When you’re listing people who forever changed the sports media landscape, ESPN’s president of content Burke Magnus is towards the top of that last. Over the course of his nearly 30-year career with the network, he’s reshaped both ESPN and how the entertainment industry thinks about sports. And it all came from a passion to be as close to the field as possible.
“I like to say sports was really the only thing I ever cared about as a kid,” Magnus told TheWrap. Magnus was able to leverage that passion into a career dedicated to optimizing the space for fans. After graduating from Holy Cross in 1988 — a college that has ironically never hosted ESPN’s College GameDay — Magnus spent his post-graduation years pursuing what he called “a more conventional profession.”