A 'Mayne' View on Avon and the Sports World (Video)

Kenny Mayne has become an international figure in the sports journalism world, but he said the climb to ESPN was not easy.

“I sent a tape to ESPN in 1989, got an interview and didn’t get hired,” said Mayne, who is moving from Avon back to Seattle this month.

ESPN was still a young company then. It was known as the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network from its founding until the name change to the acronym in 1985, according to the ESPN radio website.

Mayne soon quit his job at a Seattle news station. He filed for unemployment before finding work assembling garbage cans, selling prepaid life insurance, and working in corporate sales at MCI.

ESPN heard that he quit and called him back for another interview, still not hiring him. He worked remotely from Seattle as a freelance reporter and field producer for the Bristol-based sports network from 1990 to 1994.

“Ken Griffey would hit some home runs and they’d send me to go interview him,” Mayne said. “Or, the Seahawks are going to make the playoffs. Go do the Chuck Knox interview. As time went on, I ended up doing more and more of that and sort of hit a dead spot where it never seemed they were going to hire me.”

He sent the ESPN a letter asking them to check of the following of three statements that applied: “contract is on the way,” “keep up the freelance work,” and “we’ll hire you when ESPN 5 is on the air.” The company wrote back, checking off “keep up the freelance work.” Regardless, a month later, they hired him.

Mayne was not always doing dry, off-beat comedic sports features. He took typical journalism and political science classes at Wenatchee Valley Community College in Washington and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where graduated from in 1982 with a bachelor of arts degree in broadcasting.

“I wanted to be a Middle East correspondent or something,” Mayne said.

After college, he worked as a reporter in Las Vegas, NV for PBS affiliate KLVX-TV in 1982, a production assistant at KSTW-TV in the Seattle area from 1982 -83, a news writer from 1983-86 and a weekend sports anchor and weekday news reporter from 1986-89, according to his biography on ESPN.  He was creative in his delivery at the Seattle station, but he said his humor was not as extreme as at ESPN.

He has many roles at ESPN, including “Sports Center” anchor and feature reporter, predominantly covering football and horse racing, two of his favorite sports.

“I’ve sort of created a job that didn’t exist previously, to my good fortune, I guess,” Mayne said. “My bosses trust me and we do a little bit more experimental things than the next guy.”

Mayne also stars on the web series, “Mayne Street,” a humorous spoof on his job at ESPN.

On “Mayne Street,” his boss criticizes his unconventional interview methods, but Mayne said that is not the case in real life at ESPN, where he is accepted for what he does.

“We took the Spelling Bee kids to the White House and pretended they were going to meet the president,” Mayne said, describing one of his skits. “And then at the end, they’re all mad at me and asking me how to spell failure and idiot.”

“I think everybody likes to be funny,” Mayne said, and one of the reasons he wanted to work at ESPN was because of how they went beyond cookie cutter sports coverage and incorporated features and humor.

“They made it fun,” Mayne said. “I love sports, but I don’t worship it. At the end of the day, if the Seahawks win or lose, Monday is still Monday.”

He also has a side gig on “Dancing with the Stars,” as one of the hosts on “Dance Center,” which he will appear in this fall. The segment is a parody of “Sports Center,” evaluating the celebrity dancers in a comical way. Mayne was a competitor on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006, doing one cha-cha before being eliminated.

Currently, Mayne is working on a new show that is a take-off on ESPN’s “Wild World of Sports.”

“We just went to England, Ireland, Brazil and South Africa,” Mayne said in July. “We might be going to Thailand and Fiji in the fall. We’re doing six countries, learning about their sports and teaching them our sports, mostly football. We’ve covered everything from cricket to stick fighting with Zulus. I took a helicopter to a mountain and hit a golf ball. Went to a British soccer hooligan game. Irish road bowling, hurling, Gaelic football.”

Mayne joked that he “revolutionized the sport of rugby” in England, teaching players that they could throw the rugby ball overhand as long as it's thrown backwards.

“I want all the credit when they win the whole thing,” Mayne said.

On the beaches in Brazil, many of the locals play “pateca,” which he said is “sort of like a hacky sack meets a shuttlecock.” He brought of the balls home with him, which he said is “a little weathered” from some days of playing the new game at Winding Trails in Farmington.

Covering the Seattle Seahawks winning the Super Bowl was one of the highlights of Mayne’s career because of his pride for his home state team. The less conventional interviews have also been memorable for him, incorporating people from both within and outside of the sports world.

“All-timer would be getting to work with Stevie Wonder. I got him to say that I can’t be at the All Star game because I have a high ankle sprain. I could have retired off that, but I needed the money,” Mayne said. “We got Matt Damon to do a line for us in a story.  Ben Stiller’s helped out, Snoop has helped out. John Legend has sung two songs they’ve written for us.”

Mayne bumped into Michael Clarke Duncan, who acted in “The Green Mile,” at a football game. Duncan is known for his booming voice.

“I recognized him and said, ‘Any chance you would voice something for us?'” Mayne said. “We ended up in his limo with a tape recorder and a camera and he did our voice over.”

Even professional athletes will get in on the fun. Mayne comes up with a story and feeds lines to players like Tom Brady. Mayne has been doing that for 10 years.

“They execute these little skits for us,” Mayne said. “The teams know we’re coming, they know it’s going to be silly. The four teams that have helped me the most through all my years are the Packers, Seahawks, the Patriots and the Vikings.”

Sometimes the “common guy” can add flavor to one of Mayne’s features.

“It could be some lineman who’s on the Packers, and we need for one line and he ends up being the funniest guy,” Mayne said.

At the local level, Mayne has actively volunteered for Special Olympics Connecticut and Unified Sports. His daughters, Riley, 12, and Annie, 10, grew up doing sports in Avon, mainly swimming and lacrosse. Riley, who went to Thompson Brook School last year, and Annie, who was a student at Roaring Brook School, both played boys baseball for "a couple years" when they were younger, and later softball.

“Competition is great, but I think it’s emphasized too much.”

Mayne can relate, as he was on the bench for many of his ninth grade football games, affectionately calling himself a “fifth-quarter” player, but he went on to play Division I football in college and signed as a free agent with the Seattle Seahawks in 1982.

“I always tell the kids that if you’re not on the travel team by age 9, you don’t have to quit,” Mayne said.  “You might be on it at 10 or 12, or high school. I think sometimes there’s too much of an emphasis about winning and losing at such a young age. It’s better to look at it with a long view. That’s hard to do when you’re on a team and you’re not one of the stars and feel a bit excluded. “

Before moving to Avon in 1998, Kenny and his wife, Laura Mayne rented in West Hartford.

“Avon was twice as much house for half as much money,” Mayne said. “The area itself is just peaceful and safe, and a good place to raise a family.”

The Maynes will miss Avon, the only place where their daughters have lived, when they move back to Seattle.

“It makes a lot of sense to get back home,” Mayne said. “We kind of go out west with built-in friends and family already waiting for us. “

Editor's Note: Do you have a suggestion for someone to feature for Patchlete of the Week? Any Avon resident from a child to an adult who plays, coaches or is somehow involved in the sports world qualifies. Email recommendations to Jessie.Sawyer@patch.com. The feature runs on Saturdays.