People come up to Scott Hanson on a weekly or even daily basis with honest-to-goodness appreciation in their eyes to tell him that NFL RedZone has changed how they watch football. It's a heck of an accomplishment. Showing all the most exciting parts of all the games without commercial interruption is a first-ballot Hall of Fame idea. Like a lot of other greatness, RedZone's has become under-appreciated. But transforming the way people watch football—quite literally the thing this country loves to do the most—is amazing.
Sports Illustrated put Hanson, effervescent and quoting movie lines ranging from Dances With Wolves to Sicaro in a media call previewing the upcoming touchdown montages, in a classic double box. On the left is him at 10 years-old, being presented with information about what the future held and what RedZone would do. Could that kid begin to wrap his mind around it?
"No way," he said. "No way. Oh man, you're going to make me emotional because I just thought back to my dad. I used to beg my dad to let me stay up on Monday Night Football to watch Howard Cosell do halftime highlights. I'm 53 years-old so I go back far enough to remember. The absolute best way to get the 10,000-foot view of the NFL in the late 70s and early 80s was Cosell doing the highlights. It was absolutely must-see TV but it was a day after the games happened. Well, fast-forward to the late 80s and throughout the 90s, the absolutely best way to catch the 10,000-foot view was Primetime with Chris Berman. It was absolutely must-see TV, the show of record but that show was hours after the games had ended. Fast-forward to now and you can see where I'm going with this.
"NFL RedZone is the show of record for the most popular sport and arguably the most popular product on television in the United States. To sit in that captain's chair and think—and I'm not equating myself to Howard Cosell or Chris Berman. I work at this very hard, I feel like I've been blessed with some talent, I try to give the audience everything I've got. But to think about that, 10-year-old Scott Hanson would have passed out. If you would go back in time and tell 10-year-old Scott Hanson that there would be one channel where you can watch all the best parts of every NFL game for seven hours with no commercials, I would have passed out from excitement that the show existed let alone that I'd be hosting it."
In the box on the right is Hanson on his first commercial-free Opening Day, apparently not just able to wrap his mind around what they could do, but wasting precious little time before creating bulletin-board material. That guy knew.
"If you go back—and this is on YouTube—the very first time I ever came on camera on NFL RedZone, September of 2009," Hanson recalled. "Sixty seconds into the show they come to me on camera and I said, Welcome to NFL RedZone, I'm Scott Hanson and you're watching the first moments of the channel that we hope changes the way you watch football. I said it and I thought about it. This goes back to my love of our industry. Every 10 years SportsCenter plays the first clip of the SportsCenter anchors. I remember I thought that this show would be such a big success that years from now they'll play the clip of, Hey this was the moment. So I kind of wanted it out there. Put something out there that kind of Babe Ruths it little bit. Stand at home plate and say, There's where we're trying to go."
Hanson may have channeled The Babe and called his shot before knocking it out of the park but to us he's more like one of Ruth's contemporaries: Charlie Gehringer. An opposing player once said that they wind up the Tigers great in the spring and he goes all summer, hitting .330 or .340 or whatever, and then they shut him off in the fall. Hanson has that Mechanical Man makeup: at the top of his craft from sign-on to sign-off all season, making it look easy without ever tiring or, famously, giving in to the human impulse of bathroom breaks.
It's been an uncharted course but the person in that captain's chair on Sunday has steady hands and steadfast confidence and commitment. RedZone wouldn't have worked any other way.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Scott Hanson Called His Shot on RedZone Becoming the Show of Record.
