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While insisting that he “never was a sports nut,” George Conner is linked to the most significant of all sports television networks — ESPN.
This week’s season-opening football games for University of Tulsa, University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are being presented on ESPN platforms, and ESPN as we know it today might not exist if Conner hadn’t gotten involved in 1978-79.
“Nothing could be as exciting as what we did at ESPN,” Conner said this week during an interview in his midtown Tulsa home, which essentially is a museum decorated with fascinating artifacts from ESPN’s early years.
Conner is the grandson of George Washington O’Neal, who in a horse-drawn wagon moved his family from Missouri and settled in Coal County, Oklahoma. O’Neal was a member of the first Oklahoma Legislature and in 1907 was a participant in the writing of the Oklahoma Constitution.
In McAlester, Conner’s parents operated a Coca-Cola distributorship. After graduating from TU with a marketing degree in 1964, Conner went to work for Skelly Oil in downtown Tulsa.
When Getty Oil gained control of Skelly in 1974, Conner became a Getty finance manager and moved to a seaside home in Marina del Rey, California. For a young person — and Conner at that time was a young person — Marina del Rey was a paradise community in the Los Angeles area.
As J. Paul Getty was regarded during the ’70s as the world’s wealthiest person, Getty Oil was saturated with money. In December 1978, Conner was asked by Getty executive Stu Evey to conduct a three-week study of an investment opportunity: a proposed Connecticut-based cable television network, committed all day and every day to sports programming.
Bill Rasmussen, who had been a National Hockey League publicist, and his son Scott had the idea for the network. They called it the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network or the ESP Network. Eventually, it became ESPN.
The Rasmussens, however, did not have the funds to make ESPN a reality. Seven potential investors said no to the all-sports proposal before Getty asked Conner to measure ESPN’s potential.
Then-Dallas Cowboys general manager and president Tex Schramm told Conner that he didn’t believe an ESPN type of situation would succeed.
Rasmussen requested $10 million in seed money for the use of a satellite dish and for talent salaries, production-personnel salaries and equipment purchases.
Evey called Conner on New Year’s Eve 1978 and asked for a definitive recommendation. Conner’s response: “If Bill needs an answer today, we’ve got to tell him no. But I like the idea, and I think you do. Why don’t we fund his payroll and some other expenses while we continue to look at it?”
Evey presented that option to Rasmussen — that Getty would pour some money into the ESPN startup while attempting to determine whether there would be a large-scale commitment. Rasmussen was overjoyed.
“That’s how it all started,” Conner says. “I told Getty that I would recommend (the investment) only if we used the highest-quality people and equipment, as most new businesses did not succeed.
“I think one reason the Getty people trusted my judgment was because I never was a sports nut. I enjoy sports, but I’m a business person and a financial person. I wasn’t affected by being around sports stars or media stars.”
In Peter Fox’s recently published book “The Early Years of ESPN: 300 Daydreams and Nightmares,” chapter 3 is titled “By George” and filled with Conner’s memories of his ESPN experience.
In a 2022 text-message exchange with Conner, Rasmussen stated “I still firmly believe” that without Conner as the bridge to Getty money, there would have been no ESPN.
ESPN went live on Sept. 7, 1979. Because so few homes had cable, the audience in that moment was estimated to have been only 30,000 viewers.
Today, about 68 million U.S. households have access to the ESPN television channel. The ESPN+ streaming app has 25 million subscribers. A recent Bank of America analysis estimated ESPN’s overall value at $24 billion.
“Getty was hesitant to tell me to move to Connecticut (in 1979) because they knew how much I loved living in Marina del Rey,” Conner recalled. He did make the move, though, and was ESPN’s vice president in charge of corporate finance. He had an office on the ESPN campus.
It was an exhilarating experience, but there was a terrible setback. Conner was a passenger in a car that skidded on an icy Bristol road and plowed into a tree. He sustained a broken right femur, a crushed knee, a crushed ankle and two broken wrists. Today, he still is affected by those injuries.
With an investment that eventually grew to $160 million, Conner reports, Getty Oil owned a majority stake in ESPN. Conner says the return on that investment exceeded $300 million. After Texaco took control of Getty Oil in 1984, the Getty-ESPN relationship ended.
After 3½ years at ESPN, Conner decided in 1982 that he was ready for a break. He was asked by Getty to return to Los Angeles and to oversee the construction of Getty Oil’s high-rise headquarters in the San Fernando Valley. His reply: “I’m not going back.”
“I had planned to leave Getty Oil after I was finished at ESPN,” Conner explained this week. “I had saved up for it.”
Conner wanted a one-year vacation, but it became a five-year reset on his life.
“After I left Getty and was back in Marina del Rey,” he said, “I was up at 4 o’clock in the morning each day and played the stock market until it closed. And then I got on a bicycle and rode up to Santa Monica and got a hot dog on a stick and played on the beach.”
A call from a TU fraternity brother resulted in a move back to Oklahoma. Conner would be a partner in the acquisition and management of two Tulsa medical companies near the intersection of 15th and Utica. There was the promise that Conner would have the flexibility to make frequent trips back to Los Angeles, but, he recalls, “I ran those companies for 12 years and went back to Marina del Rey twice in those 12 years.”
Conner’s favorite pastime now is stock activity and managing money. He says he may visit ESPN in November. He hasn’t been back to Bristol since 2004, when he attended an ESPN25 event — a commemoration of ESPN’s 25th anniversary.
That night, Conner was stopped and embraced by SportsCenter legend Chris Berman, who was fully aware of Conner’s role in ESPN’s development.
“Thank you, George,” Berman said. |
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