fshorr's blog

I too was watching last night and continue to be in awe at what Steph Curry does on a nightly basis. Every time he does something you can’t believe, he follows that up with something even more unbelievable the next night. It’s funny that this game happened just days after Rob King of ESPN came to speak to us, and specifically talked about Steph Curry being must-watch TV. As Professor Shorr points out here, if Steph keeps being Steph, Rob has nothing to worry about when it comes to ratings and people tuning in. I truly believe at this point you can just put up video of Steph Curry warming up in practice and you’ll get millions of people to tune in, just to see what crazy shot or dribbling routine he’ll do next.

I think this ties in nicely to one of the main themes I took away from this seminar and that is the idea that ratings and interest drives everything they do at ESPN. Rob specifically said that one of the things that ESPN is very good at is understanding what the fans are interested in and what they want to see. They’re able to gauge this interest through the use of data and feedback from fans. This data and feedback is very important because there is no specific audience for ESPN. Rather, it’s a mass audience of fans with different feelings about different sports, and you need to be able to appeal to these different groups of fans, or they won’t tune in.

For example, when it comes to Sunday night baseball, you will notice that a majority of the time, the game will be Red Sox Yankees as opposed to other games, such as the Giants and Dodgers. Rob said that through their collection of data and feedback, they discovered that Red Sox Yankees will out-rate Dodgers Giants even out in Los Angeles. So even though there is a specific fan base in L.A. that supports the Dodgers, the overall mass audience would rather see a Red Sox Yankees game on national television, so that game gets the nod, showing how much the overall ratings and interest drives everything ESPN does.

Not only do the ratings and interest drive what teams, and sports, are on T.V., but also who is on T.V. Rob specifically spoke about hockey and how some ESPN analysts and anchors don’t want to talk about hockey or aren’t the most knowledgeable about it, and the fans can sense that. That’s why ESPN specifically has Steve Levy, Barry Melrose, and John Buccigross do hockey coverage, because they are the most knowledgeable and the ones that fans most respond to and want to watch. This is just another way in which ESPN is driven by their ratings and their fans.

Another major theme I took out of this was the idea of the behind-the-scenes people being the driving force behind ESPN. You hear it all the time, stories about the “unsung heroes” on sports teams and in different professions, and ESPN is no different. Rob talked about how they hire people at ESPN that are essential to making the whole process work, but you will never know their names because they are never on T.V. or in the spotlight. A specific example was made about one guy who was a NASCAR expert, but if you took him out of ESPN, he probably wouldn’t be able to find a job because NASCAR is his life. That also applies to a lot of the other behind-the-scenes workers who focus solely on one sport or area of coverage. You may not know who they are, but they are essential to keeping ESPN up and running. It’s not just the personalities and celebrities you see on T.V. every night.

One last theme I took out of this was something Rob said in the very beginning, and that was that he never thought he’d get to this job. He grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and worked in a newspaper to start out, and now he is one of the top guys in all of ESPN. It just goes to show that you never know what can happen in this, or any profession really, and that if you have a dream, you should go for it. It’s good to hear that from someone in Rob’s position because a lot of the time when someone is in as prominent of a position as he is, they’ll act like they are above everyone else. But Rob was the complete opposite. He was down-to-earth and able to connect with us, a younger audience, by talking about the time when he was in our shoes in college, and how he never imagined he’d get to where he is today. He just proves that if you work hard, you’re ambitious, and you’re good at what you do, anything is possible.

I did not watch Saturday night’s epic tilt between the Golden State Warriors and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

I did not see Stephen Curry’s triumphant, record-breaking, game-winning, 32-foot buzzer beater live.

I did, however, see it several times on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. ESPN made sure of it.

If it seems that there’s even the slightest bit of bitterness in my tone, it’s because, well, I’m quite frankly exhausted with any and all things related to the Baby Faced Assassin. Our tremendous guest, Mr. Rob King (who’s personal qualities I will commend later), described anything to do with No. 30 as “crack” that his sports-loving audience flocks to, but I must say, it has quite the opposite effect on me.

I know that, despite the vast majority of people who are enamored with Curry (after all, he did cite the impressive data analytics), I am not alone. You see it all the time. For nearly every major athlete in the world, there is the hater battle cry: “This guy is so overrated.”

But what they’re saying isn’t quite what they mean to. What they’re really trying to say is, “This guy is so overexposed.” Back to this point shortly.

As my classmate Timmy Lagos described, King spent a considerable amount of time outlining the aforementioned data collection and utilization process, all of which I found to be tremendously interesting. He explained the curation of content, ensuring at all times that 80 percent of his audience be happy, and then detailed some of the particular programs which make that metrics gathering possible.

He even summarized all of these things into an answer, once and for all, to age-old question: “Why is my favorite team not on SportsCenter?” For a few minutes, I even bought his response, with all of his flashy statistics and easy disposition.

But still, I couldn’t wave my inner, disgruntled fan away. As it turns out, I had a good reason.

Of all the technology King mentioned, SpredFast most caught my attention. Via his explanation, I gathered that the software relayed to ESPN what their fans, followers of ESPN’s social media, discussed across a variety of online platforms. Would it not follow, however, that at least a portion of what motivated that discussion was the content posted by ESPN itself? After all, if I see that there’s a trade rumor involving Al Horford on their Twitter, I’m vastly more likely to respond.

Media has always had the power of agenda setting. The responsibility of swaying popular opinion is huge because it is so easily done. Obviously, no one is coming to SportsCenter for unbiased breakdowns, but is it not entirely possible that, by selecting what to focus on, ESPN, the flagship of sports media, the veritable mecca of all things highlights, analysis and player news, is influencing what people want to see?

I’m sure that, as King likely would have attested, come the NFL season, Odell Beckham Jr. consumes an enormous amount of attention. He’s talented, he plays in a tremendously sized market; it all adds up. But even despite his jaw-dropping catch, if all network conversation around him had abruptly stopped, would people care?

In essence, I firmly believe that this process is not as linear as King depicted. It’s not simply the consumers telling ESPN what they want to see. It’s a cycle. They see an amazing play. They talk about it online. ESPN spends six minutes discussing it on SportsCenter and posting the highlight to every available forum. The consumers relive it, and further break it down, then go hunting for more information about the athletes involved, which ESPN provides (and so on, and so forth).

Even I, however, can’t decide where it begins or ends. How did the Red Sox and Yankees matchup get to be so popular in the first place? Likely because of media coverage. As someone who was an avid follower of (if I’m being perfectly honest) an irrelevant sport, equestrian, I frequently heard complaints about how broadcasts, when they even occurred, would take place at odd hours in the night. What would happen if a big-name sports network were to suddenly make a tremendous fuss over such a little-known competition?

Perhaps nothing (or worse). Not everything, after all, has the same potential for widespread appeal. But maybe, should they get the opportunity to watch more of his highlights, national viewers would earn more respect for a top-flight receiver like Allen Robinson – a member of the one NFL team King said didn’t make it into the Top 100 squads sports fans cared about.

At what point does a pioneer like ESPN stop regurgitating the same few names because they’re the most popular? As I mentioned earlier, the practice has already begun to sour. Every major sports fan has a name they can’t stand to see pop up. Tim Tebow? Conor McGregor? LeBron James? JJ Watt? Tiger Woods? Tom Brady? Ronda Rousey? Johnny Manziel? And yes, now, Steph Curry.

I appreciated King’s candor about the negative qualities of ESPN. Respectfully, I’d like to add this to the list. It will never be the thing to take down the titan, but, should a vibrant, innovative group begin showcasing less-known but equally (or more) impressive talent, the household name may soon have some serious competition. For this reason, I commend their exploration of the unknowns through their #SCTop10. If only some of those people weren’t the oversaturated in the making…

Now, a quick word on King himself. Wow. I didn’t know what to expect, but after a tight-lipped reception a week ago, this was a breath of fresh air. Of all the fantastic things he had to say, perhaps my favorite was his journey.

As a writer, I often toy with the possibility of spanning the gap into television and broadcasting, but too frequently see the median between the two as an insurmountable wall, a barrier cautioning me to stay on my side. I was heartened, however, to hear that King spent the better part of his career working in “the newspaper business.”

His determination to pursue work as an editorial cartoonist was both amusing and inspiring, reminding me that any dream worth pursing may not always readily be in reach.

Many of my peers and I have almost tangible aspirations, but often, we dismiss them as being unreachable. It would seem that, according to King, so long as your legs keep churning in the direction of your passion, everything will be fine.

After all, as he described, there’s a home for everyone, and he sure made ESPN seem like such a desirable one!

When Steph Curry plays like this, it makes me feel better as in it completely continues to legitimize and solidify his NBA Finals victory over my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers. It makes me feel better because he clearly isn’t a flash in the pan. He is a once in a generation talent that could POSSIBLY dethrone King James…THERE I SAID IT.

One thing that stuck out to me from our conversation with Rob King was the notion of analytics and that data drives companies like ESPN and their content—data from people like us. Sports is increasingly becoming a business built around the needs and wants of its audience, much like King said. Therefore, like Vanessa was saying, that is why ESPN won’t let us forget about that game winning three—that’s what the people want, that is what drives our business.

I think this definitely taps into the direction sports journalism is headed these days, a lot of our presenters have talked about writing these fluff pieces about player’s hair, because that is what their audience wants. One thing that stuck out to me most is when King told us that this is no longer a business where we can tell people what they want to know—they drive us. I think a lot of people are afraid of that, but I don’t think ESPN is. Maybe it is because they are the leader in sports journalism as far as audience, or maybe it is because they embrace it instead of fighting it. I think King was refreshing in the sense that he wasn’t hung up on the fact that journalism is changing, but rather he was excited about the opportunity to adapt. I think journalism needs more people like this. We need to find ways to overcome the changes and find creative ways to deliver our message to our audience. I am being nothing more than philosophical here—I have no idea how I would do that, and if I did I would go right to Shark Tank and sell my idea to give myself a little wiggle room instead of living pay check to pay check as the “starving” journalist. But, in all seriousness this drives back to the point of passion. If you have the passion to want to succeed and be in the business of journalism, you will find your way.

I am in the business of honesty, and I can honestly say the second Rob King sat at the front of our room Thursday night I was completely star struck. At first it was because of his kick ass job at ESPN, but then when he started to speak so eloquently about ESPN and every calculated move they make about the analytics and content alone I was completely impressed. The best part about King was he seemed just so genuinely relatable and knowledgeable, for lack of a better term he wasn’t just a pretty face sitting in the boss’s chair—he was the real deal who knew the inner workings of each part of his department. I really respected that level of commitment to his job. Additionally, it was clear that King just frankly enjoyed his job—I felt myself constantly thinking I wanted something similar for myself one day.

After class I went up to talk to him. At first I was nervous because I really didn’t know what to say—I know I couldn’t talk to him intelligently about analytics, but I decided to just give it a go. I literally just told him thank you because I appreciated his time and I really appreciated the picture he painted for the class. He showed us that hard work and dedication will really pay off if you just stick to it—and passion will take you far. He left me with a line I think I really needed to hear, especially since it isn’t very common you seem to find people being positive about jobs in journalism these days. He told me “you are going to get where you are supposed to go, you just don’t know how to get there yet.” Ya this was pretty simple, but it really resonated with me—this business is going to get hard, that is inevitable. You are going to have late nights and terrible articles, but at the end of the day, if you put in the time and your passion, eventually you’re going to get where you’re supposed to go.

Listen to Sports Chat with Gabbie and Ashley episode 2!

https://soundcloud.com/gabbie-chartier/sports-chat-with-gabbie-and-ashley

Growing up, watching ESPN was ingrained as part of my my early morning routine with my dad. I worshipped the ground Linda Cohn walked on and waited patiently for the next the personalized touch Stuart Scott added to a home run announcement. But somewhere along the way, I lost interest in ESPN. With the availability of sports information littered throughout the internet, ESPN became, to me, the place to verify information but not necessarily the first place to go for sports news or entertainment. It quietly slipped into the shadows of my young adulthood.

Going into last Thursday’s class, I brushed up on some recent criticism of the place in the middle of Connecticut that brought so much joy to my mornings as a 7-year-old. I was prepared to sit and listen to King with a large dose of skepticism. From what I had read, there was a good deal of negativity being thrown around about ESPN. If ESPN was “the worldwide leader in sports,” what exactly were they doing to lead the way?

What I didn’t expect to get out of the class was to understand the weight of that statement, “worldwide leader in sports”. King helped me see that to be a leader in sports, ESPN must do things differently than other institutions. In order to stay relevant, it must follow the analytics and data in order to garner interest in topics, address those topics, and come up with a creative way to fit those topics into a show. It must constantly adapt its view of the company’s future, as when King said ESPN was looking to personalize its content much like the new Apple TV does. ESPN must check, double check, and be 100% positive that a source is accurate before running a story. And it must take the heat for not running a story fast enough because that’s the information driven society we live in. With the power of being the self-proclaimed leader in sports comes great responsibility, and with King I could feel the weight of ESPN trying to meet everyone’s expectations while staying relevant in a ratings-driven society. For as much criticism as ESPN receives, it sure does a lot to try to make (and keep) us ever-changing viewers happy. These efforts are often overlooked by viewers (myself included) because it’s easier to criticize and point out what’s wrong than to praise an already thriving company on what they do right.

King’s well-formulated and genuine responses reminded me why I loved ESPN as a kid: it was captivating. Whether it’s because I fell off the cable wagon and switched over to internet as my main priority or because I didn’t feel like Steven A. Smith should still have a job at ESPN after he reminded women during a rant about Ray Rice’s actions to “make sure [they] don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions”, I had forgotten what ESPN used to, and what it still has the potential to, be. Being captivated by King’s responses mirrored the way I used to feel as a kid and gave me hope that ESPN is truly striving to be better, to fulfill that promise to sports fans that they are the leader in sports. King embodied everything I thought ESPN wasn’t anymore: honest, professional, innovative, passionate, and driven. ESPN is not a machine, it is held up by people like King, humans with individual stories, who are constantly coming together to think of ways to make the audience come back time and time again.

Are there still things ESPN could do better? Absolutely. I’m not implying that the company doesn’t have some major flaws (sex-crazed employees, a semi-documented culture of sexual harassment). These are absolutely issues to me, but that’s for another day. To me, though, King’s visit to our class left me feeling hopeful despite the negative aspects of the company. Seeing how passionate King was about his job and how honest he was about his path to getting there was the bigger take away. Other speakers we’ve had in this class have really made the journalism situation seem bleak and unforgiving. King’s cool nature provided me a different look into what a career in journalism can actually be like if you enjoy what you do and are striving to make your company a better place.

The entire time Rob King spoke I was enamored. Maybe I didn’t know what to expect. Besides his impressive resume there was nothing to precursor his knack for storytelling or his giving out gems of wisdom. But all that aside it was the fact that it was like sitting down in front of the secret keeper of sports, the gate keeper of T.V., and the psychic of future technology.

Then it was scary. I realized he had so much control. He was like the king that didn’t know he wore the crown. But he kind of did.

“It is tireless to try and keep up with what audiences want,” he said. I’m sure this is true. But from everything he said (the data analysis, social media stalking, the algorithms) it began to seem like ESPN isn’t keeping up with the audience but shaping what the audience wants.

Rob King says ESPN’s shows like SportsCenter are showing us what we want to see, that they are “serving the fan”. I believe that is all true and King made it very clear that the feedback that is given out on Twitter and other platforms is some of the most important pre-show material.

But at some point in his talk it dawned on me that King and his team, what I envision as pods of sports fans and tech geeks scheming together, are pushing so hard to keep up with fans that they are actually surpassing them.

Chicken or the egg.

King made it sound almost like, while journalistic at heart, ESPN is not serving the news as it is or as it is happening. But serving it as the public wants to see it. And serving it as ESPN believes will get the most clicks.

Several of my classmates asked King questions about this subject: journalistic integrity versus ratings. Does ESPN sacrifice the former for the latter? King’s response was that as long as the base journalism (facts, double checking, sources) is right and good and true, then ESPN isn’t sacrificing covering Steph Curry way more than baseball.

Who is telling who what is important? Or in what way we want to receive our news?

ESPN or us? I still don’t know.

After reading my other classmates posts, and listening to what they had to say, I realized I missed an amazing seminar. Hayley and I were talking about it the next day, and she emphasized how great Rob King was at speaking and that she thought it was the best seminar yet. But, after looking through all the posts, I can get a gist of what happened.

Every since I was little, my dad and I would watch ESPN. My dad would always say, “Honey, flip it to ESPN!” when he wanted to hear updates about his favorite team. Now that I’ve gotten older, I realized that ESPN is almost like the sports reporting parent that gets the information right for its children (other sports reporting organizations). One of our classmates paraphrased King, saying that ESPN does not want to have the first 140 characters, but the best 140 characters, and I think that describes what they do perfectly.

When I want to find out correct information about an athlete’s injury, or a scandal, or even just a game synopsis, I look to ESPN. When I google search something about professional sports, ESPN is always one of the top choices, and if it’s not, I go to ESPN anyway. But, I never really think about all the people that go into making ESPN stories credible and true.

Timmy talked about this in his post. He mentioned that ESPN is no different than any other organization in the sense that they have “unsung heroes” who do all the little things to make the big things great. The example of the NASCAR expert stuck out to me because his entire life is NASCAR, and if he did not have the job at ESPN, he might have to find work outside of what he loves.

Another point I read trending throughout the posts was that Rob King was so impressive because he did not think he would ever get to ESPN. One of our classmates brought up the point that King was a cartoonist at first, not knowing where his life was going to take him, and now he’s a top dog at ESPN. His story gives our generation of sports journalists hope. We always hear from our professors or from people we know in the field that it’s about what you know, but almost more importantly, who you know. As a senior heading into graduate school here in the fall, it’s refreshing to hear from King that you don’t always have to know exactly what your plan is.

Even though I wasn’t able to attend, I think a great point to take away from the seminar, which Hayley talked about, is to follow your dreams. King said he said yes to talking to us because he never thought he’d be where he is today when he was in our position. At work, I always ask people in our office, whether it’s Alex Corddry, or Koon Lam, etc. how they got to where they are. It’s extremely beneficial to ask these questions because everyone’s story is unique and a lesson can be learned from each one.

The bumps in the road help us grow in our profession. The only way we will exactly know what we want to do or who we want to be is by getting out in the real world and trying different things. King went from writing to ESPN. We have to use stories like his to inspire our own stories.

We have to remember that the ride to our destination might not always go perfect, but a smooth sea never made for a skilled sailor.

“When I was your age I never would have told you I’d be sitting in the chair I am today.” Instant relief.

Every time I hear someone say that his or her path was an unexpected one, I get a little more hopeful that everything is going to work out. Majoring in this field I’ve felt like I’ve been surrounded by people who have known what they want to do career-wise since before the even got accepted to Boston University – and here I am, a second semester senior, still trying to figure out what it is exactly that I want to end up doing. If Rob King can make that big of a change at age 42 and be as happy as he is at a company he’s that passionate about, then I have hope.

I found it funny when King spoke about how SportsCenter differs from news because everything is on a schedule. He’s obviously right – games start at specific times and you can guess pretty accurately to when they all end – but hattricks and shutouts and Steph Curry shooting from 35 at 47% is not on schedule (well, maybe he is at this point). They still have to figure out what highlights to include and how long to talk about them.

I loved that he said that the anchors talk about the things they are actually interested in – they aren’t told exactly what to cover and what to include – if they like basketball, they’re gonna talk about basketball, if they like football, they’re gonna talk about football. Hearing that instantly made the network seem more genuine to me.. these people are just talking about things they’re interested in and dedicated to presenting it in a way that attracts people that are just like them. I love that.

I’ve always been a little bitter about the lack of hockey talk on SportsCenter, but have found a little solace in Buccigross (he also shows love to the women’s side which is great – mostly on twitter). But it’s pretty impossible to argue that they should actually get equal time – the truth is that hockey just isn’t as big as basketball, football or baseball. ESPN clearly recognizes this, but that’s why they are so successful. They understand the market so well and give their audience (at least the majority) pretty much exactly what they’re looking for almost every time.

“#SportsCenterTop10,” is how Rob King, senior vice president of SportsCenter and News, answered me when I asked him how Boston University was able to make it on the top 10 plays twice in two consecutive weeks. To be honest, I didn’t believe Rob when he said that this was the way ESPN was finding most of its news and highlights. Having someone look at a Twitter feed with hashtags relating to SportsCenter? How is that reliable? Especially with all we discussed in the past seminars about how Twitter isn’t the most reliable source. However, like King said, “social is built in the fabric of how we think and report and it has to be. It is central to how we serve you. This is not a fad.” With this in mind, after a couple days, I decided I would see how serious he was about it by scrolling through the feed #SCTop10 to find Sarah Hope’s buzzer beater score at the BU women’s basketball game, and it took me almost an hour to scroll about 15 days back. The amount of highlights people were posting on Twitter to get seen was unbelievable. I think I saw over 200 tweets about Jamal Murray’s dunk. It was just ridiculous that ESPN, which seems to have no competition (even though according to King that isn’t true), has taken advantage of Twitter to find its top plays rather than watching the actual sport.

After, scrolling through thousands of tweets with the #SCTop10 and finding Hope’s buzzer beater, I thought about how many of them were about Stephen Curry. The Golden State Warriors MVP was all over it and I started to think maybe this kid could be the next legend in the league. Oscar Robertson and Phil Jackson had some remarks about how they have already seen players like this and how he isn’t anything special. Robertson and Jackson have both seen a lot of basketball and I hate to disagree with them, but they are crazy if they truly believe that. The Big O said, “He’s shot well because of what’s going on in basketball today,” referring to the defense of NBA teams. The Big O might be right when he talks about the James Harden’s of the league, but not every player is like that. Curry has shown time and time again he is the real deal, from his shot in Game 3 of the New Orleans Pelicans playoff series to his shot a couple nights ago. Curry has brought something to the NBA that people have never seen before and that is why he is special. However, it is only during his time at Davidson and these past two years that he makes the cut for ESPN. What about the seven years between those two events? Oh right, he was Mr. Glassankles and had the scouting report of a 50th pick in the draft. He led the team to its first Elite Eight in over 50 years, but even after all that, his report still stated, “he’s not a natural point guard that an NBA team can rely on to run a team.” I bet that guy feels dumb just like the Minnesota Timberwolves team that chose two point guards in a row over him. Alex Smith explain that one too me. Curry wasn’t good enough for ESPN, but now he is and that irks the hell out of me.

No disrespect to King, but this is exactly why I can’t watch ESPN for more than 20 minutes. To me, the way ESPN does business is like a bandwagon fan. They do some amazing data research and then throw whatever has the best data on screen, which ends up satisfying 80 percent of their viewers. Like a bandwagon fan, they find the best player and ride them as long as they can. Don’t get me wrong. ESPN does a great job of following their mission statement, “To serve sports fans anytime anywhere,” but it makes me feel that all these sports fans are bandwagoners. I bet half of those alleged sports fans couldn’t tell me who Stephen Curry was when the Golden State Warriors logo had an actual warrior holding a lightning bolt. I guess if you think about it, ESPN is doing what they seek out to do, so maybe I should just blame their viewers. I guess ESPN is pretty smart when they only have team sites for 81 out of 100 teams. Once the new Steph Curry walks in the door in six years, they can just throw out the old one and make the new one part of the 81 teams they cover, just like they did for the Cleveland Cavaliers when Lebron James came back. ESPN is doing an incredible job satisfying their viewers, but why do most of their viewers have to be so fake? Isn’t half of the fun in sports rooting for a team from the very start and sticking with them through thick and thin?

Like the rest of the students in the class, I found King to be an amazing speaker and could have listened to him talk for another five hours, but there was something that actually irked me. Vanessa mentioned that he was not like the tight lipped speaker, Michael Jurovaty, we had the previous week. But there were some things he did keep sealed tight. When Professor Shorr asked him, “What happened with Bill Simmons?” I was ready to jump out of my seat with an answer. I have been waiting so long for this, but instead I got a list of all of Simmons’s talents and “Bill and I are friends.” Mr. King graced him with his compliments and it was great to hear how talented Simmons was, but all he gave us was a basic answer. “It got to the point where he had to take it somewhere else,” King said. I completely respect King, but when he did that, it showed me that whether you’re from the Patriots or not, you still have to have some of that Patriot manner, and this was not the only time King had done this. It continued when Professor Shorr asked him, “Should the Pats get their pick back?” King answered, “I believe this will be dissatisfactory for a long time.” King was definitely engaged in our conversation and was an unbelievable guest, but he was still working for ESPN, just like how Jurovaty was working for the Patriots when he was speaking with us. At one point, he even asked himself, “Can I tell you this? Yeah, I think I can.” King knew what he could and could not answer, and I think some of us were so star struck that every word from him was what we wanted to hear, so we did not even think to question him, unlike with Jurovaty. King has been wearing the ESPN brand since he joined them and has not taken it off since.

King’s seminar was truly a breathtaking one and the way he described the future of ESPN was even more incredible. The 3-D golf demo he participated in sounded like an unreal experience, along with this idea that in five years, you can tell your television to pull up highlights of Steph Curry in the past and there is a split screen of him going live and past performances. If that does become a reality, I know that the shot from 32 feet out from this past Saturday will come on, and not only will I remember it, but I will remember the moment that King was the one who told me this was the future of ESPN.

“That’s where the journey took me,” said the aspiring cartoonist who would eventually become the senior vice president of SportsCenter and News. King went through so much to get where he is and he continued to explain how he is still on that same journey today. He definitely inspired many people in that room and I can’t wait to see where the journey will take him next.

http://www.nbadraft.net/players/stephen-curry
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14870322/why-hall-famer-oscar-robinson-buying-stephen-curry-revolution