The Hurley Edition: ESPN's Randy Scott
BOSTON (CBS) -- On the latest episode of The Hurley Edition, ESPN SportsCenter anchor Randy Scott visited the studio to talk about his job and -- unfortunately for him -- the Tuck Rule.
As the host of "SportsCenter:AM," which goes on air at 7 a.m., Randy revealed the ungodly hour at which he awakes every day.
"It's like 100 miles door-to-door for me," Randy said of his Massachusetts home to the ESPN headquarters in the heart of Connecticut. "I have to be there at 4 a.m., so I wake up at 1:45. In the morning."
Randy wasn't complaining, but Hurley couldn't believe it -- especially considering Randy and his wife have three children under the age of 4.
"Yeah, man. It's early," he said. "I can't remember the last time I saw the other side of midnight."
Somehow, the conversation continued, and Hurley asked Randy how he deals with the amount of displeasure many sports fans express toward ESPN these days. That's especially true in New England, where fans were quite perturbed at certain aspects of the network's coverage of the saga known as "DeflateGate."
"I can't tell you how many Patriots fans work there, I can't tell you how many people who agreed with the Kraft/Belichick/Brady side of the deflated football thing worked there, so that part always felt unfair to me. And I'm not a Patriots fan. That's the thing -- I'm not a Patriots fan, but even I have recognized how ridiculous that story was, how ridiculous the punishment was, all of it," Randy said.
And with many vocal critics voicing their displeasure at ESPN personalities dipping into political areas, Randy said it's hard to make everybody happy.
"It's sort of a catch-22, because you get this whole segment of the viewership understandably is like, 'Man I am sick of the national anthem thing.' And then you get this other segment that is like, 'You're not giving these causes the right attention.' So you almost, as a network -- uniformly, unilaterally -- can't please everybody. So the people who make decisions who are well above me and my pay grade, it's really an impossible position to try to please everyone."
Randy also discussed the uneasiness of going through a day of massive ESPN layoffs, shared a tremendous story about how he accidentally talked trash about Tom Brady in front of Brady's sister for an entire evening, and was forced to take a lot of grief for being a Raiders fan who's still very sad about the Tuck Rule.
Listen above, on the CBS Boston audio page, on Stitcher, or on iTunes!