Play-by-play voice Dave O’Brien was one of the many people that ESPN laid off in the spring of 2017 to cut costs.
But when Lee Fitting, ESPN vice president of production, called him in January to gauge his interest in being the lead football and basketball play-by-play voice for the ACC Network, O’Brien, who still calls Red Sox games for NESN, jumped at the chance.
“It didn’t take me 10 seconds to figure out that was something that I wanted to be a part of,” he said. “This fits in beautifully with my baseball schedule and gets me back to a conference that I’m very fond of.”
I caught up with O’Brien just outside of the broadcast booth in Death Valley before the network’s first game, Georgia Tech vs. Clemson. I remarked at how surprised I was to see him return to a company that had fired him.
O’Brien responded by saying that he holds no grudges.
“I think a lot of people could be justified in feeling that way if it happened to them,” he said. “I always thought that if I had an ill word to say about ESPN, I’m saying that about my friends. I worked at ESPN for 17 years; 15 years as a full-time broadcaster. I loved it. I love the people I worked with and enjoyed the people that I worked for. I had such a great time. It was the highlight of my career. It would have been silly for me to act any other way than graciously.”
