Boston-bred Bryant Bounces to ESPN

By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

With a constant parade of traditional print sports people streaming to the Web, we bring you the Boston-angled story of Howard Bryant, currently of the Washington Post, soon to be of ESPN’s Empire.

Twenty months after leaving the Boston Herald for the Post, Bryant confirmed this week the rumors that his next move will give him presence across all of ESPN’s current (and future) platforms. It will also allow Bryant to start using what was once Boston’s most-provocative sports voice (and its lone minority sports columnist) on a much grander scale.

Bryant is scheduled to start with ESPN in mid-August and his final day at the Post (where he shared Washington Redskin beat duties) comes on Tuesday, July 31.

“This is going to be quite the challenge,” said Bryant, 38. “The capacity is a senior writer for the .com and The Magazine, with numerous ESPN radio and TV appearances. The chance to work at ESPN with Rob King and John Walsh put me in a can’t lose position”

In other words, Bryant hit the jackpot of sports journalism’s one-armed bandit. Better yet for the Dorchester native who grew up in Plymouth, he found himself in a unique position, and one that gives a glimpse of the ongoing gold rush for some of the industry’s more prominent writers (see: Michael Silver note below).

Within a six week period beginning in early June, Bryant was contacted by both Sports Illustrated and ESPN and was eventually offered what could be considered lucrative job offers from both media/content GIANTS. The SI pitch and recruit came complete with a pricey Manhattan dinner with fine cuts of beef and the promise of writing duties that hit on all of Bryant’s primary interests (baseball, football, drugs in sports, sociological sports issues and more). The ESPN offer was similarly open-ended and included the additional exposure and street credibility that comes with TV exposure.

In short, Bryant was being wooed by the two biggest players in sports journalism and being handed

“This is an extremely transitional time in our business,” said Bryant on Thursday as he waited for some routine service on his 2005 Toyota RAV4 near his Virginia home. “It’s so transitional that people are in the middle of a decade-long game of musical chairs. And no one wants to be standing when the music stops – and the music will stop.”

For Bryant, the music never stops. “The Herald was by far my favorite place to work,” said Bryant. “Did I want to be at the Globe since I was a kid? Sure I did. Do I have an interest in making them see the mistake they made by not [hiring Bryant as a columnist]? Of course. I’m a competitor. At some level do you want to say F*#% you to people that didn’t think you could do what you’re doing? Well, whether you say it out loud or you just smile at them, you’re still saying it. But I don’t have any bitterness to anybody.”

. . . Look for Bryant to molt into a generalist’s role for the dot-com (think Gene Wojciechowski
or Pat Forde) and then do longer take-outs for the magazine, most assuredly issue-pieces. He’ll also have plenty of TV and radio time with the expected continuance of his usage on “Sports Reporters” (where Bryant has shone) and other Disney properties.

. . . The Bryant move to ESPN shows a couple of interesting lessons:

1. He took a step backwards (leaving his column in Boston in November of 2005 for a beat job in Washington) and the result is a job with the Worldwide Leader. Would it have happened if he stayed at the herald? Bryant doubts it. “There is something to be said for the power of the Post,” he said.

2. How bad are things for the once-proud Sports Illustrated? The HR department must be spinning with all the separation-from-employment papers it needs to be processing. There are always going to be writers who will crawl through glass to work at SI, of that there is no question. But what level of writer that is tends to be a bit hard to quantify. The fact is, the dot-coms (especially ESPN with its TV and radio presence) offer more enticing packages, more opportunities and better long-term security than the traditional print-based media outlets.

. . . Bryant and his family (wife and child) will most likely be re-locating to the Berkshires, he said, where Bryant will be able to work on his 2008-scheduled book on Hank Aaron. Once that project is complete, Bryant will “readjust” and see where his family will be best off.

. . . Don’t ask me why, but I’d guess the talented Mike Wise is the next Post guy to jump to ESPN. He already has a great thing going on “Rome Is Burning” - let the mo-fo burn - as that show tries to get more Disney Family focused with its regular guests.

. . . An email announcing Bryant’s departure was circulated at the Post last week and likely originated from sports editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz:

We are sorry to announce that Howard Bryant will be leaving us at the end of this month to join the ranks of ESPN. Although he has been with the Post for less than two years, Howard has established himself as a huge asset to the Sports department. He played a major role in our coverage of the Washington Redskins the last two seasons as one of our two beat writers. It goes without saying that we will miss Howard tremendously. We wish him all the best.

Said Bryant: “I really loved being part of that newsroom [at the Post]. Emilio is the best line editor I’ve ever had. I was frustrated because I thought I could do more than a beat, but the Post never sold me a bill of goods. I just have things to say and needed a place to say them.”

And now ESPN gives him that chance.

. . . To say Bryant’s been through the gamut of emotions over the past four months would be understating things a bit. On April 12, Bryant’s mother, Nona died at the age of 60. “I’m still grieving my mother,” said Bryant. “And all this discussion starts up and there’s a part of me saying that this is the kind of thing that give me the golden years that she didn’t have. She didn’t get to sit on the beach with the umbrella in her drink.”

Bryant’s mother worked 30 years for Ocean Spray in management information systems. “She died in her sleep,” Bryant said quietly, acknowledging he wished she could have seen this next step in her son’s career.

Bryant was reminded that she’s watching it all with great pleasure.

• In what can only be considered a major coup for the ever-expanding, ever improving Yahoo! Sports, the site has landed its biggest name to date with Michael Silver jumping ship from Sports Illustrated to become THE face of Yahoo!’s burgeoning NFL coverage. He is being billed by Yahoo! insiders as its answer to Peter King and be a personality for the site to hang its hat on (they already do a lot of original video content through SportStream and are rumored to have radio plans as well).

Silver has always led the league in access to players so that alone is huge for Yahoo! (and yes his name is big enough that he doesn’t need the SI business card to be effective).

And personality? Well, Silver takes the gold in that department – for better or worse.

. . . Not sure how exaggerated the rumors of Silver’s salary may or may not be, but I do know he had his agent negotiate the deal. If that’s the case, add on a good chunk of cash for the agent’s efforts which have been on-going for at least two weeks.

• It’s not just the Patriots’ football scouting staff that has grown fond of Florida Gators. The franchise’s media division is also plucking gator talent from Gainesville as the team this week confirmed the hiring of ex-Dazzler Dancer (and Miami Heat shimmier) Kristina Akra who has a chance to be – could we be so lucky? – the next Erin Andrews.

According to Kraft Sports Productions Executive Producer, Matt Smith, “Kristina is the new host of the new and improved ‘Patriots Today’ webcast which will debut in its new format on September 4th with Kristina as host,” he said. “In the meantime, ‘Patriots Today’ will be seen daily throughout camp in its current format, with Kristina contributing. She will also be seen this Saturday (July 28), when a special Training Camp edition of ‘Patriots All Access’ airs on WCVB-TV (ABC5) at 7PM.”

Akra, who lists Tom Petty’s “American Girl” as her favorite song and ten years ago was “dreaming of competing as an Olympic gymnast in the 2000 Summer Games” graduated from Florida in 2006 with a bachelor of Science Degree. She’s done news, weather and sports and a couple of looks at her reel suggest some nice potential for the young, twenty-something Ft. Lauderdale native.

• The Bob Ryan/Charlie Pierce pairing on Wednesday’s “Globe 10.0” was an encouraging sign for the fledgling NESN property. Pierce in the suit, tie and sport coat was a bit jarring at first and there were some tangents that might have lost the casual viewer, but overall this is the duo that needs to be given the most reps on the thrice-weekly ONE (Original NESN Entertainment) production.

There also seems to be some fondness for the young Christopher L. Gasper in the early-going. Gasper has shown glimpses but you start to wonder how much personality you want your No. 2 guy on the Pats’ beat to actually have. Point being, it would seem that Mike Reiss has the more developed background for “10.0” stints. It might work better to use the Reiss’s and the Cafardos as more of a “5 Minutes With. . .” guest, used in sort of a local version of Richard Justice (for you PTI-literate analogists).

. . . And thank you, NESN for using the numbers 1.0 through 10.0 numbers to assemble the daily list. Now you can work on pacing and mixing in some interviews and horseplay.

Stop me if I’m moving too fast here. I just think the show needs to hit its stride for Pats season and the days are a dwindlin’. And all sorts of new offerings could be in the works from the soon to be ‘Comcast Sports North’ (when its takeover of FSNNE becomes official). UPDATE 7/27/07 10:30 A> EST: The FSNNE sale to Comcast is official according to a company spokesperson. And the CSN moniker is just our own way of identifying what will very likely be a re-branded network.

• Notice the date and notice the marquee event that begins today (Friday July 27) over in Foxboro. Also please note that the Boston Globe sports department has yet to fill the long-vacated Ron Borges position. Our Globe moles are telling us that the position is being re-configured and may now slide to more of a generalist spot that would benefit from not simply NFL coverage, but also an investigative and enterprise facet to the job.

We’ve already made the argument that Reiss and Gasper can handle the beat fine and that the Borges spot could be best served as a multi-platform hire with a heavy dose of web presence.

However, all three of Joe Sullivan’s favorite picks are NFL-dominant guys from what we hear and management is looking for a different list with different skill sets and strengths.

Meanwhile the pre-season games are right around the corner and the Globe continues to get thinner and thinner through attrition and what almost seems like a hiring freeze. Bylines disappear and new ones come infrequently, if ever (intern Daniel Malloy is getting a lot of reps, it appears).

The writing staff needs another body and whether or not it’s an NFL-centric person or just the Best Available Writer (who’s willing to jump aboard a teetering ship), the body needs to appear soon before things get real hectic in Beantown.

• Remember the name Doug Tribou? He had a brief run as the Program Director with 890 ESPN until March of 2006 and now can be heard on weekends at WBUR doing perfectly intoned public radio news updates between some of the NPR station’s best programming (especially Saturday late morning through the early evening). We’ve been hearing him for a couple of weeks and we kept meaning to check where the name rang familiar from. Now we know.

• Let’s all just understand that there won’t be any more Skip Prossers in the near future in college basketball. That’s a shame that’s well-explained by Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, 
Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom

You can listen to Scott every Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. as he co-hosts the Boston Sports Review Show on ESPN Radio 890 AM with ESPN’s All-Sports Reporter, Mike Salk.