Grand Prize Winner New England Book Festival
Winner Southern California Book Festival
A walk through sports history with the man who changed it.
“Bill Rasmussen delivers with a creative, smart and unique approach, combining his personal journey with what was happening at the time in our country. The creation of ESPN is an amazing story, and Bill tells it with fascinating detail, heart and humor.” —JIMMY PITARO, President, ESPN
About the Authors
BILL RASMUSSEN is the founder of ESPN, the world’s first 24-hour, 7-days-a-week sports television network.
He is a legend in innovative and entrepreneurial sports, advertising, and broadcasting. He is recognized in Sports Business Journal as one of the 100 people who greatly influenced the NFL business. Sports Illustrated honored him as one of their Forty For the Ages. USA Today called him “The Father of Cable Sports.”
Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Mr. Rasmussen is a veteran of the United States Air Force. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from DePauw University and an MBA from Rutgers University. During his career, he was a television sportscaster and a radio and television play-by-play announcer for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
Mr. Rasmussen is the author of Sports Junkies Rejoice! The Birth of ESPN. A frequent guest on television, radio and podcasts, he is in demand as a speaker at corporate events and on campus. He is an Awareness Ambassador at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and speaks about Intentional Optimism at American Parkinson Disease Association events across the country.
Donald T. Phillips is the author of Lincoln On Leadership. He has collaborated on books with Mike Krzyzewski, Cal Ripken, Phil Mickelson, and George Bodenheimer. He grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.
Peter Fox –
ESPN: One Giant Leap for Fankind
The world held its breath in 1969 as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and took a great leap for mankind, especially pulling Americans from assassination depressives and giving them button-bursting pride again.
A decade later, almost to the week, the sports world barely quivered when Bill Rasmussen threw the euphemistic switch on ESPN, taking a giant leap for fankind.
It might have been a bit understated for some, but for a few of us, birthing ESPN was a rocket ride that landed my golfing friend, colleague, author, and fellow maven of media on a memory moon only a few experienced.
Bill’s latest accounting of those days, traces his nine living decades and then some, weaving technology, sports, and history as they impacted him and us.
ESPN: One Giant Leap for Fankind is a magnificent sequel to the ESPN founder’s classic original Sports Junkies Rejoice, flavored by 40 more years of sports, relentless innovation, and invention by one of America’s true visionaries and good-natured teammate.
Bill’s large fan-filled trip through the 9 decades and then some he has lived, offers insights, tattles, and tell-all snippets only his multi-faceted heart, head and hearing could manifest in ESPN: One Giant Leap for Fankind.
During a few of those escapades, I rode shotgun with and for Bill Rasmussen.
Even so, the way he has woven the three elements of time, sports, technology and business into another easy and breezy bio-doc is a must-own book if you’re a sports fan.
Peter Fox