Rich's 'This Was SportsCenter' - Dan Patrick - Season 1, Episode 1

Dan Patrick cold-called John Walsh. No agent, no leverage, just a Friday afternoon and a name he'd found somewhere.

The story came out on the inaugural episode of "This Was SportsCenter," Rich's new Disney Plus series, sitting down with Patrick inside Patrick's Connecticut facility. What followed was two hours of memory, honesty, and more than a few moments where the legend turned out to be more improbable than it looked on camera.

Patrick had been making $50,000 at CNN and asked for $60,000. His boss, Bill McFale, came back at $55,000. Patrick didn't understand that was a counteroffer, not a ceiling. "If I asked for 65, he would have given me 60," Patrick told Rich. Instead, he walked. He called Walsh directly, got put through, and was on his way to Bristol by Tuesday. His first ESPN contract: $100,000. "I'd made it," he said.

His first SportsCenter came with an assist from Chris Berman, who had already finished his own show that night and stayed to co-anchor the 2 a.m. Berman welcomed Patrick on the air as a man who had "changed area codes." Patrick's response: "It doesn't get any better than this." What he said off-camera, right after Berman turned the volume up: "Man, you're loud." Berman's reply: "If it's too loud, you can go back to Nick and Fred."

The partnership with Keith Olbermann lasted five and a half years. Management, Patrick said, never once told them they were a team. They opened the schedule, saw each other's names, and figured it out. Real conversations happened in the bathroom, where they did their own makeup because ESPN said there was no budget for a makeup room. "Here's SportsCenter making probably 100 million or something crazy," Patrick said. "And they said, budgetary reasons, we couldn't get makeup." He was borrowing his wife's foundation and blush, unsure what he was putting on.

When management finally called them in, Patrick explained what had pushed it. They had been embedding the phrase "Hello" in the show after noticing their boss, Bob Eaton, said it to everyone in the newsroom each morning. One night a ball went through an infielder's legs and Olbermann dropped "Hello" on cue. Nothing happened. So they kept going. Eventually, someone noticed. Patrick described the meeting: "The more wood paneling, the more trouble you're in." There was a lot of wood paneling. Eaton pounded the table. They walked out, Patrick panicking about his three kids at home. Olbermann's response: "Fuck them. We're too big."

The real ending of Patrick's ESPN run arrived not in a wood-paneled meeting room but in his driveway. His wife had given him an ultimatum: if he signed another contract, the family would be out of the house. He drove 55 minutes to his boss's office, heard "take it or leave it," and said he was leaving it. Then he sat outside and cried. He drove home. His youngest daughter, Molly, came running out. He assumed his wife had set it up. Molly told him he had a booger in his nose and walked away.

He went inside. His kids were silent. He sat down. They asked if this was a good thing.

"It's a great thing," Patrick said.

They banged the table.

Six weeks later he was alone on the front porch with the dog. The attic studio built from two combined bedrooms eventually became what Rich pointed to, sitting across from Patrick on his 70th birthday at the Connecticut facility: mission accomplished. Patrick's response was to say he still can't turn off the competitive part.

Rich let him have it anyway.