In this video, former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Dan Patrick talks about how the iconic SportsCenter ads came to be.
If you’ve never seen them, they’re very clever. They get athletes from various sports to show up to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, in their uniforms, and do various things as if it’s how things work in real life (some of the best ones featured mascots).
But it wasn’t an easy concept to sell.
Patrick brought the idea up, and his boss said okay, you’re in charge.
He had trouble
getting athletes to do it though, since they weren’t really getting paid very much to do it.
However, his breakthrough was Duke legend Grant Hill.
He got Hill to sit in the ESPN lobby in 1996 and play piano. Patrick walked in and said he had a bad SportsCenter, so Hill cheers him up by playing the traditional tune called Stadium Charge, or just Charge.
And of course, Hill was wearing his Pistons jersey.
Jason Kidd did an early one too, delivering his highlight reel to Patrick and Keith Olbermann via helicopter. And naturally, he was wearing his Mavericks uniform.
The rest of the campaign was borderline genius. It really hit a chord with ESPN fans.
Just a reminder: we are calling these Twitter Gold, because it makes more sense than X Gold, which could also trip an algorithm n0-nometer somewhere.
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