Dan Patrick

Daniel Patrick Pugh, sportscaster; A popular presence on television and radio sports programs, Dan Patrick was the host of the irreverent "Dan Patrick Show" for ESPN Radio and later on various syndicated networks, where he presented the world of professional sports with a blend of expertise and healthy disregard for the deification of players and games alike. Born Daniel Patrick Pugh in Zanesville, Ohio, Patrick was raised in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, where he played basketball at William Mason High School. He attended the Eastern Kentucky University on a basketball scholarship before transferring to the University of Dayton, where his father Jack worked in the computer science department. There, Patrick majored in broadcast journalism, which led to on-air assignments for a variety of Midwestern radio stations and a six-year stint as a sports reporter for CNN in the mid-1980s. In 1989, he began his lengthy relationship with ESPN as an anchor with Keith Olbermann on "SportsCenter" (1979-). There, he developed a reputation as a well-informed and opinionated observer and interviewer with a dry wit that often targeted the network's practices; when reprimanded by the station's executives for calling "SportsCenter" "The Big Show" on broadcasts, they began referring to the show's title in deliberately sarcastic tones, which led to the network's long-running series of parody commercials promoting the program. Patrick hosted the initial version of "The Dan Patrick Show," a loose-format sports program that drew from Howard Stern's radio program for its collegiate tone and self-referential humor, on ESPN Radio from 1999 to 2007 until Patrick left the network in 2007 to host a new edition of "The Dan Patrick Show" through Premiere Radio Networks and later, on Sirius XM Sports Radio. That same year, he signed with Sports Illustrated to become the magazine's senior writer and occasional non-television content provider. "The Dan Patrick Show" bloomed into a television broadcast on the 101 (later Audience) Network, and later Root Sports and NBC Sports Network. In the midst of this activity, Patrick also joined NBC Sports as a co-host of "Football Night in America" (2006-), which reunited him with Olbermann from 2008 to 2010. His duties with NBC expanded to include coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 London Olympics and the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010 and 2011. In 2014, Patrick was tapped to host "Sports Jeopardy!" for online distributor Crackle.