You Are Looking Live!, Rich Podolsky
You Are Looking Live!, Rich Podolsky
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You Are Looking Live!
How The NFL Today Revolutionized Sports Broadcasting

Author: Rich Podolsky, Jim Nantz

Narrator: Barry Abrams

Unabridged: 7 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/22/2022

Synopsis

You Are Looking Live! is about the genesis, success, and magic of a live television show that in 1975 captured the excitement of the country, and launched four magnetic personalities to stardom: Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, Irv Cross, and Jimmy The Greek Snyder. It was the first NFL studio show to go live and the first to have both a Black and female cohost. Those four personalities battled each other and the competition, and America loved them for it.

This is the story of how Brent, Phyllis, Irv, and Jimmy got there, their drama and front-page headlines, and what happened to them after the magic ended. Those headlines included Brent and The Greek's famous fight at Peartrees, Phyllis first marrying the man who produced The Godfather, then dropping him after two months for the next governor of Kentucky, and the shocking firing of Musburger on April Fool's Day, 1990.

America had never seen a show like this before. The NFL Today became so popular that it not only dominated the ratings, but also won its timeslot eighteen straight years, from 1975 to 1993, until CBS lost its NFL package to Fox. And today, looking back, these four personalities, like any family, had their own battles, and became even more famous for them.

About Rich Podolsky

Rich Podolsky has been an established writer and reporter since the 1970s, covering the Miami Dolphins and writing for The NFL Today. He has been a staff writer for CBS Sports, and has written for the Philadelphia Daily News, the Palm Beach Post, the Wilmington News-Journal, TV Guide, and ESPN. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Keystone Press Award for writing excellence from the Pennsylvania Publishers Association. He has written about the business of sports on television many times and is a columnist for David Halberstam's Sports Broadcast Journal. His passion for music of the 60s and 70s fueled his desire to write about it. In Don Kirshner: The Man with the Golden Ear (foreword by Tony Orlando), and Neil Sedaka, Rock 'n' Roll Survivor (foreword by Elton John), he tells the inside story of their success.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeff on July 06, 2022

How great it was to be young and growing up with sports on the tv...forget the dinning room bring the table into the front room so as we could watch the game ma! God who can remember tv before there was cable, I do and it was like hell, nothing much on but Marlin Perkins and his wildlife or lawrence......more

Goodreads review by Brian on March 12, 2025

A very informative, if uneven, read. There was some fascinating information here about the rise of sports TV in a pre-ESPN world. Very interesting stories on behind-the-scenes folks like Mike Pearl, Bob Fishman and Bob Wussler who brought you the NFL Today, which revolutionized sports television. But......more

Goodreads review by Ian on December 26, 2021

Workman-like telling of the story of The NFL Today. It's 16 chapters, and most of them focus on the separate stories of the different figures -- Brent Musberger, Irv Cook, Jimmy The Greek, Phyllis George, Jayne Kennedy and others. Writing quality is modest (it's written by a former newspaper guy who......more

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