Joan Lynch got a couple of Flyers tickets and was excited about seeing her team play against the Bruins in early February. The ESPN executive producer and VP of content development production, who said she has “the best job in the world,” is “a huge Flyers fan” since growing up the granddaughter of George Torchiana, a Flyers goal judge. “We weren’t allowed to wear team logos, but we sat near the bench and rooted for the Flyers,” while her grandfather, nicknamed Jiggs, “stayed focused and objective.” She said her late grandfather was “an unbelievable role model,” who would be proud that Joan develops content for ESPN like “SportsNation,” with Colin Cowherd, an audience-directed TV version of the ESPN Web page slated for a summer premiere. “If he wasn’t in heaven, he’d be in heaven anyway because I work for ESPN.” … When producer George Roy edited HBO Sports’ newest documentary, “Battle for Tobacco Road: Duke vs. Carolina,” his concern was “How do we make the film totally balanced?” He said tilting it to one side would “start an uproar.” His answer was in the interviews. “Once we filmed coach Mike Krzyzewski and coach Dean Smith, I knew we could make this happen. And former players with incredibly busy schedules squeezed us in, such as Michael Jordan and Grant Hill.” He premiered the film before an equally divided Blue Devils and Tar Heels audience at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, N.C. HBO’s airings start Feb. 23.
Jay Leno joins Tiger Nation, with help
from the team’s Molly Light and
her fiancé, Alan Betensley.
Bronx-born Maureen “Moe” Shea, who was Hilary Swank’s main sparring partner as the actress prepared for her Academy Award-winning role in “Million Dollar Baby,” is on the undercard of the Miguel Cotto-Michael Jennings welterweight championship fight at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 21. The Bob Arum doubleheader includes the Kelly Pavlik-Marco Antonio Rubio middleweight championship from Youngstown, Ohio. Shea was also the boxing coach and mentor for a young ballerina named Whitley on MTV’s “Made” series. … Molly Light, the Detroit Tigers’ director of broadcasting, and her fiancé, Alan Betensley, visited a taping of “The Tonight Show.” Because her uncle is a friend of Jay Leno, the couple was invited backstage, where Light presented Leno with a Tigers jersey. Molly and Alan will marry on Saturday, Valentine’s Day.
Living in a dorm is “lots of fun” for Kevin White, the Duke AD, and his wife, Jane. “The 400 students we are living with have adopted our two Labs, and this gives us another chance to get that parenting thing right,” he said. Actually they did get it right the first time, having raised Maureen, an English teacher, Mike, Danny and Brian, all professionals in sports, and Mariah, a swimmer who plans to attend Duke as a freshman next fall. Duke’s faculty-in-residence program gives the Whites a chance to live in a new apartment at Few Quadrangle that White describes as “wonderfully well done, spectacular,” while the empty-nesters are having a new house built near campus. “This is an amazing opportunity for us to refocus on student life.”
Ashton Kutcher and wife Demi Moore hosted The Giving Back Fund’s “Big Game-Big Give” Super Bowl party in Tampa, which was a family affair. Ken and Brenda Roethlisberger brought their son, Ben, and Brenda Warner was accompanied by her husband, Kurt. In addition to the game’s starting quarterbacks, more than 50 NFL players attended, and from the sports business world were agents David Dunn, Tom Condon and Ben Dogra, Hunt James of Raymond James Stadium and Otto Hoernig, CEO of Casa Noble Tequila. … Columbia AD Dianne Murphy, chairperson of the National Football Foundation Gridiron Club of New York, and Don McPherson of Syracuse, a 2008 College Football Hall of Fame inductee, rang the Nasdaq closing bell Jan. 28 in recognition of the foundation’s impact on building leaders through football.
MAGIC SHACK: The Orlando Magic’s
Dwight Howard (center) and COO
Alex Martins (right of Howard)
celebrated the opening of the
Parramore Kidz Zone Teen
Shack on Jan. 28.
It was an unusual phone call detailing adversity and determination. Jennifer Figge, the 56-year-old mother of race driver Alex Figge, told her media consultant, David Higdon, she was experiencing bad weather on her swim from the Cape Verde Islands to Barbados. She’s attempting the 2,100-mile Atlantic crossing, but the trailing boat loses her in the 30-foot seas. The weather has forced her to limit shifts in the water and to abandon her shark-proof cage, which she calls a “French-fry basket,” in favor of a leg-attached device to scare away predators. But Figge’s biggest concern, as she called from Bill Ray’s sailboat, was how her son was doing in the 2009 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Higdon said, “She’s doing the roller coaster more than the crawl. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about Alex’s mechanical problems.” Figge said she inherited her spunk from her mother, Margaret Roberts, a former opera singer who went by Margarita Roberti when she sang in Italy. Figge lives in Aspen, with her husband, Tom, a retired Iowa banker whose family lent its name to Davenport, Iowa’s Figge Art Museum. He has a wooden duck decoy collection valued by Forbes at $5 million to $10 million.
John Genzale can be reached at johngenzale@gmail.com.
