How do you succinctly present the best sports highlights of a decade? Let the producer of SportsCenter’s “Images of the Decade” video tell you!
Temitayo Anjou knew he had been assigned a monumental task.
The 18-year ESPN veteran producer was tasked with creating a seven-minute video that would be a retrospective of the most memorable sports moments and images from the 2010s.
After Anjou and his team at the SportsCenter Enhancement Unit (SCEU) had done exhaustive research, viewed countless hours of video and made dozens of hard choices, SportsCenter viewers saw the result of their work as the video aired on editions of the program over the recent holidays.
I can't recommend this incredible @SportsCenter recap of sports in the 2010's enough. pic.twitter.com/iVriE565qv
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 1, 2020
“We tried to think of what were the moments that stood out the most, what had the most resonance, what had the biggest impact?” Anjou said. “It meant going and talking with all our folks here, and reading a lot. Also, we did a lot of Googling around to see what seemed to register the most and had the most lasting impact. And just from my own memories as well.
“I looked at the year-end stuff that had been done the previous 10 years to give me a refresher of what’s happened, and started making a list,” he said. “It became a very, very massive Google document with at least 600 different moments over the 10 years.
“There were plays that were ‘Plays of the Day’ and were great for that day but is it something that’s lasting for a decade and would qualify as something for the lasting images of the decade?”
There were some tough decisions that had to be made but I’m happy with where we settled and feel we had a good measure of what happened over the last 10 years. — Producer Temitayo Anjou regarding SportsCenter’s “Images of the Decade”feature
Anjou and the SCEU group then began pulling video from nearly all of the 600 moments, followed by the process of assembling the piece and three weeks with editor Jess Foster. Deciding what made the final cut wasn’t easy.
“It’s impossible to cover everything in the amount of time that we’re given for it and there are plenty of things I would have loved to have gotten in that didn’t get in,” he said. “This thing could easily be 20 minutes and still be missing some things.
“There were some tough decisions that had to be made but I’m happy with where we settled and feel we had a good measure of what happened over the last 10 years.”
