America at Large: I don't know Dick Ebersol especially well, which is why I've been puzzling over the fact I've found myself so profoundly affected by the tragedy which befell his family this week, writes George Kimball.
As the chairman of NBC Sports, Ebersol's name regularly appears near the top of those lists of "The Most Powerful Men in Sports" some publications seem compelled to compile every year. I hadn't seen him since the US Open at Shinnecock Hills last June; although we spent nearly a month within a mile of one another in Greece this summer, our respective schedules were so fraught we never once crossed paths at the Olympic Games.
In fact, I recently learned he may never have left the broadcast centre between the opening and closing ceremonies: when a colleague was stuck for accommodation in Athens, Dick handed over the keys to his hotel suite, because he knew he was never going to use it.
Although our professional and social interaction has never been anything but cordial, it occurs to me I've never before written anything that wasn't critical of Ebersol's decision-making.
Over the years, he presided over NBC's decision to bow out of the NFL business, which was an open invitation for Rupert Murdoch to bow into it.
Having lost the television rights to AFC telecasts, he then sank something like $34 million of his network's money into a partnership with wrestling magnate Vince McMahon in the ill-fated XFL, a tasteless, made-for-television outlaw football enterprise which, thankfully, went belly-up after one season.
And Ebersol was single-handedly responsible for NBC abandoning its live coverage of professional boxing. His distaste for the sport was evident in several subsequent Olympics, where not one minute of boxing appeared on network television, it having been consigned to obscure cable channels inaccessible to most of the nation's viewers.
Couple that with his disastrous run as producer of Saturday Night Live, which he attempted to run on a hands-on basis for several years during the 1980s following the departure of his co-creator, Lorne Michaels, and it begins to explain why, when I mentioned his name in print at all, it was rarely to flatter him.
A protégé of Roone Arledge at ABC, Ebersol rose through the television ranks to head up a network that owns Olympic broadcast rights well into the millennium, and his two-decade marriage to the actress Susan St James (McMillan and Wife, Kate & Allie) ensured the couple's names would be a staple of "Beautiful People" lists as well.
They raised three sons (Ms St James had two other children from an earlier marriage), and the Notre Dame-Southern California college football game in Los Angeles last weekend provided the perfect occasion for a family getaway: their eldest son, Charlie, is a student at Notre Dame, while middle son Willie attends USC. The youngest, 14 year-old Teddy, attended school in Connecticut.
Following the game (which Southern Cal won, 41-10), the four Ebersols left Willie in California and flew back in a private jet. The plan was to drop Susan at their winter home in Telluride, Colorado, and Charles in South Bend, while Dick and the youngest boy would fly back to New England.
Something went horribly wrong as the plane attempted to take off from a private airport in Montrose, Colorado. Indications are that the plane had not been properly de-iced, or even de-iced at all. In any case, it never got off the ground, ripping instead into a mountainside beyond the runway and bursting into flames.
The cockpit was sheared off (pilot Luis Espaillat, a native of the Dominican Republic, was apparently killed on impact, along with a flight attendant), but Charlie, though injured himself, managed to pull his dazed father to safety.
When emergency crews arrived, Charlie pleaded with them that his kid brother might still be trapped inside the wreckage, but the flames prevented any attempted rescue before the plane erupted in a series of explosions from the fuel tanks.
Since not even Teddy's seat had been found, it was initially believed he might have been thrown clear, but as crews combed through the scene two days later, the boy's badly-burned remains were found beneath the wreckage. He had in all likelihood been killed on impact.
"Teddy was a warm, loving, energetic young man," said Ebersol and St James in a statement released on Tuesday. "He had developed a wonderfully quirky sense of humour way beyond his years that kept the whole family laughing.
"His wonderful spirit lives on in our family, and in all who knew and loved him. Of course, everyone who knew Teddy was aware of his passion for the Boston Red Sox, and a highlight of his short life was the Red Sox winning their first championship in 86 years. Like his team, Teddy never lost hope.
"While our grief is unfathomable, we are so proud of our Charlie, who pulled his father from the flames. That anyone was able to survive this horrible accident is a miracle, and all of us will forever be inspired by Charlie's courage and bravery."
Due to the prominence of the family, the nation's newscasts led with the story for several days. My own grief can partially be explained by the fact I also have a teenaged son named Teddy, but I'm clearly not the only one who feels this way.
Because there's almost no one in the world of sport who hasn't been affected by Dick Ebersol over the years, pretty much everyone in this business regards it as a death in the family.
