Decades Ago, He Had a Weird Idea for an All-Sports Channel

Bill Rasmussen, who co-founded ESPN in 1979 after being fired from a public relations job in the World Hockey Association, died Tuesday at age 93, per the AP. ESPN historian Mike Soltys said Rasmussen died at his Florida home from the effects of Parkinson's disease. He had been diagnosed with the degenerative disease in 2014. Rasmussen and his son Scott came up with the idea of a network carrying sports around the clock, and it would revolutionize Americans' TV-watching habits. But the pair didn't stick around long. They were forced out after only a year by ESPN majority owner Getty Oil.

Bill Rasmussen's original idea was a cable channel covering only Connecticut sports. Many cable operators in the state were skeptical, but someone suggested buying satellite time to reach a national audience. ESPN was launched on Sept. 7, 1979. George Grande welcomed viewers to the first SportsCenter broadcast before the network's first live event, a slow-pitch softball game between the Kentucky Bourbons and the Milwaukee Schlitz. The Rasmussens secured financial backing from Getty Oil and a rights deal with the NCAA, and built a studio in Bristol, Connecticut, still under construction when ESPN went on the air.

"When someone tells you you can't do something, you want to prove them wrong," Bill Rasmussen said. "Many, many people told us there wasn't enough sports to do a 24-hour channel. I didn't argue with anybody. I just thought they were wrong and I was right." When the Rasmussens were forced out of ESPN in 1980, Getty owned 85% of the network. Texaco, which had acquired Getty, sold its interest in ESPN to ABC in 1984. Bill Rasmussen and ESPN were estranged until 1999, when company executives invited him to the 20th anniversary celebration. Since then, he has been embraced and recognized for his vision of creating an all-sports network.