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My guest for this bonus episode of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is ESPN anchor Randy Scott. He shares a hilarious yet humbling story from his early days on live television. Reflecting on an on-air blunder during Highlight Express, Randy reveals how the moment taught him resilience, the power of adaptability, and the importance of laughing at yourself.
Join us as Randy takes us behind the scenes at ESPN and shares valuable lessons learned from his favorite mistake!
Questions and Topics:
- What's your favorite mistake?
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- Quotes
- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Hey Mark, this is Randy Scott from ESPN. I'm sorry for taking a little bit extra time to get back to you on this. We just got done with our Monday show, and I wanted to come out and show you a little bit of the lobby here, a little bit of the entryway. That’s the quote wall here at ESPN. It’s something that one day I hope to get on. But you see—they could go all the way; there’s room, there’s room to add some more over here. Maybe I can get on there one day with Gary.
I’m here at the original marquee, the original ESPN marquee from the original SportsCenter set. You’re asking for a mistake that I’ve made? I mean, there are too many to choose from. That’s kind of the problem, right? Like, I can’t… you know, my favorite mistake? I’ve made some. I’ve made some before, but I think my favorite one was on a show that I started on here at ESPN.
It was called Highlight Express. It’s on ESPN News. It started at 10:00 Eastern, a half-hour show, and it just repeated over and over until all the games that day were done. So a lot of times, you’d be stuck watching like 17 innings of baseball on the West Coast and leaving here… I think the latest I ever left here was like five-something in the morning, maybe four-something in the morning.
But man, the mistake that I made on that show… we only got one on-camera segment per anchor per half-hour. So I was very excited. You put a lot of effort into it. You take a big swing, you know—you’re new, you’re young, you’re trying to get noticed for the right reasons. I wrote a good on-camera segment, and I delivered it. I thought I was going to a highlight.
So I kept talking because the video didn’t roll. I thought, “Cool, I’m just going to keep talking. I’m just going to get us there. It’s totally fine.” I was supposed to lay out for sound. So here I am, then, at ESPN for all of 20 minutes—it’s probably like the first couple of months of shows—and I’m just thinking to myself, “I’m showing them how I can ad-lib, how I can roll with a mistake.” And obviously, this is their mistake and not mine.
Finally, they just cut me off, and they rolled the sound bite that I was supposed to throw to. As they’re doing that, I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” The realization hit that I’d just made a massive mistake. It was on the air, and it was live. The producer got in my ear and said, “Hey, that’s fine. I could have communicated better to you, whatever.” He was very kind about it.
But I realized in that moment, very early in the show, that I could either let this completely ruin me for the rest of the night—get in my own head and mess up the rest of the shows—or I could just flush it. It happened once, it’s done, and it’s never going to happen again.
I also realized, man, if I actually have to ad-lib—if I get put in a situation where there’s a technical issue, the video doesn’t play, or whatever—I can buy some time. And that situation has played itself out over the last 12, 13 years. I realized I can do that. So, in a way, it’s my favorite mistake.
It was very embarrassing at the moment. I felt like I was never going to get assigned to shows again. But in a way, it’s my favorite mistake because it taught me something that I wasn’t quite sure of about myself. It’s something I could laugh about and definitely learn from.
I think about that at least once a week. That was 2012, the summer of 2012. I think about that at least once a week here, 12 years later.
All right, buddy. Appreciate you watching.