Is ESPNs Scott Van Pelt feeling pressure to revolutionize SportsCenter? Not really.

Publish date: 2024-07-30

Scott Van Pelt has a lot of things on his plate, but first he has to keep his dog from attacking the air-conditioning repairman.

“Just your basic Homeowner’s 101,” he says by way of apology for being about 90 seconds late for our scheduled telephone interview. And with that out of the way, we get to talking about how he’s been handed the reins of the midnight “SportsCenter” at ESPN, with the first show set to air immediately following the Ohio State-Virginia Tech college football game on Labor Day night.

For all the talk about talent defections and cord-cutting and sagging finances, ESPN remains a behemoth because of its stranglehold on just about every live sporting event that anyone wants to watch. So it’s not like Van Pelt is being asked to save the company here. But still, there’s no doubt his personality-driven take on “SportsCenter” — many of the bits that worked well on his former ESPN Radio show will make the migration to television — will look a little different to viewers who are used to the highlight-driven versions of the show that will surround it.

So it’s more of a re-imagining of the wheel, rather than a reinvention. Here’s what he had to say about it. (Interview edited for clarity.)

Was there a sense that “SportsCenter” needed fixing, or was there a sense of, “Let’s do something new with it”?

I think more the latter, but to be fair … look at the landscape and look at how people consume things – anything – whether it’s us, or music or The Washington Post. The way we consume everything has changed and to that end, there was this push [from ESPN executives] to say, “Would you be interested in …” And I thought, “Nah, I’m good, I really like doing radio.” “What if you could bring some of those ideas into the ‘SportsCenter’ space? And I said, “Yeah, that’s cool, but you’d never let me do it.” “Yeah, we would,” and now here we are.

I think more than anything, it’s simply looking at how people consume stuff, realizing that “SportsCenter” has become to a large degree this all-day buffet, that people can stop in as they choose, and thinking, “All right, for an hour we’ll just change up the fare.”

Was it fixing? I don’t know if it’s fixing so much as adapting: “Let’s try a different presentation of what we’ve done prior.”

It wasn’t like there was an emergency meeting and people rolling up their sleeves and cartoonishly saying, “We’ve gotta fix everything.” It was more like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And it was very cool to have these conversations where there wasn’t pressure.

Which leads me into my next question: Are you specifically feeling any pressure? The show hasn’t really been centered on one or two personalities since Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann way back in the day. Now, it’s sort of like it’ll be “SportsCenter, starring Scott Van Pelt.”

I understand the question and it’s reasonable, but I have a very hard time viewing it that way even though, at its bare bones, that’s what it is. I’m looking at it this way: I did a radio show. It was centered around what I thought and what I wanted to say, and I had a great partner in Ryen Rusillo, and we did the show the way we wanted to do it, and I’m emboldened by the fact that a lot of people found that show. The past two years that we did it, it grew and it found its footing and traction. That leads me to believe that the approach I brought to that, the same approach I brought to “SportsCenter,” is palatable enough to some that they’ll turn up to watch.

I’m not following Letterman’s footsteps, I’m not Rece [Davis] trying to follow Chris Fowler [on “College GameDay”] … the pressure I think is in stuff like that. We’re on at midnight on cable; that’s what keep telling myself, not sitting around and freaking out. Until you asked me I was doing just fine! [laughs]

It doesn’t feel altogether different. I’m not gonna go out there and sing. They’re not asking me to do anything that I haven’t done before. I don’t have to go out there and do cooking segments, I don’t have to play the banjo, I just have to do sports. … I’m comfortable with it. I just have to keep coming back to that.

I can’t make this into a scary monster, I just have to focus on things that are comfortable.

With the format of the show — and I realize it’s hard to put a number on it — is there a set percentage split between highlights and commentary, or is it going to be more fluid depending on what’s going on?

One hundred percent fluid, because the thing I’ve said to anyone who’s asked is that this is still “SportsCenter.” All I mean by that is: Last night, the Cardinals and the Nationals [Washington’s bullpen collapsed again Tuesday, further sinking its season]. That happens, well, if I have some bit of commentary [about another topic], be it poignant, or important, or whimsical, that has to die. … That now trumps anything that I had to say prior. I can’t put any percentage on it. … As an example, what Olbermann did in his show. He would start with a monologue, which was always I thought – whether you agree with him or like him or whatever – the man is brilliant, brilliant, and his ability to be brilliant on television is matched by very few people. So I wouldn’t start there. That wouldn’t be the way I would go about it. I would sprinkle it in.

I still am going to build around games: who won, why, what was interesting about it. And then what’s left is where we can fill in the blanks with the personality-driven or opinion-driven-type stuff.

So you’re venturing into a talk show-type program without making it “Late Night With Scott Van Pelt.”

I would push back on just the idea of a talk show. We’ll have guests as we see fit. It’s not monologue/go to break/come back/first guest pumping a movie/blah blah blah/and then a mariachi band in the last 15 minutes. That isn’t at all our rundown. … We’re doing a show about sports that’s on at this time, and I don’t think about those other things, I just think, “Who won some games and let’s talk about it.”

But when you have to inject personality into the show, which is what I think you’re trying to do here, do you ever worry – especially with all the things that’ve gone on at ESPN in the past year – about crossing a line, about “maybe I shouldn’t go there.”

No, I don’t. When you talk for a living on the air, you always know the dance, right? That third rail is out there, and there might be times when you want to run up right close to it, but you know not to grab it. I’ve said things that have got me in trouble in the past. The idea that you need to inject your personality into a show doesn’t mean that you need to do something bombastic or idiotic. That’s never been my calling card. I’ve never been a yell-the-loudest-to-get-people-to-pay-attention-to-you type. That’s never been me. So no, I’m not even nudged in that direction in my own brain.

But it’s reasonable [to think that way], because you think: “Okay, what can I do, what viral thing can I do? I know, I’ll say something crazy that’ll get me on Twitter tomorrow.” That’s just never appealed to me.

If you just trust that your approach and your sensibility is well enough to get you to sit here, why would you show up and suddenly do something drastically different. Because that’s when your bosses would be going, “Who is this person and what happened to Van Pelt?”

But there’s also has to be a sense that, for the guy who blindly turns into “SportsCenter” at midnight because it’s his evening news, and they see what you’re doing, do you ever think about alienating the bedrock “SportsCenter” viewer?

[Sports Illustrated media reporter Richard] Deitsch asked me something like that: “Can people like the show if they don’t like you?” And the answer is probably no if you’re somebody who’s like, “Oh, this guy, I can’t stand him.” There was this thing we did on Kimmel around the college football title game last year where we read mean tweets that people wrote about us, and mine was, “Get the penis man off my screen.” [laughs] If you’re the guy who tweeted that, you’re probably not going to hang out for an hour with the penis man. But I’m hopeful there are enough people who think I don’t resemble a phallus who will hang out. I don’t worry about alienating people, but I do know that to people who tweet like that, I’m not their cup of tea, and that means they’ll have to watch [“SportsCenter”] at a different time.

With everything that’s come out about ESPN’s finances, is there a sense of worry in Bristol, or is it more like, “This is sometimes what happens with a big businesses”?

I have never once in my time here thought about our relative strengths or now these articles suggesting weakness. I know that the valuations that I’ve read, if they’re accurate, the place is worth more than every NFL franchise combined. All I can say is, there have been no internal memos saying, “Every Tuesday and Thursday at the cafeteria, it will be grilled cheese only.” You know? “We will only be able to have running water in the toilets on odd-numbered days.” … They just gave me a five-year extension, and I’m well compensated for my time, and I have a show to worry about, and I’m worried about that.

I will say this: If we started from a position of, you’d have to say, ultimate strength among our competitors, where does this leave them? Because when you say people are cutting cords, they’re not just cutting ESPN and saying, “Let me keep that other-network stuff.” When I read “cord-cutting,” it’s as if they’re cutting the cord that goes only to ESPN. If they’re cutting our cord, they’re cutting theirs, too. So all I can do is shrug about that and say that everyone’s aware of it. … I put my money on us to figure out how you’re gonna consume this if you’re going to step away from the television. I bet on us if the trend continues.

You’re incorporating a lot of bits from your radio show into the new “SportsCenter.” What are some of the differences between doing radio and doing TV?

The main thing that you had to do in the past [when hosting “SportsCenter”] is divorce yourself from opinion. As an anchor, your felt like you were beholden to objectivity, objectivity, objectivity. I can be objective but still have an opinion, and I think that’s where we’ve arrived, and as long as we’re up front with each other at the beginning, I think it will all make sense. I think I just have to remind myself that my charge here is to just be that, and if anything I’ll err on the side of being less rather than being more when it comes to being opinionated, just because you’re so used to being that, to editing yourself on the fly. Radio’s harder because it’s just you, you have to fill the canvas. TV, the heaviest lifting is done by the athletes. I go back to the Nationals and the Cardinals: They gave me yesterday’s story line. What did I do?

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLumw9JonJqqnK56rbHAnWawqF9nfXKBjmlwaGhjZLa0ecSsp6erXaiwsMDTZq2apl2lsq3AjJ%2BcnqSZo7RuvNGeqqytopp6tbuMq5yvp5yqwaq7zaKxnmWjpbyzwNKcnKeslad6r7vTZqmemZyhxnA%3D

JadeVlog

Is ESPNs Scott Van Pelt feeling pressure to revolutionize SportsCenter? Not really.