Trey Wingo Wants To Remind Everyone Of ESPN's Plebian Roots

NFL Live's silver-haired lead dog Trey Wingo is one of the more likable chaps over at ESPN and straddles the line between Disney drone and regular guy better than most other WWL employees. Wingo took some time away from cuddling with Mark Schlereth to speak to Dan Levy's OnTheDL podcast and gave an interesting assessment of ESPN and its place in the media landscape:

"Remember when ESPN started, we were nothing. In 1979, you couldn’t find us with a police blotter. You could hide from the authorities on ESPN. And I think the thing that ESPN has done better, that nobody gives it credit for … we went from being the mom and pop shop – we were the bloggers, essentially, in 1979. We were trying to find a way to put something on the air that somebody would pay attention to. And somewhere along the way, over a vast period of time, we went from the mom and pop shop, the blogger that nobody really reads so we can say whatever we want out there, to suddenly the most powerful entity in sports in this country.

"And I think that we managed that transition better than we probably had any right to. I think that’s the one thing when people are critical of us that they forget. Look, what we are and what we were…it’s a long time in between, and it’s been a really seismic shift and I would defy anybody in any sort of medium – whether it’s blogging or radio or television or print or whatever – to handle that sort of transition as well as we’ve done it."

It was a glorious time at the network in 1979, a time when Chris Berman was paid by the Nielsen rating point and George Grande used to do Sports Center broadcasts in his pajama bottoms. Dream big, everybody. Trey Wingo [On The DL]