Levy said that "SportsCenter" over the years has gotten more off-the-cuff when it comes to hosting dutiesESPN IMAGES
Longtime anchor Steve Levy this week celebrates his 25th anniversary at ESPN, and tonight he will co-host the 11:00pm ET “SportsCenter” alongside Keith Olbermann in an episode that will pay tribute to his time at the net. Levy: “The average NFL running back plays about 3 1/2 seasons. If you have any kind of a career as a sportscaster, clearly you can do it for at least for 25. It’s worked out beyond my wildest dreams.” THE DAILY caught up with Levy ahead of tonight’s episode to touch on his start at the net, how the “SportsCenter” brand has changed and what stands out when looking back on the past two decades.
Q: When you originally jumped ship to ESPN, did you ever imagine you’d still be there 25 years later?
Levy: I didn’t know what to imagine. I had no idea where the journey was going to take me. I was so young and going to what might as well have been a foreign planet going from N.Y. to Bristol. It was only two hours away but it felt like worlds apart.
Q: What’s different about hosting “SportsCenter” now as opposed to 15-20 years ago?
Levy: In the beginning I was on at 2:00am and we did a 30-minute show where we got every single MLB score in. Full panels, stats, everything. Now, we’ll do the Sunday night 90-minute format and maybe we get half the baseball games in. From an anchor perspective the show seems a lot looser than ever. It’s much more off-the-cuff. The poor producers, we have these in-depth production meetings and then the show ends up being nothing close to what we talked about. We ad-lib much more, and the prompter is hardly ever used on our 11:00pm show. It keeps us fresh and fun. Probably more mistakes are made because of those same reasons. But I think the fans understand that when they see new highlights, it’s also our first time seeing them as well. The newsroom where we watch leading up to the show is the best place you could be. It’s like being at every MLB ballpark at the same time minus the alcohol.
Q: Is there any special preparation going into tonight’s show with Olbermann?
Levy: They asked me a while ago what I wanted and my claim to fame is that “bulging disc” moment. Olbermann was my co-host that night so I imagine we’ll see that again. I don’t have a lot of catchphrases, I’m not that guy. I’ve always been somewhat of the straight man next to the funny guy. I know my role. I imagine we’ll play it pretty straight.
Q: What’s a personal highlight for you at the Worldwide Leader?
Levy: We went to the U.S. Army Camp Arifjan in Kuwait in ’04. We took “SportsCenter” on the road to be with our brave men and women in uniform. It’s a week I’ll never forget. It wasn’t a political visit. We were there simply to try to give our service people a break and give them some sense of normalcy. We tried to put a smile on their faces for an hour with a live show. That was Stuart Scott, Kenny Mayne, Sean Salisbury, myself and a few others. I don’t think anything will ever top that in my time at ESPN.
Q: Give us one of your favorite behind-the-scenes moments at ESPN.
Levy: People always like the “This Is SportsCenter” promos. I did the LaDainian Tomlinson mailroom one where he has the helmet visor on. So he’s putting our mail in the wrong mailbox as the joke, but his agent is with us on set. And his agent basically shuts the place down and says ‘no, no, I need his helmet off’ to market him. But then Tomlinson would just look like a dope for putting things in the wrong mailbox. The agent couldn’t understand that so we actually just taped a “dummy” version with the helmet off just to appease the guy. I’m not even sure there was film in the camera for that one.
