This is a place in which professional athletes and sports-channel staffers (and more than a few team mascots) work side by side — a place where Tiger Woods roams the halls trailed by a hushed gallery, Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins breaks down tape with a slumping Scott Van Pelt, and NHL great Alexander Ovechkin rifles through files in his secret identity as a Russian spy. This an arena of the deadpan and the absurd — presented in 30-second vignettes. This is “This is SportsCenter” — the venerable and much-loved TV ad campaign that helped define a sports network called ESPN. The Bristol, Conn., media giant recently launched its latest batch of commercials, including a riff on the unflattering effects of form-fitting uniforms, taking their place among the roughly 400 spots created since ad agency Wieden+Kennedy created the campaign in 1994. TIME chatted with Aaron Taylor, ESPN’s senior vice president of marketing, and anchors Jay Harris and Steve Levy to collaborate on a Top 12 list and provide some insight into the process. TIME: How many spots does ESPN produce each year? And how do you roll them out? Taylor: We try to shoot between 15 and 18 per year and break it up to gang a couple of shoot-days three times a year. We do try to time the release of specific spots to relevant milestones in sports and what is going on with specific athletes. Do the participants enjoy the process? Taylor: I think the anchors always enjoy it. It is a break from what they do every day and the creative process with director David Shane is a lot of fun. We have athletes who come to us because they want to be part of the campaign and we have stories we like to tell about particular athletes. There are stories we want to tell about SportsCenter and sometimes the athlete can be interchangeable. When doing this a few times a year, you land an athlete or two and anchor the shoot around them. What is the process for getting![]()
