‘Sports Night’ Aims and, for the Most Part, Hits Target

On a recent Tuesday night in the ESPN newsroom, a cry went out: “Hey, they just used ‘bulging disc’ on ‘Sports Night.’ ”

In a way, it’s a tribute to the ABC comedy that a bunch of the staff at ESPN’s “SportsCenter” actually watches the show set at a fictional sports network. And even more so that they cheer every time the sitcom depicts terminology or an incident stolen directly from their own experience.

Like the “bulging disc” episode. A few years back, ESPN anchor Steve Levy was supposed to report that a certain player was laid up with a “bulging disc.” But thanks to a TelePrompTer typo, which dropped the ‘s’ in disc, exactly which body part Levy said was bulging changed entirely. “Keith Olbermann [Levy’s co-anchor at the time] was crying he was laughing so hard,” remembers Rich Eisen, the co-anchor of the late-night version of “SportsCenter,” seen here weeknights at 11.

On the episode of “Sports Night,” the rookie ABC series that has been a darling of the critics but so far a mediocre ratings performer in its Tuesday 9:30 p.m. time slot, the anchors, played by Josh Charles and Peter Krause, were warned of the typo just in time.

“The show has really captured the thought processes and sensibilities of those of us who work here,” said Charlie Steiner, who has anchored more than 2,500 installments of “SportsCenter” during the past 11 years. “They have picked up on some of the conflicts we have about the business. When I first got here, basically it was balls and strikes and first downs and who won and lost. But the whole culture has changed. . . . Unfortunately real life tends to infringe on our playground.”

‘We Created Our Own World’--After Research

Reality isn’t what Aaron Sorkin, the creator and executive producer of “Sports Night,” is after anyway.

“What I took wasn’t so much the detail, but the fact that these people work extremely hard to put on a live show every day,” said Sorkin, a screenwriter whose credits include the films “The American President” and “A Few Good Men.”’

Still, Sorkin did spend time observing the operations of ESPN in Bristol, Conn. and Fox Sports here in Century City as research for his first prime-time comedy series. (Fox Sports, which, like the Fox network, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s huge conglomerate, would not permit its employees to comment on “Sports Night,” a company spokesman said, because it didn’t want to be seen bashing or praising a show on a rival network. ESPN, meanwhile, is owned by Disney, which also produces “Sports Night” and owns its network, ABC.)

“It’s as accurate a picture of ‘SportsCenter’ as ‘The American President’ was of the White House,” said Sorkin, adding, “we created our own world.”

That world is a fast-paced, fast-talking newsroom in New York City where the pitfalls and jealousies of office crushes, the birth of children and the charms of the city outside the windows make up far more of the fictional show than the whos and whats of sports.

Nevertheless, many “SportsCenter” staffers believe Sorkin has done a fairly good job, with some artistic license, in grounding “Sports Night” in the terminology and chaos of the real thing.

While re-creating “SportsCenter” per se isn’t Sorkin’s intention, the “SportsCenter” team said the comedy’s stories often hit very close to home.

“They had a new producer edit his first baseball highlights and it came out eight minutes too long, and he nevertheless insisted that there was nothing he could possibly cut out,” said Julie Mariash, a coordinating producer at ESPN. “Another time they didn’t know if Helsinki was in Sweden or Finland or Switzerland. It really is so funny and so real.”

The ESPN crew did point out that the TV offices of “Sports Night” are far slicker and neater than the real thing, which is littered with paper and videotape. And in sleepy Bristol, they obviously don’t get to stare out the windows at the beautiful nighttime New York skyline, which graces the “Sports Night” set. While office romance does bloom now and then at ESPN, no one has ever arranged a candlelight Chinese food picnic in their work cubicle.

“And we don’t have Benson running around here telling us what to do,” Eisen said, referring to Robert Guillaume, the former star of “Soap” and “Benson,” who plays the top boss on “Sports Night.”

Ironically the most glaring difference between fiction and reality is sports itself. “Sports Night” does depict the production of a sports-news broadcast and refers to teams and players during each episode, but mostly the characters chat about their personal lives and relationships with one another. Meanwhile, back at ESPN, those who work there insist, if you see three or four people sitting around, it’s taken for granted that they are talking about sports.

“Because such a large percentage of the people who work here are men, there isn’t the kind of emotional bonding and involvement in each other’s lives that you see on the show,” said Lisa Fenn, 24, who has been a production assistant at ESPN for about a year. “This is a place where people’s first get-to-know-you question is, ‘Who’s your team?’ ”

Sorkin, who fell in love with the rotating crew of anchors when he used to watch ESPN’s “SportsCenter” for companionship after staying up all night writing his screenplays, readily concedes that the show is about human beings, not sports. In an effort to broaden viewership of his series, he even went to ABC’s Web site to ask fans of the show to dissuade others of the notion that it is a “sports” show.

“My obligation is to involve the audience,” Sorkin said in an interview from his office in New York. “This is not a sports show anymore than ‘ER’ is about surgery. It’s about the lives of these people.”

But both Fenn and Mariash believe that Sorkin has accurately depicted their lives as women in this male-dominated world. On “Sports Night,” Felicity Huffman, who plays the show’s producer, and an associate producer, played by Sabrina Lloyd, both know their stuff.

“You have to be pretty tough to fit in and take part in the goofing around in order to be accepted and succeed in your work, and I think both of the women in their show do that,” said Mariash, the youngest of five girls, who became the son her father never had and his companion at New York Rangers and Knicks games and, eventually, a lifelong sports fanatic. But when it comes to the show’s more emotional moments, that’s something she rarely sees surface in her world.

“They had one of the anchors do this whole big thing on the air about his brother who had died. That could never happen. It’s too personal and too emotional,” said Mariash, adding, “If they did a show based on the reality of our every day, no one would watch. We’re just not that exciting.”

TV Playing Field Taps Into Emotions

Even with the sitcom’s colorings and distortions, the ESPN staff all said they will continue watching “Sports Night.”

“I thought it would be a traditional goofy sitcom, but every once in a while it really tugs at the emotional strings,” Steiner said. “In my time here, I’ve seen young men graduate from college and grow into men, babies being born, parents dying, dear co-workers dying. He’s tapped into that emotional playing field by intruding some real life into this almost surreal setting. And look, I’ve been on ‘SportsCenter’ ever since we were just a little news show on the sports channel. Now we have a sitcom about us. That blows me away.”

* “Sports Night” airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. on ABC.