Channelling the essence of sport

Inside The World Of ESPN By James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales Little, Brown, €25.20 Those Guys Have All The Fun

ESPN has never had the snappiest name in the world. In 1979, when the American cable sports station was in its first days of existence, its head of production, Scotty Connal, rang the recently-fired coach of the Detroit Pistons, Dick Vitale, to ask him if he fancied doing

some basketball punditry. ‘‘Who ...