Rich's 'This Was SportsCenter' - Craig Kilborn - Season 1, Episode 6

The first season of "This Was SportsCenter" ends where so much of Rich's own career began, in the stairwells and studios of Bristol. For the finale, Rich sat down with Craig Kilborn, a friend from those early days, and the two men spent the better part of an hour walking back through a version of ESPN that no longer exists.

They overlapped for only a few months in 1996 before Kilborn left for "The Daily Show," but the first exchange stuck with Rich. He was climbing the stairs as Kilborn came down, and Kilborn looked at the new guy and said, "You're doing a lot of stuff that I do." Kilborn does not remember it. "It sounds like something obnoxious, I would say," he offered.

Kilborn's path to SportsCenter reads like a series of lucky bounces. He was anchoring in the tiny Salinas market when a friend introduced him to a New York agent. That agent sent his tape to Al Jaffe at ESPN. Kilborn thought he was auditioning for ESPN2 and figured the test show went poorly because he could not work the computer system. They hired him anyway. "Thank God," he said.

The best story of the afternoon had almost nothing to do with sports. That same friend, a fellow anchor named Dena, ended up marrying Clint Eastwood, which eventually put Kilborn at dinner across the table from him. Halfway through the meal, Kilborn asked about "Where Eagles Dare" and whether Richard Burton drank a lot on set. Eastwood said he tried to match Burton beer for beer but could not keep up once the scotch came out. The question got Eastwood talking, and Kilborn walked away with a night he still retells.

Then there was the suspension. Kilborn, exhausted from staying up to watch his own late-night shows, finally asked for a lighter day and got sent to give score updates on ESPN2. When other anchors started needling him over the internal messaging system, he fired back on air with a crack about being "on the deuce." He got a week off without pay and, he says, no explanation.

The relationships mattered more than the paycheck. Kilborn spoke warmly about the anchors who took him seriously, from Robin Roberts to Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, whom everyone looked up to. Olbermann, in particular, kept telling Kilborn he was joking too much, that he was not close to the anchor he could be. The advice, Kilborn said, was to cut the jokes down, one segment at a time, until he could carry an entire show. There was also the day Patrick handed Kilborn the newsroom phone. On the line was Bill Murray, calling to say he thought Kilborn was funny and to thank him for defending him in an argument.

The two reminisced about the "This is SportsCenter" commercials, the ones Kilborn helped build a reputation on, and about the origin of his signature move: introducing himself at the end of the show. Kilborn claims it started as a way to save money.

Before they wrapped, Rich floated the idea of Kilborn coming back to anchor a highlight, maybe the two of them doing one old school, one more time. Kilborn, who has said he does not miss the grind, softened. "It would be fun," he said. "We'll be in communication."