Profile: Mike Carlson
Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 April 2010 20:26 Written by David Finnigan Wednesday, 14 October 2009 11:18
‘I keep writing or talking about the things that I've always liked...I'd
hate to have to start working at my age…’ Mike Carlson
LIKE the sports he covers, Mike Carlson is an All-American import, taken to the heart of a hard-core British following.
For those who don't already know the man, “Iron” Mike Carlson is the UK’s most popular American sports analyst. From Louisiana to London, Boston to Barcelona, Montreal to Moscow, Carlson has travelled the globe reporting the world of sport. Having worked at the Olympic games in Moscow and Barcelona; commentated on Rugby League’s Super Cup Final and covered the past two Super Bowls for the BBC alongside Hall of Fame inductees Jerry Rice and Ron Woodson and, well… Jake Humphries.
Over the last decade “Iron Mike” has worked almost exclusively in Britain as the face of Channel 5’s late night sports package, explaining the finer details of the American Empire’s beautiful games. Engraining himself to a student dominated audience, with his sharp humour, left-leaning political views and limitless analytical skills.
A jack of all journalistic trades, never finding an answer off limits, and the king of the contentious catchphrase, Mike recently took time out to talk to the Strathclyde Telegraph.
In 1972 Michael Carlson added his name to the list of future great Wesleyan University graduates. Based in Milford, Connecticut, the University counts amongst their alma mater successful television writer Joss Whedon; head coach of the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick; and a member of America's most popular political dynasty, Ted Kennedy Jr.
Twenty-seven years later I asked Mike, back then, where he thought his career would take him. He said: “Honestly, nowhere”.
It was the typically dry Carlson-like response.
After working and then travelling for two years (including a brief spell in the UK), Carlson moved to the French-Canadian city of Montreal in the mid-Seventies where he gained a Master of Arts degree from McGill University. It was also in Montreal that Carlson’s journey back to Britain would begin: “I met an Englishwoman there, and that was that”.
Moving to Britain in 1977, Mike worked as a journalist: “My first day at UPITN was spent, literally, in the bar on the seventh floor of ITN House, and I was amazed over the next five years just how much was produced by a collection of total piss-heads”.
Over the next two decades Carlson has come to find Britain his home-away-from-home, living with his wife, author Kirsten Ellis, and son Nate.
Throughout the 80’s Carlson worked as a journalist, a television sports producer and the head of European operations for Major League Baseball.
It was in the early-Nineties that Mike gained his first on-screen experience covering baseball for ScreenSport and Sky.
Following a hiatus in 1994, where he worked as a freelance journalist, Mike returned to the airwaves as the face of Channel 5’s American football show in 1998. From this point on “Iron Mike” has been a weekly fountain of knowledge for Football aficionados and new comers alike.
Unlike sports shows in America, with their high-testosterone, smack talking between ex-players and token talking-head anchorman studio panels, British NFL fans have Mike Carlson, a man known for peppering his analysis with references to literature, film and politics and for treating his audience as intelligent people.
What makes Mike so different from the archetypal analyst is his ability to bring his own life and natural humour into his commentaries. “It's not really a deliberate thing, it was just part of trying to be entertaining, and keep football in the context of the real world”.
When describing a player’s superhuman leaping abilities, he jokes, “He’s high! But not in the Ricky Williams sense”.
For those who don’t know, Ricky Williams is an NFL Running-Back who spent a large portion of his suspension training to become a holistic healer.
Carlson admits this quirky style is unlikely to garner him favour with US broadcasters, “Seriously, the kind of stuff I've mostly done here, especially with football, wouldn’t translate into the US, and at my age it'd be hard to break in to what is… a contracting market”.
Carlson is further separated from his American counterparts in his left-leaning political views. “There is a sense in which the NFL, and most of the people who cover it, seem to feel an obligation to buttress a particularly right-wing sense of the world - not just celebrating the millionaire ownership – and some but not all presidents; but military and war in general”.
I was interested to see if Mike's political views went further than his on-screen persona, and sufficed to say I wasn't disappointed.
“The funny thing is, I feel like I've been proven right - certainly over the whole post-9/11 war business, and now over the so-called 'free market' economy. By the way, I think it's hugely funny that Condoleeza Rice, proven liar in the international forums, an inciter of aggressive war, and as a result mass-murderer, is being touted for a position in the sports world and celebrated for it. With her résumé, the only place she belongs, apart from the ICC in The Hague, is running the (NFL, Oakland) Raiders”.
To round off the interview, we discussed the recently retired commentator John Madden.
Mike treated me to a typically funny story about Madden's replacement Cris Collingsworth. “I was working on what was probably Cris' first-ever show, the rugby league cup final from Wembley. During the match someone was having a cut swabbed with a sponge, and when the trainer threw the sponge back into the bucket, another player grabbed it and squeezed the bloody water into his mouth. Jim Lampley, the play-by-play guy, said, in a shocked tone, 'Did he just do what I think he did?' and Cris sort of howled, 'I guess these guys really do drink blood!'”
For more Mike, fans of the NFL can catch him every week on Channel 5's coverage of Sunday Night Football. Those interested in his written work should check out the blog-o-sphere that is IrrisistableTargets.com, where Mike talks film, music and TV; including an incredible analysis of HBO’s The Wire.
