Sports fans of the 2000s may recall The Best Damn Sports Show Period. The trailblazing sports talk show that aired on Fox Sports Net and Comcast SportsNet gained a heavy following during its heyday run. The show famously saw athletes and sports personalities join the show to talk about a variety of topics. Not just what they were good at it or what their “expertise” was. If that sounds kind of familiar to sports talk shows today, it’s because it probably should.
Chris Rose knows all there is to know about Best Damn. The former MLB Network host gained early prominence before that by hosting the once-popular sports show, which ended back in 2009.
Rose joined Comeback Media’s Short and to the Point podcast with Jessica Kleinschmidt this week. After discussing why he felt the show was not only the first of its kind, but perhaps the inspiration to shows of today, he shared a story about how he got the hosting job for The Best Damn Sports Show Period.
Rose recalled that while he was working at Fox, there were murmurs that the show was in development. But the note that got him perked up, Rose revealed, was learning about Tom Arnold joining the show. His reaction was priceless.
“I had been working at Fox for probably a year, almost a year and a half, when we heard rumblings of this new show coming along,” Rose said. He then said that they were told that Tom Arnold, an actor best known for being Roseanne Barr’s husband on the hit show Roseanne (and in real life), was coming on board.
“I’m like, ‘Tom Arnold? You mean like Roseanne’s ex-husband Tom Arnold?’ Like yeah!” Rose said. He admitted he wasn’t supposed to be the host of the show originally and was hired the day before it launched.
“The week before, there were two guys who were going to be splitting the hosting duties because of their commitments at Fox already,” Rose explained. “And, the week leading up to it, it was like the final dress rehearsals for the entire staff. They wanted the on-air people to start building more and more chemistry. They wanted the people behind the scenes to start getting into a daily routine on what the timeline was gonna be like every day to put on a show that an organization like this had never put together. It wasn’t just a highlight show. It was totally different.”
Rose recalled that he was at a movie for his wife’s birthday. He cheekily noted that he was contacted via a pager and asked to “help out” and “fill in” during rehearsals. They also claimed he could be a “good vacation fill-in.”
Rose talked about the week before the launch and how his boss approached him, saying they might call him on the weekend. And they did. Rose said he didn’t think anything of it at the time, and then he started and it changed his career forever. There were a lot of things he had to do, working double duty, among other things. But he said it led to so many other opportunities for him.