Bloom where you are planted- Jason Romano

Legendary coach and Jesus follower, Tony Dungy on a visit to ESPN asked producer Jason Romano how he was sharing his faith at the sports network. That question was a turn around moment for Jason as he recognized for the first time the importance of "Blooming where you are planted" wherever that might be. ESPN was fertile ground for him to bloom. Living his faith in a secular world.

In this episode you'll hear the difficult story of growing up with an alcoholic father, but also a God guided career story that led to a 17 year Emmy award winning career at ESPN. Jason shares the details of his rewarding transition from network producer to media director of a powerful podcast and media company that connects sports with faith: Sports Spectrum. Jason is a two time author. His first book "Live to Forgive" is a powerful look inside the tough life of growing up with an alcoholic parent with all of the struggles and challenges. His second book.: The Uniform of Leadership: Lessons on True Success from My ESPN Life

You can find his podcast, wherever you normally get your podcasts and check out about the great work at the website Sports Spectrum You can hear and see of the Amazing Greats podcasts on our website.

JASON ROMANO AT A GLANCE

Former ESPN Producer • Sports Spectrum Host • Author • Christian Sports & Media Leader

Topics

ESPN • Sports Spectrum • Sports media • Faith • Forgiveness • Alcoholism • Family • Prayer • Infertility • Calling • Christian athletes

His Faith Journey

Catholic upbringing → Faith as tradition → Watching brother's radical conversion → Mother's Day 2001 decision for Christ → Deeper understanding of the Gospel → Baptism in 2002 → Growing faith and calling

This Episode Explores

• Growing up with an alcoholic father

• Breaking the cycle of addiction in his family

• Forgiveness versus reconciliation

• Coming to a personal relationship with Jesus

• His 17-year career behind the scenes at ESPN

• Moving from producer to podcast host

• Leaving ESPN for Sports Spectrum

• Following God's call despite a major pay cut

• Using sports media to point people to Jesus

• Infertility, unanswered prayer and trusting God

• Family, loss and the urgency of sharing the Gospel

• The mission of Sports Spectrum

Questions Answered

• Who is Jason Romano?

• What happened in Jason Romano's childhood?

• How did his father's alcoholism affect him?

• What does Jason Romano say about forgiveness and reconciliation?

• How did Jason Romano become a Christian?

• How did his brother influence his faith?

• What did Jason Romano do at ESPN?

• Why did he leave ESPN?

• What is Sports Spectrum?

• How did Jason become a podcast host?

• How does he use sports to share his faith?

• How does he deal with unanswered prayer?

• What has Jason Romano learned about God's calling?

Core Story

Jason Romano's journey moves from a difficult childhood and a 17-year ESPN career to forgiveness, faith and a calling to use sports media to point people to Jesus.

Podcast Transcript: Jason Romano on ESPN, Faith, Forgiveness & Sports Spectrum

Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen

Meet Jason Romano

Ric Hansen: Hi, Ric Hansen here with Amazing Greats.

Last time around, we had a conversation with Brock Heward. While we were talking, he said, "There's a guy you really need to get on your show. He is a man of God, he's a sports fanatic, he was a producer at ESPN, and he's written two books. His name is Jason Romano."

So I said, "Well, yeah, let me give him a shot."

I got hold of Jason, and we had a wonderful conversation. I think you're going to enjoy this one.

It's Jason Romano on Amazing Greats.

We are live from coast to coast—me on the West Coast and Jason Romano on the East Coast. What a pleasure.

Let me give you a quick introduction.

Jason was a producer at ESPN for 17 years, the developer of Sports Spectrum and its podcast, among other things, and the author of two books.

That's what you've done and what you do. But who you are is a follower of Jesus, an awesome dad and husband, and a genuine great guy.

And thanks to Brock Heward for introducing the two of us.

So how are you today, Jason?

Jason Romano: Oh, Ric, that's a great introduction. I am doing great, and I'm so glad that Brock introduced us.

Brock's been a friend for quite a few years. We both live in a very similar space of sports and faith in Christ.

It's great. When he said, "Hey, check out what's going on with Ric," I said, "I'm in. Just let me know."

So I'm glad to be here, buddy. This is great.

Live to Forgive: Growing Up with an Alcoholic Father

Ric Hansen: As soon as I got word that you were going to move ahead, I grabbed your first book and had a chance to read it. It's called Live to Forgive.

It was so heart-wrenching and authentic. Before we even got on the air, I felt like I kind of knew you because I knew your feelings and knew who you were and what you've been through.

If you could just give us a quick overview—I don't want to get too heavy into all of that—but you're the son of an alcoholic dad, and that was not easy.

Jason Romano: No, I would venture it wasn't easy for any person to grow up or to have a father who is an alcoholic.

I grew up with two brothers. I'm the oldest of three boys.

My dad had three sons and married my mom, and he struggled with alcohol from a pretty young age.

When I was five or six years old, my parents were on the verge of a divorce. They got divorced when I was—I think I was five, actually.

As I got older, I started to recognize that this was a problem and that my dad really was hurting himself and hurting so many others in our family through the choices that he made with alcohol.

It is a choice to start, but then there's the addiction that comes with that. He just couldn't kick it.

It led to two divorces for my dad and strained relationships with me and my brothers.

I remember as a kid, eight or nine years old, my love of sports that I still have to this day. I'm almost 49 years old here.

My love of sports stems from my dad and from his dad. His dad was my grandfather, George Romano, and we called him Pa.

Pa was the greatest man I've ever known. I actually dedicated Live to Forgive to his memory. He passed away about 15 years ago.

Thinking about Pa and my dad, I wouldn't love sports if it wasn't for either of those two.

Pa was not an alcoholic. He drank a little bit here and there, but he was a gentle, kind, loving soul who loved his grandkids and loved his son so much.

But as my dad got caught up in drinking, that led to so many other things.

As I got older, I really started to think, "I have a choice too. I could choose to follow the path that my dad chose, or I could choose to try and break that cycle."

And this was even before I was a follower of Christ.

I just thought, "I don't want to become my dad. So I'll do anything to try and do the opposite of what he's done."

So when he was drinking and choosing that world, I chose not to drink.

Still to this day, Ric, I've never been drunk in my life. I've had alcohol, and I've gotten to the point maybe where I was buzzed, but I've still, in almost 49 years of life, never been drunk.

And I don't plan on doing that.

I don't particularly like alcohol. That's just my own preference.

But I didn't want to become my dad.

Even now, when I'm well past that point—my daughter's in college now—I'm still afraid to even try something that I might like that's alcohol because I don't want to become my father.

That's the impact that he had.

Thankfully, once I became a follower of Christ, that helped in my journey to find a little bit more purpose than just somebody who wanted not to drink and not be my dad.

But there were some really, really hard times, and I wrote about a lot of them in the book.

We could spend an hour on it.

Breaking the Cycle

Ric Hansen: I know. The book was so intense and so revealing. It was absolutely phenomenal.

I thank you for sharing that because there are so many children of alcoholics, unfortunately, and somewhere along the line some will make that choice to be anything but their dad, and others will follow right in their footsteps.

You made that choice, and so did your brothers, right?

Jason Romano: They did.

I will say this: my brothers got more caught up in the worldly fashion of partying and drinking at a young age, whereas I didn't.

I did my own share of bad things, trust me, but I didn't ever drink or go to parties in that way like most 20-year-olds would.

Again, because I had this fear of becoming my father.

My brothers didn't necessarily have that. They both got caught up in it.

Thankfully, now they're both pretty well off and fine in that sense, especially my brother Chris. But they both had to make choices as well.

I think having kids helped both my brothers see it from a father's perspective and see what my dad had done.

That's what did it for me.

Both my brothers are Christians, and knowing that they both made choices to follow Jesus was also a big pivotal moment for them, as well as myself, to say, "Okay, we're followers of Christ. We want to conduct ourselves in a way that is pleasing to God and be great ambassadors for Him."

But also, we are husbands and dads, and we want to be as good an example of that as we can to our own kids.

We never had that as kids from my father.

So we looked for it in other places—certainly my grandfather, and we all had coaches and teachers and people who impacted us who were sort of father figures.

But it's not the same as having your own father, and we missed that for quite a few years.

Thankfully, the relationship is better. It's not perfect, but it's better now with my dad.

For many years, it was just to the point where I had to isolate myself from him and do the best I could not to become him.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Ric Hansen: Like you just mentioned, it was years and years and years.

I wanted to end this part of our talk today with a bit of happy news. Your father is now sober, has been for a bit of time, and you have healed through forgiveness.

That's kind of the light at the end of this book, because I was hoping it wasn't going to end in something much more tragic than that.

Jason Romano: The idea of forgiveness, right? Even the title is Live to Forgive.

I know people who've been through situations like I have with my father, and it hasn't ended great. They lost that person they loved, even though that person might have caused some pain in their life.

My dad was close to dying, as I depicted in the book, and he almost ended his life. Thankfully, he didn't.

That allowed an opportunity for me. I think I would have forgiven my father even if he had died, but he's still alive. So it gave me an opportunity to forgive him and actually restore—or begin the process of restoring—a relationship with him.

Now, I'm very careful to say this. I say it in the book, Ric, and you know this:

Forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation. It just doesn't.

For me, I had to be mindful of that.

In fact, the last chapter in the book isn't even mentioned in the table of contents. I don't know if you noticed that. That was intentional because reconciliation in probably a good amount of relationships where there's been a lot of pain doesn't always take place.

Most people, I want people to learn that forgiveness is what sets them free.

If restoration or reconciliation in the relationship can happen, that's great. Sometimes it can't.

For me, I'm grateful that it did, and I was able to help, over a period of time, heal and begin a relationship again with my dad.

As I stand here talking to you in 2022, I'm going to see my dad in a few weeks. I haven't seen him pretty much all year. He lives quite a few hours away and doesn't drive, so that doesn't help to be able to stay connected to him.

But we talk at least once a week.

It's usually very cordial, usually a very surface-level discussion about sports. Occasionally I'll try to go a little deeper, but that's just not who my dad is.

He's not this philosophical guy who can have deep conversations on real-life issues like I can with my mom.

But it's a much better place to be with my dad now than it was a decade ago.

Finding Jesus

Ric Hansen: We're talking with Jason Romano. What a great story and what a great man of Jesus.

So where in the process of all of this going on in your life did Jesus come into your life in a real way?

Jason Romano: Jesus came into my life in 2001—about 21 years ago.

I grew up as a kid who went to church with my grandfather, Catholic church. We went to Mass. I made my First Communion. I made my Confirmation. I did all the things you were supposed to do as a good Catholic boy.

But I had never—and this is not my grandfather's fault or even the church's fault—it was just something that I had never been introduced to: a relationship with Jesus.

So I just kind of did it to check a box.

Usually I was rewarded with something. My grandfather would ask me to go to church with him, and I'd say yes. He'd take me bowling, or for pizza, or to play video games—something that would entice me to go to church.

That's really all I was doing: checking boxes.

I'm glad he brought us. I'm glad he laid a foundation of faith that my grandfather did that my parents didn't necessarily do as much.

But I really had no idea that a relationship with Jesus could even exist.

Fast-forward to 2001.

By this time, I'm working at ESPN. I had been married for a year or so, a year and a half, and we had moved to Connecticut from upstate New York, where we grew up in the Albany area.

At some point a few years earlier, my brother Chris, the middle brother, got saved. And I mean radically saved.

He had chosen to drink and gone down a tough path, but when he began a relationship with Jesus, he did a complete 180 and became a different person.

I watched him and thought he was crazy. I really did.

I thought, "What is happening to this guy who was my brother?"

I loved my brother then, and I still love him now. We're best friends. But I just didn't know this person.

So I became a little bit judgmental, a little bit standoffish, and even a little bit jealous that something else was taking away my brother from what I thought was our relationship.

I was like, "What happened to us? You're at church all the time and you're always talking about this Jesus and this relationship. What's going on here?"

Then I watched my brother over the next few years live his life.

He got married, he had his son Samuel, and as he became a husband and a dad, I saw a different person.

I saw a guy who loved Jesus, loved his family, treated his wife in an incredible way, and was an awesome dad.

It became attractive.

I don't know if I was in the same situation as he was, because at the time the only thing in my life that I felt wasn't really happening was that my wife and I were trying to have a child.

We were unsuccessful for the first year and a half. We had gone through some infertility issues and doctors' visits, and it wasn't happening for us.

Whereas my brothers had kids, no problem. We were really struggling.

That was the only thing in my life where I thought, "Okay, maybe God can help in that world."

Everything else from a surface level, I thought, "I'm great. Got the job at ESPN. It's an amazing job. They're paying me to watch sports. Are you kidding me?"

I had a wife who loved me, and my wife was awesome and is awesome. We had a house, and things were happening in my life on the outside that looked great.

And yet, inside, I realized that I didn't have a Savior for my soul, but I also didn't have a child yet.

I yearned to become a dad. I think so much of what we just talked about with going through the situation with my own father was part of that.

So take you to Mother's Day 2001.

That's when Christ enters into my life, when my brother took us to his church and we experienced worship for the first time.

We experienced clapping and people raising their hands for the first time—much different than the church I grew up in.

But there was something about that day that was somewhat attractive to me.

In fact, I remember the exact words my brother said. He asked me, "What do you think?"

I said, "Oh, it was okay. It was all right."

That was enough for him to say, "Well, come back to the back bedroom with me for a second."

He brought me back to the bedroom. We sat down at the foot of the bed, and he asked me, "Could I explain to you the Gospel and what God has done in my life and see if this is something that you would want?"

And I said yes.

I think he recognized that my heart was open that day.

We prayed a prayer of salvation, and I tell people all the time, though I'm very mindful of this: If I had died that night, I have no idea if I would actually have gone to heaven because I don't know if I knew what I was saying yes to.

A lot of what I was saying yes to, I think, was hoping that this God would answer my prayer to become a dad.

I thought, "Well, if I get God on my side, He'll bless us with a child."

That was the real motivation initially.

I haven't told a lot of people this. I did share it at my church recently, but prior to that, I'd usually just share the fact that my brother asked me to say yes to the Lord, and I did.

And there is a starting point here of this faith journey.

But I was very selfish. I was trying to manipulate God into giving me what I wanted, which was a child.

That's actually a good thing. A lot of people want children, but if that is how I was using God, it's clearly not a relationship.

God loves us, and I have to put my faith in Him and say, "Your will be done."

And if that means I don't get children, well, God is still good.

I didn't comprehend all of that at first.

It took me about a year to understand who Jesus was and to begin to see why we need a Savior, why He went to the cross, how sin is in all of us and why we need Him in our lives, and why God loves us so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross, as it says in John.

Once I got that under wraps, that's when I'd say, "Okay."

I went and got baptized at that point in September of 2002.

That's when that relationship really started to become a relationship.

It's still growing. I'm still learning. I still struggle.

But I'm so glad that my brother took the initiative that day to just say, "Hey, can I tell you about who Christ is?"

Just saying yes at least started the journey.

We don't have to have it all figured out.

I would venture to say I don't have it all figured out right now.

We just have to have an open heart to say yes to the Lord.

And I'm thankful that that day my brother was willing to ask, and I was grateful that God gave me the willingness to say yes.

ESPN: Behind the Scenes

Ric Hansen: I love that story, and it's a parallel story for mine too.

I'm a Catholic boy who kind of drifted away. Then my son, who was 14 at the time, went to Christian camp, got baptized and came back.

I said, "I'll support you and go to church with you."

I went to the church, heard worship music, a rock-and-roll band on stage, relevant conversation, and it was just... yeah. I liked it.

Jason Romano: It was dim, right? It was just a little dim light that eventually would get brighter.

Ric Hansen: Yes, exactly.

So let's talk about ESPN, because I know our audience is anxious to know a little bit about that.

You were there 17 years. You were a producer there.

Some of our folks probably don't know what that means. What does a producer do at ESPN?

Jason Romano: That's a sort of generic term, right?

I was a producer at ESPN, but over 17 years I worked behind the scenes.

First of all, that's what a producer is. They're the behind-the-scenes people that you don't see on television every day.

I started out my career at ESPN on the radio side, the national radio network. I was the producer on ESPN Radio for three years.

That meant show prep, topics that we would discuss, fielding phone calls, booking guests, the direction of the show, letting the hosts know where we were going, what time we had to break—all of that stuff.

So that's what a producer is: the behind-the-scenes guy in charge of a show.

Three years after that, I moved to the television side.

For 10 years, I worked on the television side at ESPN on all of the shows you would know if you watch ESPN: SportsCenter, Mike & Mike in the Morning, First Take, NFL Live, Monday Night Football, Sunday NFL Countdown.

My role was talent producer.

That only meant that I was the booker. I was the guy who would book guests and secure the guests for all of the shows.

Beat writers, athletes, coaches, analysts, authors—you name it. Anybody who could be a guest on a show, I was one of four people who would help secure those guests on ESPN television.

So that was the 10-year mark.

Then the last four years, I was a social media producer.

This little thing called social media came into the world in 2009 or 2010.

By 2012, they had created this new job on the NFL at ESPN and needed a social media producer.

Basically, you were going to be the social media voice for what the NFL on ESPN was.

I thought, "Well, I like to go on social media and I know enough about the NFL. Let's go."

I got this new social media job.

In 2012, there weren't many of us. There were maybe only four or five of us that did any social media at ESPN.

I'm grateful because that taught me a lot about the digital world that we were entering into and are clearly in right now.

It really gave me, even at the age of 38 or 39, a head start into the world we were about to enter into in this new digital age.

Social media was looked at by ESPN in 2012 as kind of this red-headed stepchild over in the corner—the dog we're watching for a week. We don't really care about it much, but it's there. We want to make sure it's taken care of.

That's kind of how social media was viewed early on.

Now it's everything because it's all about representing the brand, and streaming is the biggest thing in the world.

So it's come a long way in 10 years.

I finished my career in my last year as the social media manager on Mike & Mike in the Morning, on their very popular radio show.

That was one of my favorite years at ESPN, but it was also my last year because I knew God was kind of calling me into something else.

I didn't know what that was.

It turned out to be Sports Spectrum, and it turned out to be this amazing sports-and-faith ministry that I now currently work for.

My gosh, did I have a great time at ESPN.

Like I said, "producer" is sort of a generic term because that's what I was for 17 years, but I had a bunch of different roles within that overarching title of producer.

How Jason Romano Got to ESPN

Ric Hansen: It was kind of a Cinderella story how you got to ESPN in the first place, right?

You were just a kind of a young guy, went to broadcast school, walked in the door. How did that all happen?

Jason Romano: I wish I could say I was clearly destined to be a producer at ESPN.

I think in some ways I was, just because of the love of sports that I had.

If you had met me when I was 14, you would have seen a Darryl Strawberry poster on the wall, probably a Tony Dorsett poster on the wall, and definitely a Larry Bird poster on the wall.

That was my life as a ninth grader in high school. All I cared about was sports.

I kept stats. I had notebooks. I fought my brothers for the sports page in the newspaper every day.

I knew sports was what I loved.

I certainly didn't know if I could translate that into a career, much less a career at ESPN.

When I went to college, I knew that I wanted to be in broadcasting. Maybe it would be sports broadcasting.

When I got out of college, I worked for three years at a local radio station in Albany, New York, where I grew up.

I loved that job. It was so much fun, just being 23 or 24 and learning about this new form of radio where you're doing news talk.

We talked about a lot of things that I had zero interest in, but it was radio and it was broadcasting, and it was so much fun.

It was really where you cut your teeth and learn about how radio works, how media works, how to be a professional and what's okay and what's not okay to talk about, say and do.

At that time, I had applied for a job at ESPN on this thing called the internet, which was new at this time in 1998.

They had jobs listed on the internet, and I thought, "You know what? I've got nothing to lose. I'll put my resume in and I'll apply," thinking there's no way they would ever call me.

Well, they called me, and I couldn't believe it.

This was 1998, the first time.

I interviewed, and I didn't get the job. I'd only had about six months of experience coming out of college, and they were looking for a lot more than that.

But just getting to ESPN to interview for a job felt like the greatest story I could ever tell.

Then two years later, the same job opened up in 2000 on the internet, same website.

I applied again.

I had just gotten married to my wife, Dawn.

I remember walking in the day that I had applied. I applied for the job at work at the radio station—and then, which you're probably not supposed to do, by the way, apply for a new job while at your current job.

I'm just saying that out loud makes me realize I was applying for a job somewhere else at my current job.

But that's—I think it would have been okay knowing that it was ESPN and it probably wasn't going to happen.

I remember coming home that day from work and saying to my wife, "Hey, honey, how do you feel about moving to Connecticut?"

She's like, "What are you talking about?"

I said, "Well, I just applied for a job at ESPN, and if they call me and offer me the job, I'm going to take it and we're going to move to Connecticut. So hopefully you're good with that."

She just looked at me like I had three heads and thought I was nuts.

Quite honestly, I thought I was nuts too.

I didn't say that thinking it was actually going to happen. I really said it thinking it wasn't going to happen, just kind of to make a funny joke.

Well, lo and behold, they called me back—the same people that I interviewed with two years earlier.

Long story short, I got the job.

I remember my wife crying a little bit and realizing, "Oh, this is real now, and we're actually going to Connecticut."

Thankfully, my wife was super supportive and knew that this was kind of a dream job for me.

It was hard because she was very close to her family, and thankfully Bristol, Connecticut, is only two hours from Albany, New York.

So we could jump in the car and go see my family anytime we wanted, and we have done that many, many times.

But it meant moving to Connecticut and starting a new life.

And again, this was before I had faith in Jesus, so none of that was in the cards.

But moving to Connecticut was definitely in the cards, and we made that move.

From ESPN to Sports Spectrum

Ric Hansen: And now, in hindsight, somebody might say, "Well, that was lucky."

But in hindsight, now that you know Jesus and have a relationship with Him, you're saying, "Oh, He was a part of that."

Jason Romano: Completely.

I didn't have a relationship with Him yet, but He was ordering my steps clearly at that time.

And I realize now where I am today.

I just went and told my wife that I had interviewed Al Horford from the Boston Celtics for my podcast right before I'm talking to you.

I'm a big Celtics fan now. I didn't tell Al Horford that I'm a Celtics fan because I wanted to be professional with my job. I didn't want there to be any bias.

But I went downstairs to my wife and said, "I just interviewed Al Horford."

I'm 49 years old, I worked at ESPN for 17 years, and I still get excited for my job.

That's why I say God clearly knew what He was doing when I was nine or ten or eleven years old and had notebooks of watching sports.

He birthed into me this passion and love for sports.

What I didn't know He was going to do was turn that into an opportunity to then point people to Jesus.

No idea that would ever happen.

But now I get to talk to Al Horford as a Celtics fan and get excited about that, but then I get to ask Al Horford about his walk with Jesus, and he gets to talk about that.

Honestly, he told me, "This is the only reason I said yes to this interview, Jason. I'm a pretty private guy, but I want to talk about my faith and I want people to know about how great God is."

So when you asked about that, I'm all in.

And I thought, "How crazy is God that He would take me through this journey as a sports fan through ESPN before and after Christ, and then to where I am now?"

I'm doing the job that ultimately I've always wanted to do, but just in a completely different way than I could have ever thought possible.

I get to host a show and interview athletes that I admire so much, but do it in a way that's completely different than ESPN—where I'm talking about Jesus.

I mean, that's only God, Rick. Only God.

Leaving ESPN

Ric Hansen: Let's make that transition in our conversation too, to what you are doing now, which is Sports Spectrum.

In some ways, that's associated with professional athletes' outreach.

That had to be a very difficult decision—or maybe it wasn't—to leave a cushy job at ESPN and say, "Bye-bye. I'm going to go do this other thing."

How did you make that decision? Was it a struggle or was it easy?

Jason Romano: It was not easy.

I wouldn't say it was easy, but I had peace throughout the whole idea of making the decision.

In 2015, I had been 15 years at ESPN and attended a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, with a bunch of other social media managers doing a very similar job to what I was doing.

But here's the catch: I was the only one at this conference who worked for a secular company. Everybody else worked for a church, a faith-based nonprofit or some other ministry.

And then there was me.

I was asked to speak and share about my experiences at ESPN.

God was birthing in me this idea to say, "You know what, Jason? I want you to do more for Me."

I want to preface this by saying you can be in any job—secular or Christian—and be doing it for God.

You can do that. I think God has placed you where you are for a purpose.

Whoever's listening to this, you might be saying, "Well, I work at a restaurant."

Okay, you're there for a reason, and you can still make an impact for the Lord at that restaurant.

But for me, leaving ESPN meant, "Okay, this is the time for you to do something for God with the skills and talents that you had acquired through all those years."

I started thinking about maybe it was time to leave ESPN.

And I didn't like that thought because I loved ESPN and I loved all that came with ESPN.

Even telling my wife and eventually telling my daughter when it was time to leave, they were both surprised.

"Are you sure? Because you love what you do at ESPN, and we love the benefits of you working at ESPN."

A couple years later, it took about a year and a half for that process of finally leaving.

My boss, Steve Stenstrom, called me one day. He's the president of Pro Athletes Outreach.

They had just acquired Sports Spectrum in 2016.

He said, "We just acquired this media ministry called Sports Spectrum."

I was very familiar with Sports Spectrum. I knew about the fact that they had sports and faith intersecting in their stories.

He said, "What would you think about maybe coming on board and helping to rebuild this thing?"

That became very attractive to me.

However, here's the deal: he could only offer me a one-year contract position, and the money he offered me was about 40 percent less than what I was making at ESPN.

So now faith really comes into play.

Ric Hansen: Yes.

Jason Romano: Because if you're in this for the money and the perks and the bonuses, there's no way you ever say yes to leaving ESPN with an offer like that.

I had so much peace, Rick, to say yes.

I just knew, "Yeah, I think this is where God wants me to go."

I had to get through that process of prayer and then talking to my wife and having her say, "Are you sure? Because this is a lot of money that we're losing here."

We had to make sure our finances were in order to at least be able to continue to take care of our daughter and live where we were living.

But I remember clearly sitting down with my wife and saying, "Honey, if this is from God, He's going to make a way."

God doesn't make mistakes, right?

If this is from Him, He'll guide us through. He will make our path straight, as it says in Proverbs 3:6.

I said, "If it's from me, or if it's any feeling I have, it'll probably crumble in my face and I'll end up back at ESPN or have to find another job."

I said, "But let me try this because I really believe it's from God."

My wife was very supportive. She said, "Okay, let's go."

There was certainly apprehension.

February 10, 2017, was my last day at ESPN. That was the day when I said goodbye.

I haven't looked back since.

I have zero regrets on the move that I made.

The great thing is now, five years later, I can look back and clearly God has had His hand on this because I'm still there.

It wasn't a one-year deal. Thankfully, it turned out to be five years and hopefully longer.

I love what we get to do.

It's not anything I have to do. It's something I get to do each and every day.

That is, ask the athletes and coaches of this world who come on our show about Jesus, and then ultimately use sports as a ministry tool to share the Gospel and point people to Christ.

I mean, what more can you ask than that?

From Behind the Scenes to Behind the Microphone

Ric Hansen: The other big transition for you was that you were always a behind-the-scenes guy.

You were the guy setting up the shows, finding the guests, doing all the stuff behind the scenes.

Now, all of a sudden, you're the face of the show and the voice of the show, and you are the personality of the show.

How did you handle that switch?

Jason Romano: That was a big one for me.

When my boss told me about the opportunity to come to Sports Spectrum, Steve called me—or actually, it wasn't a call. It was an in-person, face-to-face meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

He said, "I want you to help restart and rebuild Sports Spectrum, and I want you to host a podcast."

I stopped for a second and said, "You want me to host it?"

He goes, "Yeah, I want you to host it."

I said, "You realize I haven't hosted anything since college. Are you sure?"

He goes, "Well, you worked with the greatest broadcasters in the world at ESPN. You know how to do an interview."

I said, "I do, but not with a microphone in my hand."

He said, "No, you know what type of questions to ask. You know how to facilitate a conversation. You're a pretty smart guy. I think you can do it."

Having his backing and one of my other former colleagues, Raymond, pushing me toward something that was very uncomfortable initially was the best thing they could have done.

Anytime we enter into something that's uncomfortable, usually when we enter into it and don't back away from it or avoid it, we get stronger through it, and we're probably much better for it when we come out on the other end.

Now, five years later, it's natural to me to host a show and hold a microphone.

But here's the funny thing about all this.

If you look in my high school yearbook, there's a little blurb about each graduating senior.

One of the questions was, "What's your greatest ambition?"

I said, "To be the greatest sports broadcaster since Howard Cosell."

Not that I am the greatest broadcaster since Howard Cosell. This just tells you the time—it was 1991.

But I wanted to be a broadcaster.

When I went to college, I hosted shows and was on air. I was in front of the microphone, in front of a camera, hosting a sports talk show.

These are the things I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was in college.

It wasn't until I got out of college and realized I was working with these professionals who were a million times better than me that I got the opportunity to be a producer.

I was a pretty good producer. Even from the early stages, I recognized, "This is a pretty good talent that I have."

And I loved my job.

So that's what took me down the producer path.

But here we are, full circle, at 43 or whatever I was when I left ESPN, hosting my own show.

It's everything I wanted to do in college. It just happened in such a weird way.

The show isn't exactly the type of show I wanted to host when I was 18, but how great is God?

To see Him put me in a position where I don't even know if I'm any good at this, to be honest with you, Rick.

I still think a producer is just in my genes. I know how to do that.

You want me to come and produce your show? I could produce it in my sleep.

Hosting a show, I'm much more comfortable with it. I don't know how good I am at it.

But God has continued to give me this platform and this opportunity, and I want to continue to honor that.

I do love it, though. I do love having it.

The Sports Spectrum Podcast

Ric Hansen: I might just throw in that you are quite amazing at it as well. I appreciate that.

Jason Romano: And welcome, everyone, to the show. I am Jason. This is the Sports Spectrum Podcast.

Ric Hansen: So his podcast is called Sports Spectrum. He's the author of two books. We're talking with Jason Romano.

Jason Romano: I think I see guys like Brock Heward and others on ESPN, and I think, "Man, they are just so talented at what they do."

I try to humble myself, obviously, but when I get a chance to talk to people like Al Horford or any of my heroes, Darryl Strawberry or whatever, when I talk to those guys, I still go back to being 10 or 15 years old and wanting to pinch myself that I'm being paid.

It's not even about being paid, but I'm being paid and I have a job that I get to do that's broadcasting.

But even more now, it's to point people to Jesus.

It's such a unique role that I have, and it's only God. I said that earlier, but it's still the truth.

It's really only God. It's nothing that I could have done on my own merit because I don't deserve this at all.

From Reel-to-Reel to the Digital World

Ric Hansen: He was grooming you through ESPN. He was grooming you first of all by being a producer, then through the whole world of technology.

That was your last four years there, and that's where you are right now.

You're streaming to thousands and thousands of people in a whole different way than you remember back in high school at the radio station, right?

Jason Romano: The first thing I ever did when I got to college, my freshman year, first day in Radio and TV Announcing 101, which was the class I took, was to splice a reel-to-reel.

You'd take a razor blade and cut the splice, then take the tape, edit it, splice the reel, and cue it up.

Anybody who's over the age of 40—or under the age of 40—has no idea what I'm talking about.

But that's what it was in 1991.

It was reel-to-reel and records. CDs were just coming along, cassettes were around.

And now it's just: hit a button on Zoom, record, boom, there's the file.

How in the world did that happen?

But here we are.

He was definitely grooming me, and it was quite something.

Even my time at ESPN when I first started was still using a little bit of the reel-to-reel stuff.

We were faxing our requests on letterhead.

Email was part of it, but email wasn't even considered an official way to request an interview in 2000.

So just in 20 years, how quickly that changed at ESPN to adapt to the new digital world.

And now where we are, it's everything.

When Prayer Isn't Answered the Way We Expect

Ric Hansen: So all of the great things that have happened, all of the answered prayers and the things that were gifted to you without prayer, there's got to be, in the midst of all of that, struggles.

Where were the struggles?

Were there times when you said, "Where is God?" and that your prayer was not answered?

Did you have moments like that along the way?

Jason Romano: There were some moments.

I think the struggle of going through infertility for three and a half, almost four years, with my wife—that was early in my walk with the Lord.

Still to this day, when I got that phone call from the nurse that my wife was pregnant—because we had gone through doctors and tests—I said, "Thank you," hung up the phone, and then I wept in a way that I still haven't wept to this day.

Just thanking God for granting us this child, which hadn't even been born yet.

So there was that struggle during those early years, still trusting in God even when He isn't saying yes to the yes that you want Him to say to when you want Him to say it.

And then, over the years, it was mostly my father.

That was really where the struggle was after I was growing in my faith.

There were struggles at work and trying to be a follower of Christ while working at ESPN, where it can be very difficult sometimes to be so open about your faith.

But that wasn't anything that was crippling to me.

I think it was my dad and just watching him go on this roller-coaster ride for many, many years.

I wrote about so many of those very personal moments when he and I were just not hitting it off—and that's just saying it lightly.

He had some really terrible things to say. He was very verbally abusive when he would drink. Never physically abusive, but sometimes those words cut a little deeper than a punch to the face.

That was really where the struggle was.

I often tell people this when I speak: I never prayed for my dad to be saved by God, which I should have been praying for.

I just prayed for him to get sober.

I thought, "Okay, God, if You just answer this prayer, if You just simply make my dad stop drinking..."

For so many years, he wasn't able to get sober.

That was the struggle, if you will, where the tension with God was, "All right, I'm praying for this very simple thing here, God—for You to just simply make my dad stop drinking."

And my dad wouldn't stop drinking.

Again, that's probably not the way I know now that God works.

God is going to work in the way He's going to work, not the way I want Him to work.

But again, He did answer that prayer, right?

Years later, my dad was able to get sober.

My dad still, to this day, is not a follower of Jesus, though.

So even at 71, which is the age my dad is, and I'm 49, I think about how much time he has left.

Hopefully it's another 15 or 20 years, but it might not be that long.

So I don't have a lot of time here to watch my dad become a Christian.

I can't save him either, though.

That's God's job. That's not mine.

If there's any other tension where I am today, there are other tensions.

I want to have a great marriage. We're empty nesters now, my wife and I, and that's a whole new world to start to acclimate to.

I pray for my marriage a lot.

I pray for my daughter in college a lot.

I pray for people at my church who are going through difficult seasons of life.

But then there's the salvation aspect of my family and my dad.

My in-laws—my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, people on my wife's side—many of them aren't really serious about their faith or don't have a deep relationship or any relationship with God.

My prayers go to that.

As you get older, I think you start to realize that you don't have a lot of time.

We lost my brother-in-law back in January earlier this year, and it was sudden. It was a heart attack in his sleep. He was 53.

There was nothing that gave us a heads-up that this was going to happen. He seemed to be in great health and then didn't wake up one day.

The next two weeks, we had to begin planning a funeral and putting all this together for my wife's sister's husband.

My sister-in-law asked me to speak at the funeral.

It was a very Americanized, secular funeral.

I said to them, "If you're going to ask me to speak, is it okay that I share the Gospel? I have to."

I don't know if Randy, my brother-in-law, knew Jesus.

That's painful to even say.

I hope he did. I hope there was a moment for him that I didn't know about.

But I didn't see that when I was around him.

When they asked me to speak at his funeral, I felt this heavy weight to share the Gospel and make sure I was clearly sharing it.

I didn't want it to be super weird, because that is weird for some people to hear that.

I didn't want it to be, "All right, come to the front and raise your hand."

I just wanted to plant a seed at that point because I knew so many people who were there probably didn't know Christ.

They probably grew up in the same kind of setting that I grew up in—maybe they went to church here and there, checked a couple of boxes, and I have no idea what the fruit is from that day.

But when you go through a situation like that, it really starts to put the urgency of life in your heart and understand that tomorrow isn't promised.

When it really isn't promised and it happens to you with someone so close to you, like your brother-in-law, my wife and I both realized, "What are we doing? We don't have a lot of time here."

I think going through that has helped us have a little bit of urgency to want to see our families come to faith in Christ.

Sports Spectrum Today

Ric Hansen: Well, let's at this point say farewell.

Thank you so much for your inspiration, your wisdom and your podcast.

I encourage our audience to check out the Sports Spectrum Podcast.

It's amazing. You do it frequently, I think. Is it like three a week?

Jason Romano: Yeah, three a week.

Ric Hansen: Holy moly. That is crazy.

Jason Romano: We love it. We like to talk to so many people, and it gives us a chance.

We started out as once a week, Rick, and then we realized I had all these podcasts sitting on the shelf waiting to run.

Let's just do two a week.

Then, "Oh, let's just go three a week."

There was a point when we were five a week. There was a daily show.

I said, "Ah, it's a little too much."

Maybe even a little too much in the podcast space for people and the way they consume it.

So we found that three seems to be a good number for us each week.

We have four other podcasts on our network, and they're all about once a week or once every other week.

Ric Hansen: And then Sports Spectrum also has the daily devotional. It also has a magazine.

So there's all kinds of things.

And the website address for Sports Spectrum is simply SportsSpectrum.com.

Jason Romano: Yes, that's it, SportsSpectrum.com.

There are devotionals, podcasts, and every day there's going to be a new article or story written on our website highlighting an athlete, coach or broadcaster who loves Christ.

Ric Hansen: Cool.

Thank you for your time. God bless you. I hope we can keep in touch.

I'm already learning a lot from you as we speak and as I read.

Great connection. Thank you so much.

Jason Romano: Rick, thanks for having me.

Hopefully this isn't the first and last time we do a podcast together.

However I can help you, let me know.

This was a lot of fun, and thanks for having me.

Closing Thoughts

Ric Hansen: Man, I love the idea that I get to sit here and chat with folks like Jason Romano.

What an incredible guy and an incredible story.

His books are fantastic, his podcast is amazing. It's called Sports Spectrum, and you can get it at SportsSpectrum.com.

So make sure to check out Jason Romano.

Thank you for watching Amazing Greats—or listening to Amazing Greats, whichever it might be.

And we will look forward to seeing you next time.

Remember, if you can share this with someone, that'd be great. If you subscribe, that's great. If you like it, that's great.

And it all helps to get us a bigger and better audience each and every week.

Thank you for watching Amazing Greats.