted seconds with Namath remain the moment people bring up first, even those who have known her best.

Kolber was among ESPN2’s original anchors when the network debuted in 1993, emerged as a cornerstone of ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage after the package arrived in 2006, and hosted Monday Night Countdown until ESPN laid her off in 2023. Yet in the moment, the Namath interview barely registered. Kolber said she dismissed it as a quirky blip, rolling her eyes at her photographer before hustling off to corral a coach for her halftime interview. It wasn’t until early the next morning, after her crew had made an overnight trek from New York to Indianapolis for the back end of an ESPN doubleheader, that the magnitude became clear, as seemingly every outlet in the country clamored for her reaction.

“I said, ‘I’m never gonna talk about this,’ which I did not for many, many years after,” Kolber said of the conversation she had with an ESPN executive on that trip.

Kolber kept that vow until HBO approached her about its documentary on Namath’s life, and she agreed to participate only after receiving Namath’s blessing.

She grew up a devoted Dolphins fan and admitted she was never particularly fond of Namath, whose fur coats, pantyhose ads, and flamboyant persona clashed with her old-school sensibilities as a kid. But watching the documentary, she said, left her proud to be part of his story. In her view, that night marked the rock bottom Namath reached in front of a national audience, and she said she doesn’t believe he drank again afterward. The episode ultimately turned his life around, she said, including his relationships with his daughters, and while many of his former Jets teammates have since died or are in declining health, Namath is thriving.

“If I could be part of what turned out to be a silver lining for him, then things are meant to be in a certain sort of way,” Kolber said.