fun read

An interesting tale about how ESPN came to be the channel it is today, told by the people that worked there. Good read for fans of sports in general.

The last time it took me four months to read a book, it was "Europe Central." Before that, "Infinite Jest," and prior to that one, "Don Quijote."

In other words, the last time it took me four months to read a book, the book had the decency to be good.

"Those Guys Have All The Fun" should have been a breeze for me. I should have had a blast reading it. After all, I'm its total target audience: an ENORMOUS fan of both oral histories and sports. I've never read an oral history that I didn't adore. I've never met a sporting event I didn't love (okay, so maybe I'm not the biggest NASCAR gal, but I'm not sure that counts as a sport). So why did I dislike this so much?

It's long. It's long and it rambles and there's too much talking with not a lot of specificity. The first third of the book is so much about the business of getting ESPN started that my eyes started to glaze over. The middle section, about when the network really hit its stride, should have had an "aha!" moment where we finally really feel like the network arrived. It doesn't. And the last chapter or two should have been more about the cultural impact of ESPN but instead falls into a trap of talking about the scandals the various personalities ESPN employs have gone through, and just how conservative the bosses of the network have become (it is, after all, owned by Mickey Mouse).

I never got a real idea of what someone's actual personality is like, because there's too much petty shit. Reading seventeen colleagues' opinions on someone should help you get an understanding of that person, but instead you lose the forest for the trees. More than once I would read thirty pages about a person, only to realize on page thirty one that everyone HATED him. It would also be really helpful to hear what someone was like as a boss, instead of just hearing from their peers. That could inform the situation immensely.

For the book's 744 pages, there's an awful lot that's left unexplained. Someone will defend themselves against the "endzone thing," or the "Hitler thing," or the "boob thing," and somehow the thing itself won't be described. There's no real flow and I never quite understood the chapter breaks. Moreover, it's such a big story that disparate parts get jammed in next to other with breakneck speed. ESPY's! PTI! Bill Simmons! Olbermann! Bam, bam, bam!!

The most interesting parts in my mind were about the difficult people - the Olbermanns, Simmonses, Kornheisers. I'm pretty sure I'm among the minority in that opinion, but at least I wasn't bored when one of them was talking.

I'm very frustrated with how much energy I put into this book, and how much energy was put into compiling it. I'm Miller's target; I'm his audience... and I'm bored.

Great for sports nerds. Hard to keep track of all the names/people but still a great story. HIGHLY recommend.

Really enjoyed this book on many levels. While I have a love/hate relationship with ESPN and how they choose to cover certain things, of course I still appreciate what they bring from a sports standpoint. This was really fascinating and it was laid out beautifully. From the early early beginnings of the network to the current state of the ESPN empire, this was a really informative and insightful read with many worthy contributors. I loved how they brought both sides into any controversial topic and put them right on top of each other. I thought it was very fair and very brilliant. It was pretty refreshing to hear such straight talk from the talent you're so used to getting PG content from too. I thought they did a great job of highlighting some of the bigger sporting happenings over the years and how ESPN handled them, but gosh, this book could have been 5,000 more pages just on those topics alone, so I felt what they included was a fair representation. This was also a really great book in terms of every day business, work ethic, and what it takes to operate at a high level in your career both individually and for a company, and anyone can certainly relate to that. This was a terrific peek behind the curtain. I very much enjoyed it.

Thorough. That is the probably the first word that will come to mind if you read this book from cover to cover. I think there will be two types of people who will enjoy 'Those Guys Have All The Fun: The World of ESPN.' The first is obviously the sports fan but more specifically the sports fan who reads beyond the news byline and reads the box score to get an understanding of a game. The second is the person who is just as interested in what goes into creating a company, movie, or team as much as (or even more than) they are interested in the final product churned out. This was definitely a good read but I go back to that first word: thorough. You aren't going to finish this in one sitting but no matter how long it takes, you will have a good time reading this book.