YouTube - Top 10 sports most awkward interviews

Top 10 most awkward sports interviews

It's tough to top that Namath moment, but I was actually present at a stranger one. When I was working in radio as a staff announcer back in the late sixties in NYC, I was working the Saturday evening shift and the guy in the previous hour (an actual recognizable name, not a staff announcer) had an interview program which I watched while I was waiting to take the mic. His guest was Lee Marvin. The interviewer had about a dozen questions, all of which Marvin answered with a single word, wherepon there was still about 55 minutes to kill. The guy fumbled for a few minutes, tried some open-ended questions, but Marvin took no bait. Now THAT was awkward.

He then played a PSA. During the PSA he asked me how fast I could get a news report together. I said, "a minute. I can just read it right off the wire." He had the engineer play a couple more PSAs while I ripped the latest sections off the roll, and when he came back he said "and now the news," gave me the chair, and I did some 40-45 minutes of news by reading every detail of every story: ball scores, weather reports, whatever. I think I duplicated a few before I realized it. (The wire would update older stories whenever there was anything to report, and the newest stories were at the top of the roll, so I'd be reading the newer version first, then the older ... nobody ever called to complain.)

As for Lee Marvin, do you think he was offended that the one-hour interview went ten minutes? Not a chance. He was laconic, but not rude. He took no offense and said he was grateful in the extreme for the chance to get out faster! That's probably about as close as ol' Lee ever got to "gracious." (I'm not sure, but I think he was loaded.)