The Best Damn Sports Show Period - A Look Back
By Chris, Best Damn Editor, Web Guy, and Podcast Producer

I edited my first piece for the Best Damn Sports Show Period before the show had even begun to air. I don't think the piece ever made the show. It shouldn't have. It was terrible. This was in the spring of 2001, and after working on that piece, my boss, Jay, asked me if I would like a permanent position on Best Damn. I asked how long a commitment the show had, and found out that it had only thirteen weeks guaranteed. I respectfully said no thanks, and kept my position on Fox Sports News, because I didn't think Best Damn would last, and they would never cancel the News.

Six months later, they cancelled the News.

Fortunately, the folks at Best Damn were there with open arms, willing to let me work on the show. The first piece I did on this second go-round with Best Damn was aiming an arrow at Leeann Tweeden's breasts, following the gaze of a Toughman competitor who just couldn't keep his eyes up. I thought it might just be time to start touching up my resume. However, as the crew of the show found their niche, the work became increasingly fun, though oftentimes stressful. Many a day, I would finish a comedy bit, only to have a producer take the tape from my hands and run, as Joan Cusack in Broadcast News, down to the tape room. I would turn in my chair, and find the piece was already on the air, just seconds later! What a rush!

I look back at those days and the pieces I edited: Robin Williams giving us a bike tour of San Francisco, a biography of Leroy Neiman, Leeann's Spring Training tour, a walk through the NFL Draft with Dan Cody, etc., and I feel great pride. We made some good television. Then, I look at the comedy pieces that I cut: The Roses-Way Beyond the Glory, Doyle Regan: Sanity Management, The Black Shadow, etc., and I can't help but laugh. No doubt, we had our fair share of bombs, but the pieces that were funny, were very funny.

You would think that after eight years, it would be hard to pick a favorite moment. Oddly enough, it's easy for me. My favorite moment on the show far and away is Pat Croce being bitten by a snake while playing a Fear Factor-style game. I have seen that clip hundreds of times, easily, and I laugh every single time. I had nothing to do with that moment, though; that happened live in-studio. My favorite moment that I had a hand in creating was following Kyle Turley as he brought supplies down to the victims and rescue workers of Hurricane Katrina. That piece was easily the most important work I've done here on Best Damn. Seeing Kyle Turley in tears after it ran let me know that I and producer Joel Santos had done it right, and when we read letters of thanks from our viewers on the air soon after, I shed more than a few tears of my own. Working on that piece was definitely one of the highest of highlights from my time on Best Damn.

Overall, though, when I look back at eight years of work on the Best Damn Sports Show Period, I think of how much I've learned from both our triumphs and our missteps (and there were many of both), of how a staff smaller than that of most local evening news programs managed to pull together and put up to two hours of television on the air every single weeknight, and most importantly, I think of the great friends I've made here, and how much I'm going to miss seeing them every day. I'm thankful for them. They've been the most important people in my life for some time now, and I love each and every one of them.

I wish we could do it for another eight years.