Woody Paige of ESPN Tells Hilarious 'Around The Horn' Stories

Intro the chase Thomas podcast for people who have nothing but time to kill in our 22nd year I think it's 22nd and I've been with ESPN about 23 years and my friends will say to me oh so you show up you do 30 SEC 30 minutes and then you go home wow you paid a lot of money for that yes I get paid a lot of money for that I'd love to have that job and I got an email from a guy said I'm a plumber assistant uh I dropped out of high school I've got a wife and three kids and I go to the bar night and I drink with my buddies and they say you should be on the Around the Horn you're better than those guys and I said I have no doubt you're better than I am but you can't just show up and do it actually 25 years went into preparing to be in that position but we spend for the inside story for people we have conference calls on U uh zoom in the morning you you're using another system but we have a zoom conference call every morning for an hour and a half to go over all the Conference Calls subjects yeah that's the way all of these programs because I did one out of New York called co- pizza for years with I worked with skip who's now in the Box sports network and we'd get there at 3:30 in the morning and go through conferences and research for hours before went on the air live for two hours every day and so around a horn just for the people who have ever watched it we have about an hour and a half of a conference call in the morning and then we start doing I get up very early in the morning and go through all the stuff that I spend tonight when we get finished here I'll spend watching NBA games and NHL games you want to get as familiar as you can because this isn't like someone covering Tennessee football and that's what they concentrate we have got to be at least familiar with or knowledgeable about every sport in the world because every day and I mean I go to Olympics and I've covered like I don't know 15 Olympics and I show up at Olympics and I wouldn't even know what how like Taiwan do yeah thought I didn't even know what it was that I'd show up and covered and in Australia I covered one the greatest sports events of all time that nobody else was covering that was the the heavyweight uh championship wrestling Wrestling match uhuh and the greatest wrestler in the whole world from Russia had won like four Olympic gold medals had never been beaten and never been scored upon and and a kid from uh Utah Wyoming beating MH I'm looking at it and I look around and there's no other press there because they're all covering the track and field and I thought I don't know how to cover this for and I had to find out like 15 minutes anyway we go through the process we do research uh then I do makeup uh have a an associate who does my makeup and my pair and uh we have more conversations before the show goes on WE tape in the middle of the day it takes us about an hour and a half to do the show so there's about I would say five six hours a day that goes into putting together R so it's the same way as you spend five or six hours getting guests preparing what you're going to do whatever advertising marketing you're doing uh it's not just showing up and uh the show did start with uh when they came to me and said we're going to do [Music] a second show to Pardon Interruption which became a very successful show uh on ESPN companionship yeah and I said we want you to be on it you're the first person to talking to I said well what what is it going to be like and he said like Hollywood Squares and if you think about if you've ever watch Around the Horn kind of the concept where they said you're going to be like the middle Square Paul in the block and I said is this gonna be a game show well well in a sort of way because we're gonna score it and people always ask me do you know who's gonna win before I don't know until the last moment and there A lot of times when they go You've Won what's your 30 seconds I have no idea because I didn't think I was going to win I'd be like eight points behind anyway there's a lot of work that goes into it just like there does in your job like I think that everybody that either is going to school or has a job realizes that it's hard work whether you're selling Insurance whether you're a plumber's assistant or whether you're doing television we we have fun at it but we work at it you have to work at it there are mistakes made so we redo segments we might go too long so we retap a seg M there are breaks to put in the highlights for the next segment there are questions about whether that that segment actually was very good or there was a mistake made in statistics because when you're talking fast and you know that's when you're talking somebody you may not get every statistic or every team that played in the bowl correctly rvy play in the Super Bowl the last weekend so it's interesting when I was in New York with the beenin for three little over three years it was I was doing six shows uh six different shows every week that I was doing round hor I was doing a show with the skip Bist in the morning a two hour show that was like the Today Show that was ESP Good Morning America called Co pizza we did a show called uh first and 10 we did a show called First Take which is still on the air Stephen A Smith uh we started that I was doing a show that was a takeoff on American Idol and it was called the dream job and 12,000 applicants would compete to be on was this the Wendy's one uh the one sponsored by Wendy's what was Dream Job that the searching for I remember a Wendy's one years ago they they they there were a lot of E ESPN sports bars in if you remember that ESPN the ESPN Zone is that what it was called ESPN Zone and so people could apply and they'd have uh auditions at all of the esps and they narrowed it down to 12 and I was one of the judges like on American Idols or you know America's Got Talent the winner got to be and most of them I think were you know in the Departments of communication like you you have been journalism and they narrowed down to 12 and we cut one a week so it was like 13 weeks steu Scott the late Stu Scott who is one of the best guyss I ever worked with was the host of the show I'll tell you one story that came out there be interesting uh Stephen A Smith was a judge I was a judge vice president of ESPN who tiir people was a judge three judges four actually one of and we'd work on that for like 18 hours it was live yeah but only the point that was on we would work throughout the day and the night with the 12 and so we got to the finals we did three or four seasons of that uh and we got down to the last two and one of them wasn't very good he end up doing but they kept saying to me he's got a great personality would you vote for it so there was behind the scenes thing that's why I don't only piece of advice I get to people don't think that reality shows are for real have you ever seen the one where they go to H storage units oh yeah hoers Storage Wars or Storage Wars and all that yeah put stuff in those storage units that units have dirty clothes in it and newspapers they put diamonds in there and people discovered so all of the that there's no way that these shows are live they have to be T all anyway so they they would say the producers would say uh what do you think of this guy and I said not very good well he's got a great personality can you help us out here and I said I don't want to you put in jail for fixing a real show but there were we of the two F finalist and Stu Scott as I said was the post of the show and the one guy was really good he ended up winning the guy who didn't win ended up doing Pizza Hut commercials for years so he actually become more famous than the guy who was on ESPN and I think he's still in broadcasting at some point so the we got to be an anchor on ESP and $95,000 in cash uh brand new convertible U uh Mustang Ford Mustang and so it was a pretty good end up for whoever won so it came down to two people the guy who ultimately won when he got through that Stephen A Smith went through his paray and they said to me what do you think of that I said you were Rock Solid you rock solid you because they were turn the [Music] U the microphones off when they were interviewing people and they had to overcome all sorts of obstacles and I said you had a perfect show tonight so now I got to turn to the other guy and I said you know you were good too because I didn't want to put him down you were good too you were Rock and I was trying to think I can't say Rock Solid because I've already said about deia what is I ask you chase what is the word you can use after Rock that would that's what I said there was a studio audience of about I don't know people Stuart Scott fell on the floor laughing those people were were going berserk and I'm saying to the guy you know you were rock hard you were rock hard and know went that's not what you want to say a live National TV with a million people watching and we laughed through that and we had a a party afterward of they brought back all the people who had been on the show came over he said I think that I didn't win I think you have the most famous line in the history of ESPN television and I think I commercial out of it and he ended up getting a Pizza Hut Commercial and they actually the advertising company that they agency that hired him said we loved it when the guy called and said you were rockart he said we just thought this guy he was rockart anyway I'm sorry I'm going on no I love that to talk about I mean I love that back to the first question I knew Elvis would come to Colorado nicely done nephew the chase Thomas podcast hell [Music] yeah [Music]