Pros vs. Joes No. 8: Schwarz’s retirement means ‘a totally open highway” ahead

Mark Schwarz’s long career at ESPN was heralded with a special on last Saturday’s “Outside the Lines” show. (courtesy Mark Schwarz)

To pay tribute to the end of his 32-year career as a reporter at ESPN — the longest tenure in the network’s history — Mark Schwarz was asked to do the narration for a seven-minute spot that was aired during last Saturday’s “Outside the Lines” show.

It was capped by host Jeremy Schaap’s salutation at the end of the piece.

“Mark has two Emmy awards for sports journalism, but his impact can’t be measured merely by such honors,” Schaap said of his former colleague, who retired on January 31. “He set a standard for tough-mindedness and fair-mindedness that has been a model to all who work here. No one did it longer; no one did it better.”

Schwarz wasn’t sure how he would feel about what he had helped put together before he watched it on Saturday.

“It was emotional to see the final product edited,” says Schwarz, 63, who has lived in Portland since 2017. “You write a piece like that and you don’t necessarily know what it’s going to feel like when it’s all wrapped up. Then I watched it, and it was like, ‘Wow, that really kind of hit me.’ ”

I’ve known Mark since our days covering the NBA together in the 1990s. Always a friendly face in the press room, Schwarz was an excellent reporter who asked important questions and always sought to get the story not just first, but right.

And now he is done, looking to spend more time with his wife of 33 years, Ann, and two young grandchildren under a year old.

“Having no work schedule is going to be marvelous,” he says. “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

Schwarz agreed to be a celebrity picker in the “Pros vs. Joes” NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket challenge on kerryeggers.com, though he claims to have no inside knowledge.

“I don’t follow it at all,” he says. “The only college basketball stories I landed on all year (before his retirement) was the Juwan Howard incident (at Michigan), and that’s only because it was in the news cycle. “I’m amazed at how ESPN covers every second of the NCAA Tournament. The tournament itself is one of my favorite sporting events, once I come around to the fact that, ‘Here we go, there are some games on this morning.’ There have been years where I haven’t watched any of it until maybe the Final Four.

“When somebody says, ‘Let’s do a bracket,’ I’m always in the same spot. I’m going to have to do some research. I’m going to see what Jay Bilas thinks will happen. I hope he’s right this year.”

Has Schwarz worked his final broadcast? “You never say never,” the Portlander says. (courtesy Mark Schwarz)

Schwarz recalls that his favorite college basketball work experience came early in his career, when “Outside the Lines” filmed a special at the 1993 Final Four in New Orleans.

“One of the best assignments I ever got,” he says. “Bob Ley and Robin Roberts were among the essential people along with great producers and other reporters. They had me do a number of specific pieces, two which I remember vividly.”

Plenty of wheeling and dealing is done during Final Four weekend, including negotiations for the hiring of coaches at some schools. Schwarz was told to find coaches-for-hire in the lobby of the headquarters hotel. He struck gold when he arranged for ESPN cameras to be on hand as North Carolina-Asheville officials interviewed a candidate for their open head coaching position in a room at the hotel.

“That was real access,” Schwarz says. “It was fascinating to watch the process.”

Division I head coaches typically hold a seminar during the weekend. “A bitch session,” Schwarz calls it.

ESPN cameras were with Schwarz in the room when UCLA’s Jim Harrick stood up for a few words.

“He moaned and lamented and whined about some things,” Schwarz says. “I’d covered him quite a bit and he knew me. And at the end of it, he walked up to me and said, ’Schwarzie, you were rolling the cameras there. Don’t burn me!’ He had already burned himself.”

Schwarz worked during the heyday of cable television. With all the options for viewers these days, he isn’t sure about the medium’s future.

“The whole cable model has changed so drastically,” Schwarz says. “As a parent of two 30-year-old types (daughter Abby is 32; son Jesse, who lives in Portland and works for Nike, turns 30 next month), I’ve known for almost 20 years that people of my kids’ generation are not interested in a cable subscription. Getting people in my family excited about watching me on ESPN has been pretty much impossible. Insanity is the definition of doing things a lot and hoping they’ll change. I’d tell the kids, ‘I’m going to be on doing a Kobe piece today on the 6 p.m. SportsCenter.’ They’d say, ‘OK, Dad — send me a link.’

“Even I might consider breaking away from cable at some point. My (menu) has a million things I don’t use. The only reason I have it is to be sure I have all the sports packages I watch. I don’t know if I can get them as seamlessly if I break away.”

Has Schwarz worked his last broadcast? Could a reporting project be in his future?

“You never say never,” he says. “It would have to be something that’s really fun. It would have to be an opportunity that just ran into me. I’ve thought about different things. One of my old buddies at ESPN said we should do a podcast together. That’s the kind of thing I would do. One of my loves is music. He said we could combine the two. That would be fun.

“I’m not going to reinvent myself. Part of the thrill of cutting the cord is to have a complete open schedule. It’s completely open highway ahead of me.”

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