Coffee With: ESPN Anchor David Lloyd
By Carl Wiser Staff Writer
David Lloyd has been at ESPN since 1997, starting on ESPNEWS and now anchoring their flagship show, SportsCenter. It's a long way from Macon, Georgia, where he started his broadcasting career as a 25-year-old unpaid intern.
"I worked at a Bennigan's during the day as a waiter and then every night I went into this TV station, WMAZ in Macon, and I was a full-time intern for 11 months," says Lloyd, who lives in Canton. "I learned everything. I learned how to shoot, how to edit, and how to put stories together and do some anchoring."
Lloyd grew up in Westport and went to college at Colgate University, where he got a degree in political science that he used sparingly. He worked as a regional flower salesman, then took a job at an ad agency in New York, where a co-worker suggested he try TV sports and introduced him to folks at WMAZ.
"I didn't like sitting at a desk working at an advertising agency, so I just took a flyer," says Lloyd. "Everyone thought I was nuts."
In Macon, Lloyd learned an important skill for anyone getting started in TV: how to live in penury. And also, persistence. The sports director at WMAZ assisted on this goal.
"He would run prompter for me after his show so I could practice being an anchor, then he'd give me a ride home because my car was always broken."
Lloyd landed a job in Savannah, Georgia as a news reporter, but two weeks later took a job in Charleston as the weekend sports anchor (his co-workers in Savannah were not pleased - they gave him the silent treatment). His next stop was Sacramento, then San Diego, and finally ESPN.
Dare Dave
In Sacramento, Lloyd had a segment called "Dare Dave" where viewers would write in and challenge him to some kind of sporting activity. One dare he took was to toss a caber like they do in Scotland at the Highland Games. It didn't go as planned.
"You try to pick up what looks like a telephone pole and flip it," says Lloyd. "I'm not a big guy, but I tried to do it. I lost control and it somehow hit me in the back of the head, knocked me out cold."
There was an upside.
"I made a ton of money off that because it was on that bleeps, foul-ups and blunders show, and they paid me for it and I got residuals when it re-aired. Back in those days I didn't have a lot of money so I was very happy to sell that. I had friends and relatives around the country that were watching this TV show. To make things worse, I was wearing a kilt."
Remarkably, a "Dare Dave" promo from 1994 is posted on YouTube.
Football Sunday at ESPN
NFL is Lloyd's favorite sport, which works out well on Sundays when he anchors the 7 p.m. SportsCenter. He watches the games with Herman Edwards, an ESPN analyst who was an outstanding player and coach in the league. "As many opinions as he has on air, he has twice as many off air," says Lloyd. "He's just riffing the whole time."
He says the atmosphere is "like a sports bar without the alcohol."
"There's a ton of people there. They all have their jobs but they're also watching the games and there's a lot of emotion and yelling and screaming and stuff. It's a fun environment. It's a fun day."
While he's watching the games, Lloyd is writing lead-ins to the highlights he'll be reading on air, not just football but NBA games and whatever other sports are going on. And he has other tasks as well.
"This week I also had to do an early taping, so in the middle of the games I ran back to my desk, got my suit and tie on, went to makeup and ran out to the studio. This is all on a pretty big campus, so it's 500 yards of walking back and forth. It was the day that the college football playoff bracket was announced, so we had a reporter in Texas and we did a three-minute interview with her."
When the show goes on at 7:00, the football games are still going on so viewership is light. But as soon as those games end, viewers change the channel to ESPN and the audience spikes. That's when SportsCenter does full postgame coverage of the NFL. Most of it happens on the fly, which is why you'll see seasoned anchors like Lloyd at the desk.
Susan
David's younger sister Susan was 18 when she was diagnosed with bone cancer in her knee. She had her leg amputated but the cancer spread, and in October 1980, about 13 months after she was diagnosed, she died.
"It was fast. It was brutal," Lloyd says. "She was just an unbelievable person. When I was at school they found out more tumors had spread to her chest, so she had emergency surgery up in Boston, which I didn't know about because it was finals at Colgate and she insisted that no one in the family let me know so that I could concentrate on finals. I got back to the house and there was a letter on my pillow from Susan explaining the whole thing. Then two days after she had surgery she came home and we had one last Christmas with her. She was just an unbelievably strong, selfless person."
"It was a rough time in my life," he adds. "I had to go back to college. I was living in a fraternity, which is about the least sympathetic, conducive place to grieve that there can be. So I had a hard time. It was a really wrenching period of my life."
Soon after, Lloyd's mother started The Susan Fund, which awards scholarships to kids in Fairfield County who have dealt with cancer. She ran it for 40 years before handing it off to one of Susan's high school friends. They've given out millions and are still going strong. "It's an amazing 'Little Engine That Could' kind of a charity that's done a tremendous amount of good," says Lloyd.
Eden
Lloyd's daughter Eden was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was four years old. "She had surgery and the doctor said, 'we got it all,'" he says. "They introduced us to an oncologist who said that 97% of kids who go through this kind of surgery are fine and don't need any sort of treatment - the cancer never comes back. Well, unfortunately Eden was one of the 3% where it did come back. So she started a chemotherapy regimen which went on for about 15 months.
"Every kid that goes chemo, there's a million little mini nightmares that go on. We probably made 20 trips to the ER. When someone's going through chemotherapy, especially a child, if her temperature goes up you have to take her out of bed and rush her down to the ER to make sure it's not an infection, which is the absolute opposite thing most parents want to do - they just want to keep their kid warm and safe.
"But when she was diagnosed, the doctor said her kind of cancer basically runs out of steam when the patient gets to be about 20 years old. When you're hearing this and she's four years old, that seems like an eternity, but she's 17 now and has been off chemo for 11 years and she's doing great. Just a normal high school kid.
"There definitely was some PTSD from Susan when it happened to Eden, but you're so busy and so consumed with trying to help your child that you can't really have any sort of self-pity."
Lloyd has been married to his wife Deirdre since 1995. They met at a wedding in 1991 when he was living in Sacramento and she was in Chicago.
Their son Dugan is 23 and is a sportscaster like his dad. He started at a small station in West Virginia and is now in Greenville, North Carolina. Their daughter Mara, who has a talent for art, is 20. They also have two dogs: Leroy and Zonk.
Questions over Coffee
To learn more about David, we met at LaSalle in Collinsville, where he answered these "Coffee With" questions.
What do you like to do when you're not working?
I love to exercise. I'm not sure "obsessive" is the right word, but I'm not sure it's the wrong word either. I exercise probably six or seven times a week.
We have a neighborhood poker game that I love. It combines all my vices: I can smoke a cigar, drink some beer and gamble. It's been going on for over 20 years - it's really fun.
In the summer I'll swim. In the winter I like to snowshoe.
What is something that you'd like to learn?
I would like to learn how to put together a documentary. Once my career is over, I'd love to do something long-form, really do a deep dive into a subject.
What places in the area do you like to go?
We go to West Hill Lake in the summertime, which is one of our favorite places around here. And we have a ton of hiking trails up near where we live, so I love doing that.
Restaurants, I love Buon Appetito. Tremendous food. We also go to Flatbread and Brewery Legitimus.
What's one of your non-work-related talents?
I'm really good at crossword puzzles for some reason. I do the New York Times puzzles, but only Friday and Saturdays.
I'm also really good at blowing smoke rings with my cigar. I've never smoked cigarettes, but for some reason I can blow a nice tight smoke ring that will linger in the air.
What other sportscasters do you admire?
Bob Costas is incredible. There are certain people that are glib and can speak beautifully off the cuff and make it sound like it's scripted. He is one of those people, and I've always been in awe of his ability.
Mike Tirico, just so smooth. Mike Greenberg, Chris Fowler. They seem to be able to get in and out of every situation. Joe Buck, watching him on Monday Night Football, incredible. People like that have the gift of being able to speak extemporaneously and make it sound like they've been crafting a sentence for 20 minutes.
What would you like to be remembered for in your career?
As someone who's a good guy but was always putting forth maximum effort. Sometimes people kind of skate through a little bit, and I don't ever want to be one of those.
Lloyd is one of the longest tenured anchors at ESPN. He started there in 1997.
