Up Close With The Pittsburgh Sports Report
Mike Greenberg

ESPN's Mike Greenberg has been a sports journalist for the past 16 years. The 38-year-old Greenberg is a native of New York City and a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. After graduating in 1989, Greenberg worked in Chicago at several small media outlets before becoming an anchor for ESPNews in 1996. On December 30, 1999, he was named co-host of ESPN's popular radio show "Mike and Mike in the Morning" and he has not looked back since. The radio show, co-hosted by former Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Mike Golic, has risen to become one of the most popular morning drive sports radio shows in the country. The show can also be seen live, every weekday morning, on ESPN2.

As well as being a radio personality, Greenberg is also a television anchor who can be seen on the weekday evening SportsCenter. He recently became an author this past March with the release of his first book, "Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot." PSR editor Tony DeFazio recently caught up with Greenberg.

PSR: So how close to reality are those ESPN commercials with you and Golic in the diner?

GREENBERG: They were the real deal. That is the dynamic that is our relationship. A lot of people ask me whether that was my real tennis shirt from high school, and the only thing I'll say is if I told you, I'd have to kill you. I will neither confirm nor deny that it was actually my high school tennis shirt.

Here's probably the best indication I can give you that the commercials were fairly accurate: Golic ate more of those breakfasts in between takes than he did during the takes.

PSR: You and Golic seem to be having a great time for the most part. Obviously that's something you want to come across on the air, but there also seems to be some truth to it…

MG: Yeah, I think we are having fun. We have a very good relationship, which I think is based on the fact that we have a great partnership and virtually no relationship outside of work, which works out extremely well for us. Our lives are totally different, as is obvious on the air. We have totally different interests, our families are in totally different places - his kids are much older than my kids. We live 70 miles away from each other. So when the show ends, we have a little meeting to discuss what we'll do the following day, and then I don't see him again till the following day. Ever. Outside of when we're on the road, we've never gone out for dinner, our wives have met each other twice - once at our tennis match and once at some other event. There's almost no relationship outside of the professional one and I think that, frankly, is a great feature of our relationship. We've never had a single fight in six and a half years of working together. I think the fact that we go our separate ways when the show is over means that we never get sick and tired of each other.

If you have a partnership like ours, and you're really mad at each other down deep inside, or you're harboring something and you're just trying to pretend on the air that you're not, eventually it will come across. But that has never been the case. I'm genuinely always happy to see him and to talk about sports with him, and I think that's one of the reasons why it seems like we're always having a good time.

PSR: So there's no negativity like you read about between an Abbot and Costello or some similar partnership?

MG: You know I read about that all time, like with Martin and Lewis, and I pay more attention to that now. I think the best thing that we did, or didn't do, was that we never tried to force a friendship off the air. And the other is that neither of us has allowed to the idea to get into our heads that one of us would be better without the other. And that's big, that's where sometimes these things can go awry. People get to Jerry Lewis and tell him, "you're the whole act, you don't need that guy, you can go off and make more money without him."

Over the course of time someone will suggest something like to me, and someone will suggest something like that to Mike - it's probably happened to each of us plenty of times - and I think that neither of us has ever made that mistake.

PSR: You're an admitted New York Jets fan, on the show anyway. What are your thoughts on sports journalists being fans?

MG: There are a lot of ways to look at that. First of all, I think you have to analyze the word journalist. I went to a pretty good school of journalism (Northwestern), and I have a degree in journalism, and I believe in the concept of journalism. And as such, I do not believe that I am journalist.

I don't think anyone is really fully objective. I think that in order to maintain credibility, you must maintain objectivity on the air or in print. As a result, I think sometimes my credibility is greatly compromised because I don't make it a secret that I have an affiliation to a team. But I think that would be a much bigger problem if I were a beat-writer versus a columnist. And that's sort of what I am. I'm not the game story on the radio, I'm the column. And as a columnist, there's room for you opinion. I think the worst thing you can be on the air is a phony, and so I don't keep any secrets on the air. God, my wife will tell you that. To the point that people will get mad over what I'm willing to share on the air, but that's my audience. So the point I'm trying to make is that I think you do lose some credibility by being honest about your lack of objectivity, rather than trying to pretend that you're fully objective, which no one is in sports. No one covers sports without some passion, because otherwise why are you doing it? Why are you involved in covering sports in the first place unless you have an affinity to a team or a player or something like that. But I don't think it really effects me because I don't think what I do is really journalism.

PSR: Do you think there is a growing disconnect between sports media and sports fans?

MG: Quite the opposite. I think the media right now is a lot closer to the fans than the players are. Certainly people who do what I do. Sports talk in particular has given a voice to the fans that did not exist before. Probably the closest thing you could ever do to let you team know how you felt about them was to boo at a ballgame. Now, I think teams pay a lot of attention to talk shows, both the local ones with the call-ins and to ones like mine, where there is a feeling that we have a finger on the pulse of what the sports fans are thinking.

I think that the media today, particularly the electronic media, are more reflective of what the fans think and want, and have given the fans a voice and an outlet that they never had before.

I think the disconnect between the fans and the players have never been great; but there is more of a connection between the fans and certainly the people who do what I do, than there is between the fans and the players.

PSR: Your show comes to Pittsburgh relatively often. Is Pittsburgh really a good sports town, or is this simply a Steelers-town?

MG: Oh I think it's a GREAT sports town. I think the passion of the Pittsburgh fans is wonderful. I was in Pittsburgh when the Penguins were making a run to the Stanley Cup semi-finals not too long ago and the town was hopping, the place was crazy.

I think every town has that one team that matters most. I worked in Chicago for a lot of years and that's a Bears town. All things being equal, I don't care what anyone else says, it's the Bears. The Bears were the biggest deal in Chicago when Michael Jordan was there winning six championships. New York is a Yankees town. It just is. No matter what else happens, the Yankees own that town. Pittsburgh is a Steelers town, there's no question. But I think that if there were a baseball situation that wasn't what is presently is, fans there are into baseball. They are knowledgeable baseball fans - I know that from dealing with lots and lots of them - and I know for sure that it is a great hockey town. Pittsburgh may be one of the last great hockey towns in America.

They support the college sports - the football and the college basketball. Look at the state of the art arena that Pitt has. It is first and foremost a Steelers town, but no more so than other towns are more attached to one team than another.

PSR: Any broadcasting or journalism heroes or influences?

MG: Sure, too many to name. The first person I wanted to be was Howard Cosell. I remember when I was a kid my family was having dinner at a place called Jim McMullen's on the upper east side of Manhattan and I might have been 9 or 10. Howard Cosell walked into the restaurant, and I still remember the whole room went silent and watched him walk across the room and sit down. It was such a buzz in the room that Howard Cosell was there, and to me, he was bigger than almost any athlete. I thought of him as being a bigger deal than any player. To me, he's still the biggest sportscaster ever. I don't think anyone has made nearly the impact that he did.

When you do this for a living, you're influenced by all the best guys - Bob Costas, Marv Albert, Dan Patrick, Keith Olberman, guys like that. All of those guys have some influence on you, but Howard Cosell would have been the first.

PSR: OK Greeny, I've got to ask. Why DOES your wife think you're an idiot?

MG: Well we'd have a shorter conversation if you'd ask why she doesn't.

PSR: The title of the book is derived from the idea that men and women just don't see eye to eye. We don't get each other and we're operating on different wavelengths. Our minds work in different ways. And the way that manifests itself is that all women think their husbands are an idiot.

Of all the examples in my book, the most frequently cited one is when my friend called me to tell me that his wife had left him. And I asked him if we were still going to the football game the next day, which struck me as the most relevant thing I could think to ask him at that time. My wife was convinced that it was the most ridiculous thing I could ask at a time like that. And she led every conversation we had with anyone for the next six months with that story of what an idiot Michael is.

I believe that football tickets are an acceptable reason for missing a wedding, up to and including first cousins. My wife does not agree.

Get To Know Mike Greenberg

Favorite interview?

I traveled with Michael Jordan for three and half years and to me, that was endlessly fascinating. I learned more lessons from covering him than anybody. As far as people who come on the show now, we once had Bill Cosby on for an hour, and I thought he was terrific. Funny and insightful, just great.

One person you've always wanted to interview but never have?

John Irving, the novelist, is my favorite writer. And also, incidentally, a member of the wrestling hall of fame, because he was a wrestler and he writes a lot about wrestling. The other is Jerry Seinfeld, who for obvious reasons, is sort of my idol. He took my life, put it on television and made $200 million.

Are you a beach or pool-guy?

Most definitively a pool guy. In the history of recorded man, no one has ever been eaten by shark in a pool.

What does Greenie prefer to sip on beach/pool side?

I'm usually with my kids, so it's usually something like a Mott's apple juice.

Last CD purchased/listened to?

Princess Party Mix. My daughter knows the songs by the numbers - "Daddy play track 12. Daddy play track 6."

What they're saying about Greeny…

Adam Mertz, Madison Capital Times

Greenberg begins to grow on you - in no small part because of his ability to detail, in highly humorous fashion, his shortcomings and the unsettling situations he often stumbles into as a result.

Dick Vitale, basketball analyst

Anyone in sports knows that Mike Greenberg is a talented sportscaster. To me, he is always awesome, baby, with a capital A!

Jeremy Schaap, ESPN

Mike Greenberg is one of the smartest and funniest voices in sports. Sadly, this matters little to Mrs. Greenberg, or to his children. Greenberg knows fatherhood and sports and humor, not necessarily in that order.

Mike Golic, Greenberg's co-host Mike Greenberg's a metro-sexual. He can't leave the house without his hair gel.