Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're sitting by the pool with our feed up, enjoying the first day of our break.
But we couldn't leave you with that a little something to listen to.
It's Monday, June thirtieth, and on today's show, we're bringing you my recent appearance on an episode of the Hello Sunshine podcast The bright Side, hosted by Simone Voice. I had the opportunity to hop on with Simone back in May and talk about why being pushed out of your quote unquote dream job isn't the end, what it means to be a woman who contains multitudes and a world that wants you to shrink, chasing big dreams, creating lasting change in women's sports, and the power of owning every
part of your story. I really love this conversation with Simone, and I think you all will too.
That episode of The bright Side is coming up right after this.
Okay, y'all, it is time to get this episode started. We told you we put a lot of thought into how we wanted to kick off this new season, and we've been really intentional about who would set the time for the kinds of conversations that we want to have together And I told you, I told you I wanted to go deeper with you this season, and we're doing
that today with someone who embodies main character energy. And I'm not talking about the overused trendy way, No, I'm talking about somebody who takes big swings, who wipes out and still finds the audacity to get back up. Someone who has stared down rejection, fear of failure, and that relentless inner critic and chose to trust yourself anyway. Someone who refuses to shrink or let the world put her
in a box. Someone like Sarah Spain. You probably know Sarah from ESPN, from her razor sharp commentary on sports and culture, or maybe just from being one of the smartest voices in the media game right now. She's been a fixture at ESPN for over a decade, across platforms like Around the Horn, Highly Questionable, and Spain and Fits.
She's also an Emmy winner and a Peabody winner. Okay, a longtime advocate for women in sports and equity and media, which is one of the reasons why she created Good Game with Sarah Spain, the first daily podcast dedicated to women's sports and most recently, she's the author of the new book Runs in the Family, which follows the real life story of Delan McCullough, a father of four and accomplished football coach whose world gets turned upside down when
he learns the truth about his family history. Y'all, I knew going into this conversation that Sarah and I were going to have a few things in common. I personally know what it's like to climb through the ranks of the media industry only to be met with constant rejection, and also confronting the reality that there are going to be suits and gatekeepers at every turn who want to keep you in a box and make you stay in
your lane. But what I didn't expect was how candid Sarah was about her setbacks and low points, and that honesty was so liberating. It was so refreshing to hear, and it really inspired me not to fear those moments, but to embrace the freedom that comes on the other side. All Right, it's time to hype up the ultimate hype woman. Here's my conversation with Sarah Spain. Sarah Spain, Welcome to the bright Side.
Thanks for having me.
Congratulations on your book Runs in the family. You got the most epic co sign from our very own Reese Witherspoon on your story that this book is based on. And here's what Rees said. Okay, she said, quote had me in tears. It made me believe in fate, the power of family and divine intervention. And this is the best part. You know, this is the best part, she said. It's so well written. I mean, you can't ask for more than that.
She wrote about it on every platform.
She posted on Instagram, Twitter, like LinkedIn, wherever, Facebook, every single place she posted something so nice when it came out, and it was like, honestly, like my cheeks hurt from smiling. I was like, oh my god, did Reason and I just become best friends. I'm still working on that part, but yeah, and so it was such a nice boost and like really awesome commentary from folks like that when we first did the story for ESPN, where I think a good little boost to get a book along the way.
And so now I'm really excited for everyone to read the bigger, more full story.
Hey, she is the Queen of books, so I know kind of endorsement does not hurt. What is your superpower as a storyteller, And how do you think it's on display in this book.
I would say it's two. I would say one is empathy.
I have a real desire to understand why people are the way that they are. And I think as I've gotten older, especially, I've become particularly interested in how people's lives have been different from mine, the pathologies that people get from the family systems in which they grow up, or the interactions that they have with loved ones, friends, lovers, whoever.
I think it's a better way to go through life to tell yourself a story about how people got to be who they are instead of just being angry or judgmental. And so, as I get older and I study more about psychology, sociology, all the different things around just kind of why people are who they are, it makes me try to better understand people's choices instead of judging them.
And so, particularly in a book like this that has these really complicated ideas of people who are dating, abuse of men, or men with drug problems, people who are struggling to pay the bills or maybe aren't making healthy choices, you can write a book like that and be up high on a hill and say, well, I never struggled with that, so that was a bad choice instead of trying to understand how they got to where they are. So I think the empathy was huge for this one.
And then the other one is synthesizing ideas. I use this across all my jobs, podcasting, radio, writing, TV. Essentially, how do I get this thing that I want to say or this thing someone else said and put it into the right words to best express it.
And for writing, I think, gosh, I should knock on wood.
But I just never got writer's block during the book. And I think part of that is like my brain just naturally wants to take ideas and find a way to make them almost fit a puzzle and get across the themes or the stories nottes that I wanted to make sure we're in there.
So I think those two superpowers were super helpful.
Yeah, I'll say, and you are the envy of writers everywhere whoever probably ringing their hands experiencing writer's block right now.
It probably jinks myself.
Speaking of synthesizing, would you just synthesize the story of Runs in the Family for us?
So long story short.
Dylan McCullough is currently the Running Backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders. He grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, right after the industrial collapse, so really tough time. There are a lot of people without jobs. Oftentimes he was without electricity or hot water. His family really struggled because his adoptive dad left when he was two, so now he's sort of doubly rejected by father. Figures growing up with a single mom who's trying to make it work for
him and his brother Damon. He gets into football, ends up getting recruited by a handful of people, including a Youngstown fellow named Sherman Smith who had made it good at the NFL level, who recruits him to go to Miami of Ohio, breaks a bunch of records, tries to go to the NFL, gets injured, eventually gets into teaching and then coaching, and along the way starts a family.
Has four sons. Doesn't know anything about his medical history, doesn't anything of his birth family, but as he gets older with his kids, he decides he's interested, and eventually the laws change. In Pennsylvania, where he was born, he can find his birth certificate, finds his mom within like a day on Facebook. She never got married, never had kids, she's been looking for him, she's so excited to find him. And now forty five years later, he asks, do you
know who my dad is? It's not on my birth certificate, and she tells him and it's someone that's been in.
His life for almost thirty years.
And the dad never knew either because he was never told about the baby. So it's just a really incredible storied, such a feel good story. But also I really wanted to make sure it wasn't just about him. It was a story anybody could find themselves in to try to understand what's passed down via DNA versus, what's passed down via family systems, generational trauma, language and messaging, and how we get to decide what do we want to keep with our family, even backwards to our parents. Is that
relationship serving us? Is that choice serving us? Or can we decide to change? And how those are interwoven with the things that were genetically handed that we can't choose.
Well, you clearly lead with empathy and curiosity, and I think those are sister traits. They go hand in hand, especially in the field of journalism, and in that field you've worked across radio, television, podcasts, writing, what skill came first, or which one feels most like you at your.
Core talking my poor parents, I just yeappen yeah, but professional? Yeah?
Or since birth? Actually, it took me a little while to start talking, and then once they did, they were like, holy cow.
I remember literally, like nine or ten years old, asking my parents if you can get paid to talk for a living, and they were like, no, that's not a job.
And I'm like, found one genius.
I've been a professional yapper for many years now, and I wish I had had the foresight to just speak it into existence at such a young age. Apparently I manifested it. Look at us now, I know we made it work.
But the curiosity aspect too, you know, I've always wanted to do everything, try everything, do everything. I was in band Chorus three, sports Talent show, went to college. I was a heptathlete, which is literally the track event where you don't pick one thing, you do all seven of them.
And then in ESPN and in my career podcast, national radio, writing, producing, television, like all the things, and so I think the curiosity to know how to do something and to try it, and then to understand why people are the way they are and get to know them. Those are a part of wanting to be like a journalist and explore stories.
What is it about challenging yourself in all these different arenas that thrills you? Like why do you think you do it? And why do you think you go after everything so hard?
I have a lot of life fomo. But it's not envy, if that makes a sense. Like I saw an interview with someone the other day and it totally clicked for me, and they said, when I see someone having success at something I think I would.
Be great at, I have envy.
There are plenty of times when I see people doing great things and I'm just happy for them. But if I'm happy for someone and there's a little bit of envy and means it might be meant for me. And I think that's how I felt growing up watching a lot of stuff like oh I think I could do that, and I think I could do it, well, let me try it. But yeah, I mean I think also, I'm pretty fearless. It's interesting. I feel fearless when I'm in control, and the older I get, the more I recognize that
I do have issues with control. The first time I do anything I'm nervous because I'm like, wait, okay, where do I sit? What will the chair look like? Which TV am I looking at? What's this question going to be?
Like? How is this?
And then after one time that's it. Not nervous again, totally fearless, practically naive. Won't even think about the fact that tons of people are watching it's something terrible could go wrong. It just doesn't phaze me. So I think it's a naive fearlessness with like just a little twinge of needing to, you know, settle in.
That was a per self diagnosis that you can tell.
Reading a lot of books for this book about like therapy, trauma.
And six We've got to take a short break, but more from Sarah after the break and we're back with Sarah Spain. So, considering that you have this zest for life and this life fomo, I want to hear what success looked like to you when you were just starting out. So can you take me back to that overachiever, younger version of yourself who just graduated from Cornell where you were co captain of the track and field team and a HATA athlete. What was baby Sarah chasing at that moment in time.
Well, right after Cornell, I was still chasing my first dream, which was most of my life and still you know, in the background even though it's not realistic at this point, which was to be on Saturday Night Live. My dream was to be an actress and comedian and performer. But because I was doing all the sports and all the things, it was always conflicting with like the school play and
other things like that. So I took some acting classes at Cornell, I moved home to save up a little money, and then I moved to La worked in a restaurant. Like every stereotype says, did auditions, did acting classes, did the Second City improv Conservatory. And it wasn't until I took a TV hosting boot camp and the teacher had us focus on something that we are an expert on to practice and I was like, my expertise is like literature. I was an English major, so that's not going to
be on a show. So I did a fake Chicago Bears show. I just always been a sports fan and an athlete. And the teacher said, oh, you want to work in sports. It's like, no, there's no women in sports. And I want to be funny and the only women are like supermodels on the sidelines, like Aaron Andrews.
And she said, well, it just seems natural you could try it.
So I took a class in TV sports reporting at Yucilie and I was like, Oh, this is so many things. The writing, the extemporaneous thinking, the interview skills come out of improv my knowledge base.
Having been a three sport athlete my whole life.
I always think of that when I consider the fact that literally when they say you can see, if you can see it, you can be it.
I never saw it.
There were no women doing sports in Chicago growing up, and it was just not really considered an option. I think it's a good quality that I have that I don't have grudges and I don't get stuck in any place. But that also means when I look back, I'm sure I have a much rosier view of like what it was like back then. I think I really thought I had something and I was so terrified no one else thought that too.
But I was really insecure about what I look like.
I've never been as skinny as most of the people on TV, despite being a heptathlete. Like my body type is just not twig, and so I was so worried watching who was making it and thinking, oh, they really
just care about what women look like. So my first job was this fantasy football show that was just like those online pop ups that used to pop up when you would go to a sports site back in the wild wild West of like very misogynist sports blogs, and it was like, Hi, I'm your fantasy sports girl Sarah with this week's fantasy football tips, and I had to wear like cleavage tops, and like that was a big break.
I was in like Jim Rome's two million dollar studio with ESPN producers, and that was the only way I could get in, was like doing the stereotypical BS sexy stuff. Meanwhile I was trying to do. I was filming my own fake sketches for my hosting reel that were all like comedic and silly and ridiculous, and I think that was I think if you asked young me, I would
never dream of a single thing I've accomplished. And that's what I tell myself every time I get an opportunity and I'm scared to take it, is what I have said. I'm gonna win it, Emmy or a Peabody, or get to be on TV or do around the Horn, or have my own show, or literally anything I've accomplished.
I wish I could say I was that kind of dreamer.
I always believed I had something, but I don't think I ever was brave enough.
I'm very afraid failure.
So if I never say the thing that I want and put it out there, then I never have anyone who could say, you said you wanted this and you didn't get it, you failed.
That's so real.
Okay, Wait, I have to rewind because there's so much there that I want to unpact, so much that you said I want therapy. So this show where you felt like you were hyper sexualized when you were talking about sports.
What year was that, Uh, probably two thousand and five because I remember also kind of becoming an on camera personality around that time, and it was a different time then that was really accepted, and that was a way that you could get a footthold in the industry was if you did kind of like a sexier spin on content.
All the women in my business from that time remember that. Yeah, we always had to be like, I'm a guys girl. Most of my best friends are like, the only way to be accepted in sports was essential to be like, don't worry, I'm not actually a woman. I'm just a hot chick who's a dude inside. And like, I talk about that a lot when it comes to the evolution of women's sports. Yeah, because we don't have to apologize for being different. It's part of the authenticity that people enjoy.
And when we stopped having to pretend like we were just like the guys, but you know, women, we got to be funnier and more comfortable and villains and heroes and masculine and feminine and queer and straight and all the multi dimensional things that we let male sports athletes and media be. And it was so restrictive and limiting that it wasn't enjoyable. And then we open up the door to let it be free, and it's like, oh, this works.
And you hinted at this. But there are even expectations around what a funny woman looks like.
Yeah, or what whether women should be funny, whether women are funny exactly, famous articles from Christopher Hitchins why women aren't funny, And there's a lot of studies of if a woman is attractive. We don't want you to make yourself less attractive in order to be funny. Your number one value is your looks, and you're trading on that when you become funny. And I have found that restrictive
at every point in my career. So when I first went back to Chicago, I was working for a startup website and I brought a ton of my improv stuff to it, and I was just having fun with player
personalities and bringing some creativity to it. And it was very hard to make sure that like, I'm being funny, but never in any way that could be misconstrued as sexual, because people are already pushing all their opinions and their feelings of sexuality onto you at every turn, and so at every turn you're constantly like kind of trying to look ahead and be like, oh, what's someone going to say about this, or how are they going to perceive this?
And I was blindsided a million times by something I did or said that somehow somebody made sexual when that wasn't my intention, and it really prevents you from being creative in so many ways.
I was also blindsided by this perception that you can't be smart and funny at the same time, like I experienced this in my career as a news journalist. It's like people are just incapable of holding space for women to be more than one thing. And this is something that I'm saying, the drum about just embracing our multitudes.
Couldn't be more true. I used to talk about this all the time. It was the idea of, like, we have to put you in one box. Either you're the hot girl, or you're the funny girl, or you're the smart girl. And I found that early in my career too, because I was doing like radio updates that were sort of light and fun. And then I started working for espnW and I was covering everything from silly stuff to
very serious stories about domestic violence and sexual assault. And I knew how to be in different places as different versions of myself and to bring the right approach and attitude.
But not everyone else did.
And I think for women especially, there is this feeling of we cannot view you as anything other than what we decided you are. And your point about especially attractive women, I think of someone like George Clooney's wife, or Michelle Obama, or like people who are so unbelievably impressive and instead it's like, but she looks great in that dress or nice arms.
Yeah, it's never ending, So I think you just have to tune it out and do you.
Yeah, like the Nike ad says you can't win, so just win, So just win.
Well, I want to get into the ESPN chapter of your career, and it starts in this unexpected way because I hear that you initially auditioned for ESPN and didn't get the job right away. I love stories like this. Can you tell me what happened next?
Yeah?
So I was living in la at the time, flew out for the audition, didn't get the job, and I was wanting to take the next step in my sports career. Got a job at Fox Sports Net this is precursor to FS one, and was working behind the scenes, but started doing those little fantasy show started writing for blogs for free just to get some content up, and started taking auditions and meetings, and I flew back to Chicago. I took two weeks off to see if do I want to try to work in Chicago where I know
the team's best because that's where I grew up. And a friend of mine had a connection at a startup website I ended up moving back to Chicago to work for that place, Mouthpiece Sports, and it was from there that I eventually got started at local ESPN radio, added on writing for espnW, working for espnW and then national radio around the Horn Sports Center. You say to all the other stuff.
Yeah, so just like hustling your way in there, getting a foot in the door.
Yeah.
So you were there for about fifteen years, right, Yeah, I think I'm close to fifteen ish. Yeah, and you're still you're still working with ESPN, just in a reduced capacity.
Yep, working with the espnW, so just focused on the women's sports stuff, hosting a lot of their conferences and stuff.
So I'm thinking back to when you gain a foothold inside an esteemed institution like that, there are moments that remind you that all of your hard work was worth it. And I can remember jumping from local news to national news and finally having a fancy coffee machine at the office and being like, oh, I've really made it. Like they're paying for my coffee now. This is this is the best. What are the pinchbe moments that you still think about from your time there.
Oh, there's a couple. So one was I just wanted to write on my tax forms sports reporter as my job instead of you know, like a bunch of other things or like waitress because that's where most of the money was coming from. Like, yeah, I was really excited
when I could just put journalists as my occupation. Another one was my very first job, which now that I think about it's really not a huge deal, but at the time it felt like such a big deal was the update anchor at ESPN one thousand, which is ESPN Radio, and so every fifteen to thirty minutes, I would hop on and be like, hello and welcome to your Sports Center Update.
I'm Sarah Spain.
Tonight the Chicago Cubs take on the Cincinnati Reds at seven pm Easter But the thing that made me like go crazy was the Sports Center music would play before I started, so it'd go.
Da da da da da.
Yeah, this is Sarah Spain with your sports and I was like, oh, my god, it's basically like I'm on Sports Center, which it wasn't, but it felt like it. And to be associated with the brand of ESPN in any way, I was like, oh, I'm doing it. And then you know, I always called Jamel Hill my fairy career godmother. And there were a couple great mentors that I've had along the way, but she in particular. I was at an espnW summit, which is these three day conferences.
I was a total nobody. I was not involved in the programming hardly at all. But I had one thing that I did on stage and Jamel said, you know, you're really great on stage.
You should be doing TV. Why aren't you doing TV?
And I said, well, back at home in Chicago, I did like a local show, but I haven't done much for ESPN. I've done one or two sports center hits and that's it for the Blackhawks.
And I think they're just not ready. They haven't seen enough tape.
And she said, well, next time i'm off with my show, I'm going to suggest that you host. And I was like, okay, sure, And then about a month or two later they gave me the call. I flew out to Bristol. I hosted a live hour show with Michael Smith. Used to be called Numbers never Lye and then became His and Hers. And within that one show, Keith Oberman show calls me
outid the lines calls me. I just had to prove myself, and so that pinched me moment of like somebody saw me and thought I could do this and then put me on the air, and I did.
I did a whole live national TV show.
I was like, I can do this, And so I always think about Jamel and try to think about how I can be that person for other people.
That is really really cool. It's so great to hear that, and clearly Jamel is a girl's girl like that. That's very meaningful when another woman stands in the gap for you like that. Yeah, were there moments in during those years where you were getting closer and getting closer where you ever questioned what you were doing and felt like giving up.
Not in the sports world.
I did feel that way about comedy and acting, particularly because I did not really enjoy the scene. And you hear about the casting couch, and it's very true, and unfortunately the sports world is not a fix for that. I was the victim of harassment on multiple occasions in the sports world too, But it felt like there was a more objective way to succeed, like if you know your stuff, if you get really good at it, you
can succeed in spite of those people. And so I think with the acting in comedy, I never felt like I really was cooking with gas. And then when I started in the sports world, it felt so natural and it felt like, Oh, you're good at this, this is where you should be. And so I never really lost hope or had enough of a drought in that to think like, oh, this isn't going to work.
Okay, So you're at ESPN for a while and then eventually it sounds like something kind of shifted within you, and I'm curious how you decided to give yourself permission to distance yourself from that original vision of your dream job and dream a bit differently.
Yeah, it was. It was a little bit of choice and a lot of a shove.
Actually.
So I had been doing national radio and some capacity for thirteen years, from updates to hosting, and for seven straight years I was doing nighttime national radio, and I took a ton of pride in being a woman who was on the slate which didn't exist other than me in representing for women in that way.
But it was feeling less satisfying.
It was feeling super ephemeral to get on the air every night for two to three hours and have whatever I said float away and usually be the biggest hits of the day. We certainly, throughout the various iterations of my shows, tried to talk about other things, meaningful things, women's sports, social issues like I really tried to make the show a lot more than just playing the hits.
But I understood that there were limitations for that medium in that space, and I had other projects that when I did them and I put my time and effort into them, I saw a lot of success with whether that was the E sixty and the feature reporting I did for Runs in the Family the First Time, or a PSA I did called More Than Mean that ended up winning a bunch of awards, including a Peabody, And it felt like as long as I had radio every single night, it was really going to prevent me from
spending time on things and making them great.
Part of radio that's great is it is immediate.
You get your feedback right away, there's a community, you have time to talk. But it's an imperfect science because it's off the top of your head. When you really take your time with a feature, you can edit and turn it into the piece that you want. And I wanted a little bit more of that, so I had been talking to the radio side about trying to get out of radio and figure out to do more of the other stuff, and a particular executive there decided he was just going to have me be gone altogether.
And so after thirteen years, with two weeks notice.
After they hadn't responded to a lot of calls from my agent, he told me they were just not going to resign me. And after our meeting, he said he had spoken to them and there wasn't a lot of interest in keeping me because he said, oh, without the radio, you don't have much.
I said, I have E.
Sixties SportsCenter, my podcast, writing espnW, all these shows that asked me to do more, and I haven't had time to do more. I was filling it at ESPN Daily and some other stuff. And he said, oh yeah, I called around. There wasn't a lot of interest, I said, So I called my bosses.
How is your call with him? They said, what call?
I said, That's what I thought, So just you know, I'm not being resigned, and they were furious, and they worked to find a position for me at the company outside of his department, But because he oversaw so much of what I worked on, it really limited.
What I could do.
So it was a shove that was completely unexpected, and I think I was very grateful that I had been hosting a podcast for years, talking to people at times about their worst times or their unexpected moments much more severe than me being pushed out of a job that I still really liked. It was people who suffered catastrophic injuries, people who lost loved ones, people who are outright fired
and had no idea what to do next. And I remember in those moments, while interviewing them, I would ask myself, how would you react to this? And my very honest answer to myself was terribly. You have been through nothing. Your life has been privileged. You have been so lucky in every way, and a lot of that is good choices you've made and working hard and being kind, but a lot of it is just luck and the privilege of mental health from your family and a great upbringing.
And so time to start thinking about how you will react, because it's not going to be this perfect forever. Something will happen. And it wasn't cynical, and I wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop. It just afforded me the opportunity to think about if something were to change in this idyllic life I had made, what would I
do about it? And so when that happened, I gave myself a couple of days to be angry and sad and feel sorry for myself and scared about what was coming next, because ESPN is the top of the mountain. And then not only did I fight to make sure I got to go out a little bit more on my own, on my own terms by working for another year in a handful of capacities. And now the last couple of year or two has been just espnW, where I'm still working with people I love working with about
something I care about. But I also took that time to look at what I wanted and why I was moving away from radio, what was going to be satisfying. I think I had always wanted to do a lot of intersection of sports and social issues because it felt a little absurd to make a lot of money and have a job where I'm just talking about people playing games.
It made me feel guilty almost that people who do good, meaningful work are working harder, or making less money or living a less privileged life than someone who's just like going on TV and being like hell of a dunk. So I always tried to find ways to make it feel more meaningful. And when this happened, I sat down and thought, what do I actually want to spend my time on?
And I knew it was women's sports.
How can I use the career I built and the influence I have on something that feels metior and more meaningful and more genuine to something I've cared about my whole career and tried to intersect with my whole career. And so, yeah, I got a shove. I'm doing awesome things ever since that shove. I would never lie and say that I wouldn't have been perfectly happy if they'd
let me stay on that path. I think I would have, But things are different at ESPN now too, and looking at it from a farm, I'm not sure how happy i'd be if I was there full time.
I so respect the transparency with which she told that story, because that's that is not easy to be. It is not a small thing to be pushed out of a dream job, and I'm sure it was extremely painful. So I just really appreciate your vulnerability around sharing that story.
You've got to be honest It's not that I was dishonest when it first happened. I just was more vague because I was really embarrassed. Like I talked about before, I'm like terrified of failure. It felt like a failure. I'd never had that before. Yeah, And I was so glad. I had talked to so many successful people who had had failures or who had been let go or who had had things that go their way, so I could not have it be a referendum on me, And frankly, I knew it wasn't.
I was crushing my work.
My bosses were so angry that this executive had made this decision.
It was not about me.
And still I could figure out how to learn from it and pivot and figure out what was next in a positive way, and try to figure out, like, because I'm a creature habit and I don't like change because of the whole control thing, how can I use this shove as an organic way to move into something new and something like the book that I've always wanted to do and never had time for because I had a
million jobs at ESPN. How do I stop procrastinating on something I've said I always want to do and just like do it use the time to do it, and so that's what I did.
Well, that's actually what I wanted to ask you next. Do you think that you would have had the courage to launch your podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain if you hadn't been shoved out.
It's certainly one of many nudges I'm getting from the universe about taking bigger swings and being less afraid to fail. So as far as the podcast goes, I pitched multiple women's sports things to ESPN over the course of my fifteen years. Sometimes they even got all the way to looking at the budget. How many people would you need on staff all that stuff. I brought sponsors to the table that were ready to work on it, and it
just hasn't been a priority for them. And I don't know if I would get fed up eventually and leave to do it, or if I would have just been happy bringing women's sports into as many spaces as I was because it was scary and I'm still scared of those leaps, So I don't know if I would have done that. As for the book, when we did the story for E sixty and the written piece, movie and book, people came running when it went viral, and we thought we'd do the movie first and then the book, and
then also the publisher that came was fine. The main one that came was fine, but it wasn't a huge advance, and we thought, let's do the movie first, and then we'll put the stars of the movie on the book cover. The book will be bigger, all that stuff. And then we were pitching the movie during COVID and then during the strike. So we've sort of been on hold with the movie for the last four years or so, and now we're going to re up the pitches with the book.
But I have to tell this quick story. So my husband and I were in New York at this time.
I was just out.
We had renegotiated an extra three months of my contract because I was hosting an event. I was interviewing the president of the company, like I had all these jobs that the executive didn't even ask about before he tried to kick me to the curb, and we were like, oh, do you want me to stick around to host this giant conference and interviewed the president of the company, and or oh you do okay? Cool, Well, maybe if you'd passed around at all, you would know, I'm sort of booked and busy.
For your company.
But so I had this couple months that was sort of like dead weight. I knew I was out, but I was working. And my husband and I went to the US Women's National Team Players Association ball in New York, and we were walking around that day before the event, and we walked by the New York Public Library and everyone raves about how it's got these big, beautiful, fancy rooms.
So we're like, oh, let's pop our heads in.
And we looked into one room and people were diligently working away in their computers, and I said, oh, I really missed that, and he's like what, I'm like, I miss like having a big project. We're just like right in all day, sitting with your coffee, like you know. And he's like, that's crazy. I went to the bathroom.
I checked my phone walking out of the bathroom, and I see an email from my agent at CAA that says, the woman who really wanted your book has left for Simon and Schuster and came back around and wanted to revisit the idea of writing it. And I said that to my husband and he's like, there you go.
I'm like what.
He's like, there's your project, And I was like, oh my god, is that what manifesting is? You just like go take a whiz and come back and the universe gives you exactly what you said you wanted within like five minutes.
Are you sure that's how it goes?
Yeah? Yeah.
And so, first of all, I did not have time to write a book before. But also it was like, hey, you are asking the universe for what's next. You are asking what will feel valuable and meaningful to you. You're asking what will be satisfying, and you have always wanted to do this, and this is a project that's right in your lap. And so I really couldn't even be afraid of failing. I couldn't even be like, oh, I'm not going to do that.
It was just I had to do it.
Well, let's talk a little bit about your podcast. But first a quick break. Your podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain is the very first daily women's sports podcast. I mean, that's huge. You've also you've won awards from iHeartRadio for social impact for this show, and you've really taken listeners along for the ride. As we've seen this surge of engagement and investment in women's sports. What's one moment from building good game that made you stop and say, yeah, this is why we did it.
Well, that's tough. We interview so many people.
This show has been so awesome to have the green light and the support and the funding and the interest to have a daily women's sports show that they've sent me to Spain, the NWSL finals, south By Southwest, the super Bowl, the Final four, all Star weekend, and putting the money in interest and effort behind the details in women's sports, because I really think that's all we've been missing,
is giving people enough information to care. Like we do such a good job in men's sports of telling you what everybody fricking ate for lunch, and then in women's sports, it's like here's a highlight, all right, see you later.
So I knew we needed to give people the.
Stories and stakes and stats and stars that they could know enough to want to come watch. And I think the biggest through line across the former athletes that we've had on the show, because we have everybody from media to athletes, to executives to sponsors, but the athletes is especially they're retired ones. They say I just wish there was more of a connection between owners in front office and the athletes, because the pyramid in men's sports very
clearly puts the men at the top. They are the product, they are the value, they are the stars, they are served and catered to, and they are the product that makes everyone below in the pyramid money. And on the women's side, it is still in some ways set up where the players are somewhere in the middle and they are not listened to and respected, and they aren't treated the right way, and they aren't.
Rewarded in the right way.
And it's not just monetarily, but in the setup of their leagues, in the response to what they're looking for and the way that they want to be coached and served and led. And so I love hearing from former players who are getting into ownership or front office roles and helping connect those two sides.
So we are.
Launching a new season of our show, The bright Side. So the concept of new beginnings is on my mind. What are three Sarah Spain truths or beliefs that have gotten you through new beginnings?
That's an interesting one.
Trust myself, I have always had a pretty innate surity that I can trust myself, my gut, instinct, my beliefs, my priorities, my principles. So I'm always thinking whatever new thing I'm embarking on to consider and always center in myself and just trusting that I'll do what's right. Try to be kind to myself and to others, but especially in our business. It's remarkable how someone I met twenty five years ago is back around in some job or
some office or some whatever. And I'm grateful and thankful that I'm always someone who's going to lead with kindness and hype other people up and want everyone to succeed. I've never been someone who wants to compete in life.
It's interesting.
I'm the most competitive human alive when it comes to like games or sports, but when it comes to supporting other people, and I just want everyone to like crush it and shine and be awesome. And I love when other people hype me, So I hype other people. You know, I'm very aware of what makes me feel good, and I try to do that for other people. So be kind, trust my gut, trust myself, and oh I think for me balance. I will work twenty four hours a day
if I do not schedule fun. I am not a good relaxer because I feel guilty sometimes when I'm relaxing about how I could be being productive. So the best thing for me is to be as ambitious about my social life as I am about my work life. And it comes very naturally. That's what I want to do anyway. But if I have a dinner on the books or concert or I throw a lot of costume parties with my friends, like it gives me some outlet other than work to put my energy, and I always make sure
there's that balance. Sometimes my friends like, why don't you just cancel, go home and sleep, And I'm like, no, if I cancel, I'll feel like I chose work over this, and I don't want to make that choice.
I just want to do all of it.
Are we a little bit of a party animal, Sarah? I'm a retired party animal myself.
It's like not partying, it's like socializing, you know what I mean. Like my husband and I have a lot of friends across the country, and when we go somewhere, we seek all of them out.
Like I just went to La for an Angel City game.
Told a bunch of my friends from when I lived there, and friends from work that I was going to be there, picked a place and I had like seventeen friends who came to eat pizza and have beer with me on a random Thursday, Like cause I keep those connections up because it's really important to me to keep those connections up.
That's so me.
I so relate to this.
Yeah.
So it's like our version of partying is now just like packing our day with good one on one or group time.
It's grown in sexy partying. For me, I can't agree you will you will not catch me? I mean, I don't have time to be hungover. No, so I got to pack my battles. Yeah, totally, Okay. Finally, Sarah, what is one area of your life where you're currently experiencing the bright side or what's one area of your life where you're looking for the bright side.
I would say my optimism is a gift almost all the time. I'm incredibly grateful, naturally for everything.
I didn't even drink till I was a junior in college because I was like, why would I need to drink?
We get sunsets and dolphins and music and like the world is the best place life.
That's right. And then like later in life.
That was part of what I was talking about earlier is starting to try to understand why the people are the way they are and being like, oh, I get why someone wants to escape or why someone doesn't think every day is a gift because people have it hard, and like, don't be judging about that. Don't pat yourself on the back for having it so easy. Start to
try to understand other people. But right now, my optimism, I think is is at odds with my desire to be informed, and my control issues are getting in the way because I feel helpless. Yeah, and my response to every problem is let me fix that.
But this is not something I can fix exactly. It's hard to be the fix it person when you can't.
Yet, And I don't want to bury my head because I'm privileged.
We'll just know that the work that you're doing is useful, so don't forget that.
There's the bright side. Is at least it feels like I'm doing good stuff every day.
Yeah, one hundred percent. Well, Sarah Spain, thank you so much for bringing your multitudes and your life FOMO to the bright side. It certainly made it bright.
I really enjoyed it. Thanks. That's it. For this week.
Join the conversation with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on ig and feel free to hit me up at some own voice. Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and as always, keep looking on the bright side, y'all. The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Simone Boyce. Production is by Acast Creative Studios. Our
producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, and Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Joya putnoy A. Cast Executive producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry is the executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Pealazola is our showrunner. Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.