EDITOR’S NOTE: During the past quarter century, Outside the Lines has presented news-breaking investigative pieces and award-winning story telling. Some OTL reporters reflect on their most memorable accounts prior to tonight’s 25th anniversary special (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Paula Lavigne
My most memorable story had to be uncovering the gambling on little league football in South Florida. It was great to break a story like that because it was so egregious – fans, including many with a history of drugs and other crimes, wagering thousands of dollars on little boys playing football, even paying the kids themselves to incentive performance. These kids already had so many odds stacked against them, and it was just made worse by having something like this sully the sport they loved.
We got such great undercover video of the guys swapping money in the stands. But the defining moment was when we sat down in an interview with one of the coaches who told us there should be a “zero tolerance” for gambling, and then we showed him the video we had of him exchanging money in the bleachers with men who clearly appeared to be gambling. I think a lot of people would see that as a “gotcha” moment, but when I look back on that now, I see it as a prime example of the complexities and challenges of those neighborhoods and the struggle to change a system from within.
Every journalist desires to ‘make a difference,’ and in this case, I certainly think our reporting accomplished that. It led to a county sheriff’s investigation that resulted in several people being arrested and the league being completely overhauled. We heard from several parents that the fear of us being back there with cameras kept a lot of the ‘bad actors’ away, and for those kids’ sakes, I hope that’s still the case.
Jeremy Schaap
Probably the most memorable OTL moments for me occurred in the anchor chair, within a few weeks of each other.
I was hosting the day the Mike Rice story broke – I don’t think I had heard of Mike Rice until an hour or two before we went to air, and didn’t see the infamous tape of him berating his players until that time – and ended up interviewing Tim Pernetti, the Rutgers athletic director, live on the show. I think the interview helped distill some of the issues raised by the tape.
I was also hosting when we received the first reports that bombs had gone off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. For the next couple of hours, I hosted our coverage as a clearer picture of the tragedy emerged, conducting interviews with our reporters on the scene and eyewitnesses, and then was joined on set by Bob Ley. We hosted together for the next few hours and I think our coverage was solid and responsible, equal, I was told, to anything on the news networks.
Pedro Gomez
I am always honored when OTL calls me for anything. I will never forget the time spent chasing down Tony Bosch to supplement our Biogenesis reporting. With Tony and I both about the same age and both from Miami it made it an interesting assignment. Once I met with Tony, we discovered we had dozens of mutual friends. This was time spent laying the groundwork to try and get Tony to relax and open up about what exactly had happened. It definitely helped ease tensions. I know it helped with me winding up with the now memorable quick interview outside of an outdoor Miami bar. I absolutely loved being a part of such an important story.
Shelley Smith
I’m most proud of the Outside the Lines stories I’ve done that highlight social issues and have had the potential to change and save lives. One was on heat stroke and how easily it can be prevented in youth sports. I’ll never forget the heartbreak of one family who lost their son because personnel didn’t know what to do. It is now one of my passions – informing people at gyms, on the golf and tennis courts, and just the crowds at events, what you should do and what the signs are.
Another story featured Bobby San Jose, a former UCLA quarterback who suffered from mental illness in college, without anyone, really, understanding what he was going through. He turned to drugs, became homeless and ultimately was struck by a car and died before our story ran. Mental illness is prevalent in all walks of life and athletes are not immune. I hope we helped shed the stigma and that young athletes who were struggling, recognized, perhaps in Bobby, something of themselves and weren’t afraid to get the help they need. OTL does it better than anyone and I’m continually proud to be a part of this important part of sports television.
Mike Fish
The piece that stands out aired April 2014 on the 10th anniversary of Pat Tillman’s death. It was a reporting/story-telling team effort on the part of Willie Weinbaum, John Barr and myself. Willie and I had done an exhaustive ESPN.com and OTL investigative piece eight years earlier into the friendly fire death of Tillman, the former Arizona State and Arizona Cardinals safety, and the subsequent cover-up or spinning of facts by the Army. The most recent piece – for the first time – brought together one of the Rangers who had fired upon Tillman’s position as well as the young Ranger positioned a few feet from Tillman during the friendly fire incident. It proved a remarkably emotional story of two men who hadn’t spoken in a decade, who had been on opposite ends of the fire, each reflecting on the turmoil and pain they had since endured, and the guilt they unknowingly shared – one knowing that he fired at his own men and may have hit Pat Tillman, the other of having survived when his friend didn’t. The two spoke after the show and took steps toward reconciliation.
Don Van Natta
As an investigative reporter, I expect people to refuse to talk, or be reluctant to talk, or talk only grudgingly and sometimes only with an attorney or a PR person present. For my first story for ESPN about Penn State, the Pennsylvania governor refused to be interviewed. In 2013, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell declined five invitations to talk with me for this in-depth profile. And during the reporting for my current project (stay tuned!), most sources have refused to comment or will talk only on background.
So it may not surprise you that my most memorable project for Outside the Lines involved getting an initially reluctant source – Dallas Cowboys owner, president and GM Jerry Jones – to agree to cooperate. Over a couple of Johnny Walker Blues after a May 2014 NFL owners meeting in Atlanta, I managed to persuade Jones to be the subject of a profile. My summer with Jones – aboard his Gulfstream (G-V) jet, in his AT&T Stadium suite for a George Strait concert, at training camp in Oxnard, Calif., and over a late-night steak dinner in Dallas – amounted to the most fun I’ve had since joining ESPN. And all that access, I think, produced TV and digital portraits that were deeply revealing about one of sports’ most compelling and powerful figures.
Kelly Naqi
(Photo courtesy of The Bob Ley Collection/ESPN)
Where to begin? There’s waaaay too many memories to recount. I was on the first show, as an associate producer before getting the chance to be in front of the camera (late 1990s), and been here ever since. How can I pick one assignment from a show that has defined my career and given me so many personal memories?
We started doing a handful of hour-long specials a few times a year in any time slot that programming couldn’t fill. We pulled all-nighters in the edit rooms before each show aired, begging editors to stay for just a couple more hours (“only ’til 4 a.m., come on, you can do it!”) and they would, too, because they had become invested in the story as they helped put it together.
I’ve slept on the floor in bosses’ offices in Bristol (when they used to leave their doors unlocked!) more often than I care to admit, so I could get that extra sleep I would have missed if I took the time to drive home to sleep. And I remember Bob and Barbara Ley hosting viewing parties when each show aired, even though our small unit had already seen each feature 100 times.
Breaking the story of Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation is my most memorable story because numerous law enforcement personnel and district attorneys have told me it had an impact on breaking up dog fighting rings – particularly in the South.
That’s always the hope for this show: to make some kind of impact or difference.
