The most widely recognized Ithaca graduate at ESPN rarely handles any production duties, although he's confident that he could if push came to shove. Karl Ravech '87 can be seen and heard on the network's SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight studio shows and covers an occasional professional golf tournament. Ravech had to pay some dues outside the company before he secured a chair on the ESPN set, unlike the production folks, who can gain entry-level positions at the network. While still on South Hill, Ravech worked on-air for Ithaca's own NewsCenter 7 (now News-Center 10) cable channel. Subsequently, broadcasting jobs in Binghamton and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, gave Ravech the experience he needed before reaching the big time at ESPN.

"We seem to have an Ithaca Bomber involved in every aspect": Labay, with Greenfield at work

Now, as host of Baseball Tonight, Ravech may well have the toughest on-air job in sports broadcasting. The show is, for the most part, unscripted; Ravech and his cohosts, Peter Gammons and Harold Reynolds, ad-lib as their production crew continuously feeds them highlights and points of interest from each game in progress. "Our goal is to show a home run highlight to viewers before the batter crosses home plate," says Ravech. "The key is to make it look seamless," he adds, which is usually the case even though he's reacting instantaneously to what's going on at ballparks across the country. "It's a real challenge, but I look forward to going to work every day because each day is different."

For those who watch the show, it's obvious that Ravech does his homework --- scanning the sports pages of newspapers and websites and talking daily to baseball insiders ranging from players to team executives. "That enables us to give fans a view of the game they don't normally get," says Ravech.

Laurie Greenberg '80 plays a much different role at ESPN. She's the New York-based vice president of sales for the eastern region with ESPN-ABC Sports, generating revenue for all of the ESPN properties and supervising a large staff. Her clients include auto, wireless telecom, and insurance companies --- "anyone trying to reach men," she says.

"I like my job because I can be creative. Dealing with television, radio, and the network's website and ESPN the Magazine requires separate approaches for each of these media." As with any sales job, there is constant pressure to close the deal. "We are a premium product and command premium prices, so we have to be aggressive," she adds.

Greenberg's route from South Hill to ESPN began with entry-level jobs at advertising agencies in New York City. She then spent a decade in sales with the Raycom Sports broadcasting company before joining ESPN in 1997 as director of regional sales; she moved to the national sales group shortly thereafter.

Everyone at ESPN lives and breathes sports, but the work is decidedly not all fun and games. During the eight-month baseball season Ravech arrives at the ESPN studios at 4:00 p.m. and rarely leaves before 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. "At Baseball Tonight we stay until the last out, wherever it may be. We groan when the West Coast games go into extra innings," he says.

Twelve-hour days and longer are typical for Sacks. "It's really a 24/7 job, living sports, which is my passion," he says. Greenfield says she has a fairly normal schedule now, but at SportsCenter the workday could run from 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. "And that's on a good day," she quips.

For those roaming the sidelines or otherwise covering events by remote, sleeping in their own beds is a luxury. Connal is on the road for the duration of the eight-month NHL season, and Sacks points out, "This is a business where we work nights, holidays, and weekends. I have worked 13 straight Thanksgivings. That's tough when you have a family, like I do, but it was a lot of fun when I was young and single."

Still, it's easier to deal with jet lag or missing a family gathering when the perks include globe-trotting and passes for premium sporting spectacles such as the World Series, the Super Bowl, or college basketball's Final Four.