This week, the Marist Center for Sports Communication sent five other students and me to cover Super Bowl Media Week in San Francisco, CA, in anticipation of Sunday’s Super Bowl LX matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots. This is the third of multiple entries documenting our journey in Northern California, covering the lead-up to America’s biggest sporting event.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Over the past few days, every Super Bowl Media Week veteran we spoke to warned us that Radio Row doesn’t really pick up until Wednesday.
How could that be possible?
While bouncing around to some other locations on Monday and Tuesday, Radio Row was bustling. But the warnings were valid. It felt like everyone in the football world was in the Moscone Center on Wednesday.
Cam Newton was filming his podcast, only 30 feet away from the live taping of the Pat McAfee Show. Stephen A. Smith, Rob Gronkowski, Derrick Henry, Kay Adams, CeeDee Lamb, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, Shannon Sharpe, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Ja’Marr Chase, Michael Irvin and Amon-Ra St. Brown all could be found doing on-air work, right next to spectators. And those are just the ones I can remember.
The day drained all of us. Thankfully, we had our best night yet in store. But, we had a lot to do before we got there.
I caught another San Francisco sunrise as I walked to Moscone. I didn’t mind waking up early; the 1:00 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. shift in bed was enough to get me through the day, thanks to the adrenaline fostered by the magnitude of the week.
I never used to think of myself as a morning person. I hated getting up at 6:00 a.m. in middle and high school, and I loathed 8:00 a.m. classes like any other college student. My year spent behind the scenes with Marist’s women’s volleyball team forced me to become an early bird – their daily early morning practices left me with no choice.
The morning dawn walks were always peaceful. No matter what madness the day might bring, I took comfort in having a completely calm ten minutes to myself. I called my parents as I picked up some fruit for breakfast in the media work room, and my Dad jokingly reminded me that my Mom was mentioned in my first two journals, but he wasn’t.
While I could write a thousand words about the crucial people who have helped me get from Trumbull, CT, to San Francisco, where my peers and I are representing Marist University on the biggest sports media stage, no one has been more influential than my Dad.
My earliest memories come from watching sports with him, whether that be in our basement lined with sports memorabilia or at our season tickets in MetLife Stadium. He even made sure I got to see a game at the historic old Yankee Stadium before its closing in 2008, just so when I grew up, I could tell people that I went – which I’m doing now (mission successful, Dad!).
Scott Leeds, a sports superfan and autograph hound, never had a career in sports. My Dad graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in accounting in 1989. Nine years later, in 1998, he came home from working in New York City to his Fort Lee, N.J. apartment, and flipped on the Home Run Derby. On his screen, Dave Ryan, a friend of his when he was at Syracuse, was interviewing St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire, who went on to hit a then-MLB record 70 home runs that season.
“Maybe I picked the wrong career,” he thought to himself.
My Dad never forced sports upon me. He wasn’t one of those live-through-their-kid type of fathers, but sports were just how we bonded, whether that be playing Wiffle Ball in our backyard, traveling to different MLB ballparks in our quest to visit all 30, attending any sporting events that I played in or watching games on TV together. On school nights, if I had to go to bed before a big game ended, he’d write the final score on a piece of paper and leave it on the floor of my room before he went to work, so I could see it when I woke up.
He knew I wasn’t going to have a career playing sports, but he wanted me to know that was not the only way to follow my passion for sports into the workplace. He’s supported me every step of the way on this journey. I wouldn’t be doing any of this without him.
I FaceTimed him as I walked through Radio Row; when he used to commute to Stamford every day of the week, he listened to sports radio for the entire drive. Seeing all the stations meant more to him than it did to me, which really made me proud.
By 9:00 a.m., Radio Row started to buzz. There was a constant hum of noise from people doing sit-down interviews and mingling between tables. From an aerial view, it must’ve resembled an ant hive.
I did as many laps as I could, taking in the scene. I brought Jaylen Rizzo along with me for some of them, and she snapped a ton of pictures of big-name athletes as they appeared on different shows.
At the same time, William Rosen and Nick Chiarito hustled around, grabbing roaming celebrities for quick videos. William was on a roll, making videos with The Pointer Brothers, a popular skit-comedy TikTok account, Nelson “Duece” Vergara from the Broadcast Boys and Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports.
We capped our day with what is truly my favorite part of the trip thus far. William convinced our entire squad to go to a live taping of Rich Eisen’s new podcast, This Was SportsCenter. Before it began, we got to speak with Eisen briefly.
Just over 11 years ago, Eisen’s longtime SportsCenter anchoring partner, Stuart Scott, passed away from appendiceal cancer – Eisen and Scott were the greatest dynamic duo in SportsCenter’s history.
When Scott passed, Eisen delivered a passionate, tear-jerking speech about his friend. The clip stuck with me, from when I first watched it as a nine-year-old, until now, whenever it comes across my feed. As just a kid, it was one of my first introductions to mortality, that good people could be taken for unknown reasons.
I told him how much that clip meant to me, how I thought it was one of the most powerful speeches a sportscaster had ever delivered. He was appreciative, sad at first to think of his friend who had passed, but then grateful that his memory continued to live on. He thanked me for bringing it up before smiling for a picture.
For the live episode, Eisen was joined by none other than Chris “Boomer” Berman, one of the most notable sports media personalities of all time. Berman joined ESPN a month after it was founded in 1979, and was slotted into the 2:30 a.m. window. With seemingly no one watching, Berman put his bizarre, lovable personality on display.
It’s absurd to think about now, but having a television channel devoted strictly to sports was a risky idea back then, as it had never been done before. Even in its infancy, Berman had little doubt that it would succeed.
“There are people out there like us,” he remembered thinking, knowing there was an audience for non-stop sports coverage. “Like all of you guys,” he continued, gesturing to the crowd.
Soon, he started getting recognized in public, despite his peculiar timeslot. He began to realize that SportsCenter was not just for those who worked 9-5 jobs.
It was for those on the West Coast, who waited on tables until after midnight and turned the TV on when they got home see what they missed in the sports world. It was for those who had to get up in the wee hours of the night to change their babies’ diapers. Berman’s screentime essentially became “tomorrow’s newspaper,” as he put it.
Sports have always been a unifier for these people across the country, and even the world, for that matter, since Berman’s origins at ESPN – and they still are, even in the intensely divided United States right now.
“Sports is one of the few things, to this day, that has no sizes,” Berman said. We all can have the same conversation… hey, did you see the game last night?”
A little over a year into his time at ESPN, Berman began coming up with nicknames for players, some remarkably clever and some so straightforward they were funny in their own right. Berman also mixed in some ridiculous self-made sound effects and catch phrases like “Whoop!” or “He… could… go… ALL… THE… WAY!”
(If you had to ask me, I’d say “Bert ‘Be Home’ Blyleven” is his best work. However, while giving examples of how easily they come to him, Berman rattled off “Jay ‘Ferris’ Buhner wasn’t having a day off,” which sent me hysterical.)
The true origins of the nicknames could be traced back to his college days. At Brown University in the mid 1970s, Berman and his friends would have a few drinks and read through box scores, trying to one up eachother on whoever could think of the best play on words.
Our crew of six spoke to Berman afterwards, and I couldn’t help but ask. I needed to know what my nickname would be. Moments after telling him my first and last name, he had it. The Who’s first live album was his easy answer.
“Ben ‘Live at Leeds’ says goodnight from San Francisco.”
Photo by Jaylen Rizzo
To follow along with our full Super Bowl LX coverage, click here.
For coverage of Marist Athletics, follow @cfmarist on Instagram, X, TikTok and Bluesky, and sign up to receive daily alerts here.