46 Fun Facts About ESPN

What did the initialism ESPN originally stand for?

Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. The plan grew from one state's games to a 24-hour national channel when renting a satellite around the clock proved cheaper than renting it for five hours.

ESPN's 2020 documentary series The Last Dance followed the final championship season of which NBA team?

Chicago Bulls. ESPN had planned the series for June 2020, but with the pandemic wiping out live sport it rushed the premiere forward to April, and it became the network's most-viewed documentary.

In which Connecticut town is ESPN headquartered?

Bristol. The founders had first rented offices in nearby Plainville, but a local ordinance against satellite dishes forced the new channel to find land elsewhere.

Bill Rasmussen conceived ESPN in 1978 after being fired by which team?

New England Whalers. He had been the hockey team's communications director and announcer; out of work, he went looking for a way to put Connecticut's games on cable.

Which company bought control of ESPN in February 1979, months before the channel went on air?

Getty Oil. It put in $10 million to diversify, watched the bill climb with no profit in sight, and had given up on the channel by the time it sold in 1984.

Which brewer bought exclusive beer-advertising rights on ESPN in spring 1979?

Anheuser-Busch. The Budweiser brewer became the channel's first sponsor months before launch, in what was then the richest advertising deal cable television had seen.

The first game ESPN ever aired, in 1979, was in which sport?

Slow-pitch softball. The Milwaukee Schlitz met the Kentucky Bourbons in a professional world series game from Wisconsin, a long way from the major leagues the channel shows now.

Which anchor joined ESPN one month after launch and stayed for decades?

Chris Berman. He arrived as a 24-year-old with long hair and became the voice of the highlight, stretching out 'back, back, back' as a home run left the park.

Early rounds of which event gave ESPN its first big programming step in 1980?

The coverage helped turn the event into what is now called March Madness.

Which analyst joined ESPN in 1979 just after being fired as coach of the NBA's Detroit Pistons?

Dick Vitale. He took the job only until another coaching offer came along, called ESPN's first big college game that December, and never left the microphone.

Which of the big broadcast networks took control of ESPN in 1984?

ABC. It bought the channel from its weary first backer, kept 80% and sold the rest to the biscuit maker Nabisco; ESPN veterans say that until then it could have gone either way.

ESPN's 2003 coverage of Chris Moneymaker turning an $86 entry into $2.5 million set off a boom in which game?

Poker. He was an accountant playing his first live tournament, and the sight of an amateur with the perfect name beating the professionals sent thousands of new players online: the 'Moneymaker effect'.

ESPN's first pro football package, eight games in 1987, put the sport on cable on which night?

Sunday. The eight games were the league's first on cable and began a weekly Sunday-night fixture that ESPN kept until 2006.

Which ex-coach joined ESPN in 1987 and stayed on College GameDay for 38 straight seasons?

Lee Corso. From 1996 he closed each show by pulling on the mascot head of the team he was picking to win, beginning with Ohio State's Brutus Buckeye.

ESPN Radio's 'Mike & Mike' paired Mike Greenberg with which ex-lineman?

Golic. The ex-Notre Dame lineman played the blunt tough guy to Greenberg's fussy New York fan for 17 years, until the show signed off in 2017.

ESPN2 launched in 1993 as a brasher, younger channel with a graffiti-style logo and which nickname?

The Deuce. The channel was pitched at younger viewers, with a looser style and room for the sports its big brother had no time to show.

In 2010, which NBA star announced his next team live on ESPN in a special called 'The Decision'?

LeBron James. 'I'm going to take my talents to South Beach,' he said from a Boys & Girls Club, and the hour raised millions of dollars for the clubs and other charities.

Which publishing company bought a 20% stake in ESPN from Nabisco in 1990?

Hearst Communications. The price was never announced, though reports put it near $170 million, and the stake went on to become one of the magazine publisher's biggest money-makers.

Which league agreed in 2025 to take a 10% stake in ESPN?

NFL. In return the league handed over its own NFL Network and the right to distribute its RedZone channel, turning a seller of TV rights into a part-owner of its broadcaster.

As of 2025, which outspoken commentator had starred on ESPN's morning debate show First Take since 2012?

Stephen A. Smith. The former Philadelphia newspaper columnist has outlasted every sparring partner the show has given him, from Skip Bayless to Max Kellerman.

In 1980, ESPN became the first network to televise which annual off-field event, now a prime-time spectacle?

The NFL Draft. When ESPN's bosses floated the idea, commissioner Pete Rozelle laughed and asked who would want to watch it, but he let them try anyway.

Which 30 for 30 film won ESPN its first Academy Award, in 2017?

O.J.: Made in America. At about eight hours it is the longest film ever to win an Oscar, and the Academy promptly changed its rules to keep multi-part series out of the category.

From 2019, ESPN paid about $300 million a year to carry 42 live events annually from which combat-sports promotion?

UFC. The five-year deal put mixed martial arts' biggest fights on ESPN and its streaming service; when it ran out, the promotion left for Paramount in a $7.7 billion contract.

From 1994 to 2021, ESPN televised the national finals of which contest for schoolchildren?

The spelling bee. ESPN covered it for 27 years, with analysts and profiles of the young spellers, until the company that runs the bee moved it to its own channels in 2022.

What was the original 1995 name of the vintage-game channel ESPN later rebranded?

Classic Sports Network. ESPN bought the channel in 1997 and put its own name on it; after 26 years of replaying sport's past, it was itself switched off at the end of 2021.

In 2006, which prime-time football institution moved to ESPN after 36 seasons on broadcast television?

Monday Night Football. One of ESPN's first Monday games reopened the New Orleans Superdome, a year after Hurricane Katrina had driven the Saints out of their city.

Which university had its own ESPN-run television channel from 2011 until it joined the SEC in 2024?

Texas. The Longhorn Network was possible only because its old conference let schools sell some rights themselves; the SEC pools them, so the channel closed the day before the move.

On ESPN, what is 'The Ocho'?

A block of obscure sports. The joke began in the 2004 comedy Dodgeball, whose made-up ESPN8 showed contests that were 'almost a sport'; in 2017 the real ESPN started playing along.

From which city has ESPN's Pardon the Interruption been broadcast since its debut in 2001?

Washington, D.C. Hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were both writing for The Washington Post when the show began, so ESPN built the programme where they already worked.

Which anchor hosted her 5,000th SportsCenter in 2016, more than anyone before her?

Linda Cohn. When she started in 1992, viewers rang ESPN's switchboard to ask why a woman was on the air; she stayed at the desk for more than three decades.

A 1984 Supreme Court ruling that freed universities to sell their own TV rights let ESPN show far more of which sport?

College football. Once schools could sell their own games, ESPN filled Thursday and Saturday nights with them, and advertisers began to notice how well-off its viewers were.

ESPN's deadpan 'This Is SportsCenter' adverts, which ran for three decades, showed star athletes and mascots doing what?

Working at ESPN's offices. In the mock-documentary spots the stars did menial jobs in full uniform, and one gymnast was simply carried from desk to desk by a college mascot.

Who co-anchored SportsCenter's celebrated 11 o'clock edition with Dan Patrick in the 1990s?

Keith Olbermann. The pair called their hour 'The Big Show' and later wrote a book under that title; he says the banter began as two anchors trying to get each other through alive.

Which SportsCenter anchor made 'Boo-yah!' and 'as cool as the other side of the pillow' his signatures?

Stuart Scott. He brought hip-hop's language to the anchor desk when he joined in 1993, and kept working through years of cancer treatment.

Who became the first female athlete to guest-host SportsCenter, in 2015?

Ronda Rousey. The Olympic judo medallist was then unbeaten as a professional fighter, and three months later she was hosting Saturday Night Live.

Which ESPN anchor hosted Outside the Lines until retiring in 2019?

Bob Ley. He arrived on ESPN's third day in 1979, and from 1990 made Outside the Lines the place where the network investigated the sports it broadcast.

What does ESPY stand for?

Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly. Part of every ticket sold for the ceremony goes to a cancer research charity that was launched from its stage in its very first year.

Who announced a cancer foundation while accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the first ESPYs?

Jim Valvano. 'Don't give up. Don't ever give up,' the dying coach told the audience; the V Foundation he launched that night has since given hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research.

ESPN's live coverage from Australia in early 1987 made front-page news and a TV hit of which sailing contest?

The America's Cup. Advertisers bought every minute of ESPN's 70 hours as the American boat won the trophy back, and executives still say it put the network on the map.

Which host began licensing his loud, free-wheeling daily talk show to ESPN in 2023?

Pat McAfee. The former Colts punter kept the show as his own and only licensed it to ESPN, so it went on streaming free on YouTube while the network aired it.

Which former Ohio State quarterback joined College GameDay in 1996 and became ESPN's lead game analyst a decade later?

Kirk Herbstreit. He started at ESPN in 1995 as a sideline analyst, and in 2022 he added pro football games for Amazon without giving up his college work.

In which state were the first X Games held in 1995?

Rhode Island. The debut in Providence and Newport was still called the Extreme Games, and Tony Hawk, the sport's biggest name, was beaten into second place in the street contest.

Which skateboarding trick did Tony Hawk famously land at the 1999 X Games?

The 900. Two and a half mid-air spins that nobody had ever landed in competition; Hawk fell again and again before riding one out, and called it the best day of his life.

Which NBA teenager shared the first cover of ESPN The Magazine in 1998 under the word 'NEXT'?

Kobe Bryant. Weeks earlier fans had voted the 19-year-old an All-Star starter, though he was still coming off the bench for his own team.

Which columnist co-created the 30 for 30 documentary series with Connor Schell?

Bill Simmons. The plan was 30 films by 30 directors for ESPN's 30th birthday, each about a story that gripped fans at the time and was then somehow forgotten.

Which trade was the subject of the first 30 for 30 film in 2009?

Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings. Peter Berg's Kings Ransom revisited the 1988 deal that took hockey's biggest star out of Edmonton, and the celebrated series began with poor ratings.