By now, we recall great games from the way we saw them on television, and, to a large extent, the way those sports events looked is because of the imagination of Ed Goren. The former vice chairman of Fox Sports Media Group assembled a sports life that is more like a highlight reel of great successes and great stories, most of which occurred on or near sports fields where he has spent so many weekends for most of the past six decades.<\/p>\n
He was a top sports producer who became a top sports executive, and he wore both hats well.<\/p>\n
Early on, Goren worked for CBS Sports, gaining fame within the business for producing NFL games. That lasted until 1993 when, in one of the most transformative broadcast transactions ever, Fox Broadcasting grabbed the TV rights to NFL games way from CBS. Not just NFL games, but NFL games featuring the National Football Conference, which comprised the best-known teams from the biggest TV markets.<\/p>\n
Overnight, or so it seemed, the still wobbly Fox Broadcasting was for real.<\/p>\n
While he was at CBS, Goren says now, he saw it coming, although nobody else did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go to Black Rock [CBS headquarters], you show your pass and walk right through, or you have to go to a desk and sign in,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI had a tendency to lose my ID. During this stretch, there was a two-week period that, on the sign-in sheet, I put the word \u201cFox.\u201d I got the idea that, if this guy Rupert Murdoch is the riverboat gambler everybody says he is, why would he overpay for the [weaker American Football Conference], which is the second-best package? He\u2019s coming after CBS. I was convinced he was coming after us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actually, Murdoch\u2019s Fox Broadcasting wanted the NFC and got it, and soon enough, Fox came after Goren. He was quickly hired by David Hill, the Australian that Rupert Murdoch had brought in from News Corp.\u2019s British sports operation to become president of the sports division here. (\u201cIt was Fox Sport then,\u201d Hill jokes, emphasizing the singular. He became the chairman of Fox Sports Media Group, but now he\u2019s a senior executive VP for News Corp.)<\/p>\n
It was as if Goren and Hill were twins, and that was the way it would stay. They built Fox Sports. There were arguments, but there was always resolution. \u201cHe would always remind me he had more education,\u201d Hill says, jabbing his mate a little. Hill could remind Goren that he was the boss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had similar backgrounds,\u201d Goren says. \u201cWe both started out in news. We both spent a little time on the air. Then we both went to sports to become producers. We spoke the same language. I was so fortunate to have a partner who had a passion for production. I wasn\u2019t working with a lawyer or an accountant. We spent 18 hours a day together, everyday throwing out ideas. It would start at breakfast and end up at a bar, and we\u2019d come in the next morning with a wine-stained napkin with something on it and say, \u2018Whose idea was this?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it failed, we didn\u2019t spend weeks trying to find out who to blame,\u201d he continues. \u201cWe just moved on: what\u2019s the next thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Fox succeeded, beyond all measure and largely because of the style Goren helped stamp onto the product. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the great, great heroes and success stories of the sports business,\u201d says Dick Ebersol, former chairman of the NBC Sports Group.<\/p>\n
Starting Early<\/b>
\nGoren\u2019s sports career began early. His dad, Herb, was a sports columnist for the\u00a0New York Sun<\/i> \u2014Goren still devours daily newspapers, Hill confides \u2014 and, when Ed was just 3 years old, he went with his dad to Havana for the Brooklyn Dodgers\u2019 spring training, where he met Jackie Robinson. Through his father, he knew Frank Gifford in his football prime because Herb Goren produced Gifford\u2019s local television show.<\/p>\n
But Goren has plenty of his own experiences, too. He swears this happened: he was producing a fight in San Juan, PR, between Muhammad Ali and a clearly overmatched European boxer, Jean Pierre Coopman. Everyone expected Ali to make quick work of Coopman \u2014 the fight was a laugher featuring The Greatest vs. a human punching bag. But Goren believes Ali kept the fight going just for Goren\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fight night,\u201d Goren recalls, \u201cand I\u2019m on the stairs of the television truck, and here comes Angelo Dundee [Ali\u2019s trainer] and the Ali entourage. I yell out, \u2018Hey, champ, how many rounds is this gonna go?\u2019 And he goes, \u2018How many do you need to get your commercials in?\u2019 I go \u2018Give me five.\u2019 He nods. I think he knocked him out in the first 30 seconds of the sixth round.\u201d (Actually, Ali knocked him out at 2:46 in the fifth.)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s hardly a major sport for which Goren hasn\u2019t produced an astonishing number of games. He has won a mind-boggling 46 Emmy Awards. His time as Fox Sports executive producer and president spanned 16 NFL seasons, including five Super Bowls; 10 NASCAR campaigns, including eight Daytona 500s; five NHL regular- and post-seasons; and four Bowl Championship Series, with three National Championship Games. In baseball, Goren has presided over 15 MLB seasons and 12 World Series. Around Fox, the sports staff knew it wasn\u2019t October, it was Edtober.<\/p>\n
He went crazy over bad-weather World Series, time-consuming and boring mid-inning pitching changes, and teams with less than stellar marquee value.<\/p>\n
At the Beginning of NFL on Fox<\/b>
\nWith the NFL, Fox rewrote the book, perhaps most notoriously with the \u201cFoxBox,\u201d the little \u201csituationer\u201d in the upper-left screen giving the bare-bones necessities: score, time, quarter, and so on. Goren says he suggested it at his first meeting with Hill, but Hill told him he was a little late: it was already in his plans.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an expected component now, but, in 1994, fans and TV critics hated it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019d go back to our very first broadcast with the FoxBox, you would have thought we desecrated the Taj Mahal,\u201d Goren says. \u201cI came back after our first broadcast and had a voice mail from an irate 49ers fan who pointed out we ruined his experience watching the game and, \u2018if you don\u2019t get rid of it, I\u2019ll come down there and get rid of it for you.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Hill says he got a similar letter and, because of it, both men got police protection. (\u201cWhy did police take this threat seriously?\u201d Hill helps a skeptical reporter by asking the question himself. \u201cThey told me, \u2018Because the letter doesn\u2019t have any misspelled words.\u2019 \u201d)<\/p>\n
But Goren wanted to be where the action was as a producer and an executive. He made sure \u201cexecutive producer\u201d was a part of whatever corporate title he acquired, always rolling up his sleeves as a program-maker.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a unique business,\u201d he says. \u201cMonday through Friday, you\u2019re running the business, and, on weekends, you\u2019re a producer.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the way he wanted it. He recalls, \u201cThe worst thing I ever heard from a sports executive when I was groveling for the extra money to do something was, \u2018Is that going to add a tenth of a rating point?\u2019 But you can\u2019t defend some of these things. You can\u2019t say it\u2019s going to give you an extra tenth of a rating point. It\u2019s about the image and the posture of an organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":783,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[26],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees\/483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/inductees"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}