Chris Berman started working at ESPN on October 1, 1979. Forty-five years later, he’s still going.
Will he make it to a half of a century?
Berman tells John Ourand of Puck that he’s willing to chase 50 years, if he’s still performing at a high level.
“If they’ll have me, yeah,” Berman said. “But I will be honest with this. I will know way ahead of you or anyone else [if I’m] starting to slip a little. Even if [50 years is] the plan, I’m not gonna do it just to do it.”
For now, he’s hoping to make it to the first ABC Super Bowl since ABC relinquished Monday Night Football to ESPN.
“We have a Super Bowl in a couple years,” Berman said. “I would like to think they’ll keep me around for that, whatever that means—maybe the exact same capacity. If that’s the case, that’d be 48 years.”
He regards his current capacity as “semi-retired,” with the “Fastest Three Minutes” during halftime of Monday Night Football and NFL Primetime on ESPN+.
The 69-year-old Berman has been a fixture of the NFL media landscape for decades. He was a foundational piece of the ESPN puzzle as it grew from tractor pulls and tiddlywinks into what it has become.