Bill Rasmussen '54 Shares Stories of ESPN's Founding with the Hartford Courant

November 21, 2018

ESPN, the 24-hour-a-day cable television sports network founded by DePauw University graduates Bill and Scott Rasmussen ('54 & '86), "stands as the most powerful sports media property in the world and one of the largest companies in the state of Connecticut," notes today's Hartford Courant. In a feature on Bill Rasmussen, the newspaper notes, "These days, whenever he ventures east from his home in Seattle, he’s invited back to Bristol to take stock of what he created 40 years ago."

Alex Putterman writes, "During a trip to the Worldwide Leader during the last week of October, Rasmussen reunited with former ESPN anchor Chris Berman, visited the spot on I-84 where he and his son first thought up a 24-hour sports network, taped interviews for an E:60 segment and some 40th-anniversary coverage to air next summer, and hosted a meet-and-greet with current employees. He spoke with ESPNers who spent decades at the company, as well as with one woman who had arrived only eight days earlier. One employee showed him photos of the dog named after him. Another described book reports she’d written about him in grade school. Rasmussen also sat down with the Courant in a cafe on the ESPN campus built long after he left town, amid a sprawl of buildings larger than he could have dreamed back in 1978. At 86 years old, Rasmussen walks slowly and speaks softly, but his memory remains strikingly sharp. Over several hours, one of sports media’s most important figures shared the history of everything from ESPN’s name (inspired by Connecticut Natural Gas) to its home in Bristol (not Plainville, where Rasmussen first sought to put the network) to its original contract with UConn’s athletic department. It’s a history rich in ingenuity, good fortune and hidden Connecticut connections."

Putterman adds, "Today, ESPN towers atop an increasingly crowded sports media landscape. The network presented 16,000 live events in 2017, reaching an average of 115 million viewers per month."

"ESPN doesn’t exist without Bill, it’s not in Connecticut without Bill," says Mike Soltys, the cable network's vice president of corporate communications. "Somebody certainly would have done a certain version of ESPN, but it wouldn’t have been the version of ESPN that I’m working at, and it wouldn’t be in Connecticut. He had the vision when others didn’t. And he had the people skills to pull it off against tremendous odds."

Access the piece, which includes video and several photos, here.

Bill Rasmussen is among five individuals selected to receive the prestigious Gold Key Award from the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance next April.

A Rector Scholar and economics major at DePauw, Bill Rasmussen went on to earn an M.B.A. from Rutgers University. He's been called "the father of cable sports" by USA Today, was recognized as one of "The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business", and was named in 1994 by Sports Illustrated as one of 40 individuals who altered and elevated the world of sports in the second half of the 20th century.

Rasmussen returned to DePauw last November for a week-long residency that included meetings with students and an Ubben Lecture, which is embedded below.