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- Priority Pop
Growing up around sports and Hollywood
stars could give anyone's kid a swelled head.
Not Pat O'Brien's.
By Tom Zenner
(10/30/00)
For years you knew him as your personal valet on the Road to the Final Four and your late night d.j. on the Rock and Roll Winter Olympics wrap up show on CBS. If there was a big time sporting event on CBS in the 80's and 90's, Pat O'Brien's presence was as etched in stone as the mug shots of the former presidents on Mount Rushmore in his native South Dakota.
- With a delivery as smooth as an A-Rod home run swing, O'Brien showed that a small town kid from the Midwest can hit the big time in network television sports. And now as he's successfully segued from the sports world to entertainment, as the host of Access Hollywood, Pat is working hard to make sure his 13-year-old Sean has just as much access to his dad as he always has. One tradition they started about 10 years ago helps ensure that.
- "We call it Daddy Night," O'Brien says. "Every Wednesday my wife Linda goes out with her friends and Sean and I take over. We're pretty close because I regularly spend a lot of time with him but our Wednesday nights are special. We cook a good meal, and spend the night talking and hanging out. I'd say we've maybe missed two or three Daddy Night's since he was three years old." When you think of the demands Pat faces covering events around the world for a national television show, that streak is as impressive as a Nancy O'Dell Oscar gown.
- Just because Pat is now interviewing Michael J. Fox instead of Michael Jordan hasn't mattered much to Sean. He still has the best material for show and tell in his class. "He grew up around the NBA and guys like Barkley, Magic and Jordan. When he grew up he thought every dad had those guys as friends," says O'Brien. "But one thing we did was never treat the celebrities any different from anybody else. We never made a big deal of it and acted like they were special. Now it's kind of gone from having athletes around to guys like Fred Durst of Limp Biskit. Sean has handled it really well and kept everything in perspective."
- This past summer Pat returned to his sports anchoring roots, hosting the weekday morning coverage for MSNBC at the Olympics in Sydney. If this were the Rome Olympics in 1960, that would have meant a month devoid of any communication with his son with the exception of an infrequent phone call. However being tech savvy paid off big time for Pat as he was able to stay in touch on a daily basis thanks to e-mail. "I communicated with Sean every day while I was there. One day the Olympic torch was being run right by my hotel. I was able to snap a picture of it with my digital camera and e-mail it off to Sean well before the rest of the country saw it."
Sure getting a Christmas card from Steven Spielberg and Shaquille O'Neal is cool, but just like every other father, Pat O'Brien is trying to teach his teenage son what's truly important in life. The fact that he can get a good table at Spago or an autographed picture from Brittany Spears means nothing if he isn't around to share it with Sean. "I think Sean differentiates the heady wine. We've raised him to realize you have to work for this stuff. He knows it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice to get to this point."
- Pat wants to help others get to the point he's at in his career. He is a proud alum of the University of South Dakota, and financially supports a scholarship run by an old professor who mentored Pat and another fairly decent broadcaster you may have heard of, Tom Brokaw. He also has his own scholarship that provides money for a student athlete who excels on the field and off of it.
- He's covered NCAA Championships, Olympics, Super Bowls, U.S. Open's and the World Series. But the most important games he sees now are the one's his son plays in. "I haven't missed many games, and I don't plan to. If I do, he
- understands."
It was the final quote I got from Pat on this Thursday afternoon. He had a big game to get to. Sean's junior high school football game.
Tom Zenner is a television sportscaster for Fox and a free-lance writer in Boston. He has a two-and-a-half year old daughter named Brooke.
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