Racquetball championship

Lou Palmer. A great man.

I loved the Australian Rules Football games, the Canadian Football League and the very first indoor arena football games. ESPN exposed college baseball and college lacrosse to a wider American audience. It helped the original Big East college basketball conference to grow and prosper. And Chris Berman gave to all of us those wonderful nicknames of so many Major League Baseball players. It is a tragic, crying shame that ESPN has degenerated into a bunch of woke, progressive, loud mouthed , left wing punks who love to hear themselves speak and yell and scream and who are legends in tbeir own minds.

Heck, I feel like I've won the tour de France if I could just balance long enough for the light to turn green again.

MTV, CNN, and ESPN. They used to be great.

Woke central

Great video chip!

This seems more like a trade pitch for cable companies than end user content, maybe both

ESPN is crap now. The announcers are annoying, they split the screen and show ads during the action and they mic up the players for insufferable commentary. It’s run by people who feel they need to distract you from the game which they must find boring.

6:33 Shout out to Chris Berman, who is still at ESPN after all these years.

Thanks for making this available. I remember talking about this in high school as they were building it. I went overseas before it ended and I never really found out what happened.

A brilliant concept. I first recall seeing ESPN in 1983 with their USFL coverage. Thanks for sharing this.

I always loved the music soundtrack they used back in the day wish I could find a copy of it I was 13 years old when ESPN launched I had a tape recorder back in the recorded the music soundtrack but I can't find the tapes anymore.

So why not SPN? Because the two-bit tinhorn Satellite Programming Network came first, that's why.

Always free, always fun.....always brutal!!! Best Gym in North America!!!

Jim Simpson/Tony Kubek combo was one of my first introductions to the NBC Baseball Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons when the Vin/Joe duo wasn't on tap.

"Happiness is seeing Bristol in your rear-view mirror" true then and now.

Awesome video. Joe Hendricks is a great guy. I did the workout there for many years until I moved away. I miss the pain!

I would love to see a pitch reel for TNN. I’ve heard it was a really fun and informative video. Can you please upload a copy? In the reel, Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona discusses the inception of TNN and how the country music network came to be. It would be great to see how they pitched the network back in 1983.👍

I worked at ESPN from July 2000 until May 2013. I enjoyed my time there and learned so much from many talented people. My how times have changed. I did freelance TV work with One Inch, 3/4 and Betacam. I remember when ESPN started using Digi-Beta for ESPNews (where I started) and ESPNews was the first ESPN network to use a digital recording platform (the name escapes me now - V910 and V911)...someone help me out here. Quite a rudimentary system compared to the Quantel system they use now (at least I think it's still Quantel they use).

Watching this grand nostalgic moment in history makes me weep...my gosh my whole family is crying. Thank you. 'Merica

Any curling?

I didn't see ESPN until a few years later, but it seems so long ago.

Swamp Buggy races

ESPN as it was meant the be… now it’s all dazzle and baffle w/ BS and on-air showmanship, vs the old ABC WWS, CBS NFL and NBC MLBB straight forward reporting and factual sport journalism, IMHO

Everyone hating on modern day ESPN because you miss the weird little sports should buy ESPN+. Lots of weird little sports like second-division German soccer and college everything.

Back when ESPN actually showed smaller college game--since that was all they could get. Now, they're snobs and act like that no longer exists. Meanwhile, they're too busy ridiculously overpaying gasbags like Screamin' A Smith, as if he adds anything to a broadcast except verbal diarrhea.

ESPN was the first cable channel we got in upstate NY in the early 80s. It didn’t require a cable box. A few months later we got the box and then we had MTV, CNN, etc. Back then, ESPN did not have any professional sports. They showed rodeo, minor league baseball, and Australian football. I still watched it like 12 hours a day. There was a humor about covering sports from day 1. They made even those obscure sports entertaining.

When I watch espn from time to time, sports is still on espn. Unless you’re talking about the sport talk shows.

Wow!!!! I didn’t know that ESPN came out in 1979! I was 10 years old.

My memory of the beginning of espn... they had a show called "Celebrity Pinball"

I had just finished high school when ESPN was 25.

Other than the advancements in technology, a lot of it is the same now as it was back then.

I miss Aussie Rules Football games to fill in time on their schedule in the early days.

loved Jim Simpson growing up

At 3:50 Mr. Simpson refers to brand new TV station in DC where then Pres. Eisenhower toured the control room and mentioned the war room remarks , That was actually WRC in 1958 when the first color tape broadcast began , Eisenhower took a tour of the area downstairs and then came upstairs to make the public dedication speech . The video is on You Tube with David Brinkley narrating .

As a 14 year old kid who LOVED sports. When ESPN launched I thought I died and went to heaven. Lou Palmer, Lee Leonard, Jim Simpson and 24/7 sports.

I sure do miss the biased political commenting.

And for about 35-40 years they did what they were supposed to cover sports with great personalities that added to the coverage. I guess all good things come to an end. I remember in the 80's when there were few sports talk shows, the one I remember was Up Close with Roy Firestone, they used to televise Australian rules football during the afternoon on weekdays before they started getting their contracts with MLB and NFL.

Oh man I miss those days

I remember those days of early ESPN programming: CFL, Australian Rules Football, hockey, Tennis Davis Cup, etc.

Total sports network? 😂

They actually televised the NCAA Cross Country Championship for a couple of years.

A great concept that has been ruined by loudmouths and political correctness. And if you remember, when they first started they didn’t even have the big professional sports leagues. They had AWA Wrestling and assorted third tier sports. I think the first big sport they got was the NHL, which they snatched from USA Network, of all places.

I miss championship log rolling

No wake racist assholes back then. Actually cared about the sports.

Form just a sports network to Elite, Socialist, Programing, Network.

Nowadays nothing but lying name calling race playing commie loving trash.

Looking forward to ESPN's last days on air.

Now they are the Entirely Woke Political Network (EWPN).