Chris Fowler on ‘Finding My Father,’ the Knicks, and More

Chris Fowler has spent his career narrating other people's stories. This time the story is his own, and it took decades to find.

Fowler joined Rich to talk about Finding My Father, a SportsCenter feature airing in the 8 a.m. hour on Father's Day. It started with a box of cassette tapes. Fowler was 16 when his father died of cancer, and before he passed, his dad had recorded roughly 10 hours of audio, hoping someone would help him turn his experience into a book. The tapes sat undiscovered for decades until, after Fowler's mother died, his brother found them in a dusty basement. Not sure what to expect, Fowler poured a glass of fine bourbon, sat alone in his mountain house late at night, and finally heard his father's voice again. It blew him away and sent him searching for the man he never fully got to know.

What he found reshaped his picture of his dad, a college theater professor and director. Fowler tracked down former students, now in their 70s, who described the lasting impact of what his father taught them. He also reconnected with Joyce DeWitt, the Three's Company star his dad had directed in summer stock long before she became famous. Fowler had not spoken to her in about 40 years, since he was a kid with a purple satin Three's Company jacket who once watched a taping and visited her Malibu beach house. Now living in Santa Fe and out of the spotlight, DeWitt told him his father was the best director she had ever worked with on stage, television or film. Fowler called it a lightning bolt.

The harder revelation was how alone his father felt. The tapes were not addressed to Fowler or Drew, but to a hoped-for collaborator, and listening to them, Fowler kept asking where he and his brother were in the story. The family had been separated during treatment, his dad in Colorado while the boys finished the school year in Pennsylvania, connected only by a once-a-week call on a phone tethered to the kitchen wall. He learned just how dark and depressed his father had become, something he believes the era hid on purpose, when the instinct was to let kids be kids. He contrasted it with how openly people like Stuart Scott and Jimmy V later shared their journeys.

Asked whether he sees his father living through him, Fowler was honest that they are very different. His dad craved fame and could be a little narcissistic, theatrical enough that, as Rich put it, he sounded like Olivier or John Gielgud narrating. Fowler never got into this to be the center of attention. Still, he loved him, and the gratifying part was seeing how much of himself his father left with others.

The conversation turned, as it does in New York these days, to the Knicks. Fowler described a city on fire, bars packed and Knicks gear everywhere, but urged a little caution. He was in the Garden in 1994 when the Rangers carried a 3-1 lead toward the Stanley Cup, dropped two, and survived the most tension-filled Game 7 he has ever witnessed. He is not really a fan of either the Rangers or the Knicks, yet admitted a title would be a special thing for the city. His prediction: the series heads back to San Antonio with the Spurs hanging on at 3-1, and the Knicks close it out in six.

On the Brendan Sorsby injunction keeping the player eligible at Texas Tech, Fowler was unsurprised, noting you can find a judge to rule on anything and that the real problem is nobody is in charge of college football. He expects more chapters. Then it was off to a long-planned trip to Slovenia and, soon after, Wimbledon, his favorite event to cover, capping a conversation between two old friends a day after Rich's 23rd wedding anniversary.