“We were talking to him well before the playoffs, in
fall 2005, actually,” says Ken Schanzer, president of NBC
Sports. “He came to New York for a meeting then, and
you could tell right away that he lights up a place wherever
he goes. People gravitate toward him because he’s just a lot
of fun to be around. He wears his celebrity well because he
enjoys it. Other people pretend to enjoy it. He actually does .”
Schanzer says the outcome of the last postseason had little to
do with the plan. “If he and the Steelers would have went out in the
first round of the playoffs last season, we still would have wanted him,”
he says. “And other networks would have wanted him, too. What happened with respect to him and his team having that outstanding playoff
run now is just icing on the cake.”
It’s an exciting thing for Bettis to go through a second “rookie year.” For
the first time, starting in November, the NFL is allowing “flex scheduling”
on Sunday nights, allowing for the most promising matchups to take place
on prime time on NBC. For years, ABC was saddled with a late-season
letdown for Monday Night Football because scheduled games that looked
promising before the season would end up featuring teams out of contention. Bettis will be working on a team with plenty of star wattage as well:
The Monday Night team of Al Michaels and John Madden is relocating to
Sunday nights on NBC. Joining Bettis in the studio will be 18-time Emmy
winner Bob Costas and six-time Emmy winner Cris Collinsworth, as well as
the outspoken Sterling Sharpe, formerly of ESPN and the NFL Network.
WEST SIDE STORY
If it seems Bettis’ turn of fate is a bit of a fairy tale, that’s because it is. He
grew up in a middle-class neighborhood on the west side of Detroit, with
