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close(Reprinted from Saturday, April 25, 2009)
For the CDT/Steve Manuel
ESPN's Game Day crew broadcasts live from outside the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State prior to the 2007 football game between Penn State and Ohio State. (L to R) Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit. (For the CDT/Steve Manuel)
UNIVERSITY PARK -- One of Chris Fowler's first bosses advised him not to take the offer to host a scholastic sports show on a little-known network in 1986. More than 20 years later, that network -- ESPN -- rules the sporting world, and Fowler anchors one of its most popular programs.
The host of "College GameDay" told a group of Penn State students he made the move because it seemed like it would be "more fun" and encouraged them to seek good career advice but ultimately follow their own instincts.
"Don't lose sight of why you wanted to do it in the first place," Fowler said.
During an hour-long talk held by Penn State's College of Communications at the HUB-Robeson Center and in a separate session with reporters, Fowler covered a wide range of subjects.
A self-described "little sportscaster geek" who knew what he wanted to do from a young age, Fowler lived in State College for three years in the mid-1970s and fell under the football spell a young(er) Joe Paterno and his Nittany Lions had cast on the town.
"I really value the time I get to spend with Joe," he said. "My dad knew him here when he was a faculty member. Penn State football meant a lot to me."
After the family moved back to Fowler's native Colorado, he worked in sports information, campus radio and taped television segments at the University of Colorado. Upon graduation, he reported for the Rocky Mountain News and a Denver television station before moving to ESPN in 1986 to host "Scholastic Sports America."
Two years later, he was a college football sideline reporter and by 1990 was the host of GameDay. He has since watched the show blossom from a 30-minute segment into a live, two-hour, loosely scripted program that broadcasts in the shadows of a different stadium each week.
"We're setting the table for the day," Fowler said. "Because of that, being at a game is the right place to be."
Fowler and fellow hosts Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit are occasionally asked for their opinions on which campus the show should visit next but producers make the final calls.
"It's pretty obvious most of the time where we should be," he said. "Maybe a couple times a season there might be an animated discussion where one agenda might not line up with another agenda. But everybody is passionate about it, and I think in the end, we're usually in the right place."
Finding compelling and original storylines each week is the bigger issue and more challenging in today's instant-update media environment. Fowler said he spends "more hours than he'd care to admit" reading and researching various topics and disseminating reliable information from faulty information in the blogosphere.
"I try to spend my energy on the biggest games of the day and also try to be aware of areas my other guys are going to cover," Fowler said. "I'm not going to try to dig where there are more qualified, better informed people than I to do that. There's schools where I have good sources, where I can get stuff that hasn't been out there all week. I'll try to focus my energy there and a lot of times it's just whatever you think the weak part of the show is. ... You better come up with something to make people care."
The final minutes of each show usually generate the most interest. Herbstreit and Corso pick winners for that week's games, concluding with the game played at the host site.
Corso, who coached for 23 seasons at three schools, dons the headgear of the mascot of the team he picks, a tradition he began during a Penn State-Ohio State game in Columbus in 1998, to a chorus of boos or cheers.
"Right away I think we knew we had something," Fowler said.
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