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Norman Chad |
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December 2007
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Whether sitting in front of the TV at his home in Los Angeles, or
biding time in his revolving New York hotel room as he waits to be
summoned to an ESPN sound studio, on most any occasion these days,
you’ll likely fi nd poker announcer extraordinaire Norman Chad the way
he often prefers life: just chilin’ by himself.
Not pondering why - once again - he's player at a fi nal table of the
World Series of Poker move all in on just a draw, or where Freddy
Deeb’s lucky shirt or Greg Raymer’s creepy glasses have been lately.
But rather how he’s evolved into a 49-year-old man who his own friends
say actually gets along better with children and dogs than with adults
of any age; or whether he can work in a jab about his most recent
marriage – Wife No. 3 – into an on-air conversation.
“I was George Costanza before there ever was a George Costanza, baby!”
Chad quipped during a late September interview with BLUFF Magazine
after a long day of taping for the ESPN broadcast of the 2007 WSOP
H.O.R.S.E event, comparing himself to the famous lovable loser from
Seinfeld when asked to sum up one thing: Who exactly was the man behind
the now-iconic voice and wit everyone knows from the worldwide
phenomenon televised poker?
Or as Chad quickly describes it, “One of the oddest pursuits ever in Western Civilization.”
Love him or hate him – poker pros, aspiring pros, ESPN viewers, and
Internet bloggers – one fact is undeniable about the
sports-reporter-turned-stand-up-comedianturned- sitcom-writer-turned
poker announcer who continues to be a mainstay in the game, despite its
constantly changing cast of characters: Norman Chad’s name, his face,
his utterly distinct voice, and his unparalleled sense of humor, are
all synonymous with the poker boom that hit in 2003 and, to this day,
shows no signs of slowing down – or moving on without him.
Yet, Chad – nearly fi ve years later and ratings through the roof at
ESPN – still modestly believes he had little to do with any of it. “I’m
not being falsely earnest when I say this but you would’ve put Pee Wee
Herman, Pat Paulsen, or Kato Kaelin next to (ESPN co-host) Lon
McEachern, and the boom still would’ve happened,” Chad laughed. “I’m
just a passenger in the getaway car.”
Yet, in plenty of corners of the world right now, there’s a 13-year-old
kid, a successful businessman and even a few grandmothers who just
busted their friend out of a home game, only to follow with a one-line
“Norman Chadism,” if you will, like “You just got WHAMBOOZELED!” or
“You can’t bluff me… I’m Allen Cunningham.”
And while reaching a level of iconoclastic status like a Seinfeld
doesn’t seem easy, it’s actually really not that hard when people love
your work.
“Norm’s been intricate in a lot of the success ESPN has had with poker.
And to top it off, the guy’s pretty darn funny,” said world champion
poker pro Daniel Negreanu. “Poker had never been on TV to this
magnitude, or presented like this before he and ESPN came along in
2003.”
As for the story behind Chad’s journey to notoriety and fame – even to this day – it’s something he still can’t make sense of.
“The first time I walked into Binion’s (Horseshoe Casino) in 2003, I
took one look around the room at the cast of characters and realized
this job was going to be everything I’d ever dreamt of. I swear I
asked myself, ‘Where has this been all my life?’” Chad recalled with
genuine excitement in his voice. “Then, after I watched the fi rst show
before it aired, I was so impressed at the gritty, real-life gambling
feel these new producers had given it, it was just unbelievable. I
watched about 15 minutes and then immediately called Lon, and said:
‘Lon, it really is that good - - and all we can do is fuck it up.’”
Lucky for poker, Chad’s effect was quite the opposite.
‘I was never cool’
From a young age, one constant epitomized Chad’s life, and still does to this day: television.
When the school recess bell rang, Chad stayed inside and cruised the
tube. In the evening, it was always I Love Lucy reruns and The Late
Show. And while other kids played sports, Chad preferred watching real
professionals play them on TV.
“I mean, my friends would come in all scraped up and dirty from being
outside. Who wants that?” Chad asked in his trademark, high-pitched
tone that let you know he was on the verge of a mini-tirade. “Not me! I
didn’t wanna get hurt!”
Becoming a self-described shut-in early on not only fueled what today
is the cynical, sarcastic personality poker viewers have grown to love,
but all the hours spent watching TV taught him a few things about
himself – and his future.
“Well, let’s see… I was never cool growing up,” Chad began, “and there
(I was) sitting in front of TV all the time, so I knew at an early age
somehow my life would have something to do with television. As it
turned out, here I am still watching TV – now I just get paid for it.”
Chad grew up in Silver Springs, Maryland, with a soft-spoken, clever
father named Seymour and a mother named Perla, who was Cuban born and
had a fiery Latina attitude
to match.
“My father didn’t really say a whole lot, but when he spoke, you
listened, while my mother was constantly yelling and swearing at us in
Spanish, even though she never bothered to teach (my brother or sister)
how to speak it,” Chad laughed. “So we never really knew what she was
saying,”
No one in the family cared for sports or gambling. But that was OK – Chad had enough to go around.
And while the gambling bug didn’t bite until college, the interest in
being a spectator at athletic events rather than a participant led Chad
to become the sports editor of his high school newspaper, which
eventually led to applying at several top-notch journalism schools
after graduation like Northwestern, Boston University, and American
University.
“After I started applying, my dad tells me, ‘Maybe you should think
about going to the University of Maryland for a couple of years fi rst,
and then maybe you can transfer,’” recalled Chad, who graduated high
school in 1976. “I had absolutely no interest in going to Maryland, so
I looked at him and said, ‘Are you kidding?!!?’”
But unfortunately, says Chad, five and a half years later he became a
Terrapin grad – and he's had a steamy love-hate relationship with UM
ever since.
(Very little) Sex, (lots of) lies
and (plenty of) parking tickets
For a guy who worked for the Washington Post while still in college,
wrote a nationally syndicated NFL prediction column, penned his own
book, and had several sitcom scripts picked up by major networks before
becoming a living legend of sorts to ESPN’s poker fans, one would think
something positive came out of Chad’s experience at Maryland.
Well ... think again.
“I went to my first two journalism classes, and I swear to God, I was
like, ‘What the fuck! This is shit for fourth-graders!’” Chad said. “So
I changed my major to something called American Studies – because you
had to pick something – and I figured as long as I read good writing
and practiced real-world journalism, I’d be fine.”
Sure enough, he was right.
By his sophomore year, Chad was not only the sports and lifetime and
leisure editor of the campus newspaper, but he also wrote for a local
weekly, tabulated results at the local race track, and covered high
school sports on Friday and Saturday nights for the Washington Post.
"I had so many jobs, I actually dropped out of school twice because I
was working so much,” Chad said, adding it was a good thing the track
was more than a half hour away, or he and his young, action-hungry
friends might be there every night. “At one point, my father called me
up and said, ‘I’m not paying for you not to go to school.’ But because
tuition at Maryland at that time was less than what it cost for books,
I told him – and he didn’t like this – ‘Dad, it’s $400 a semester…
and it’s Maryland! How about I just give you the $400 if it makes you feel better!’”
It didn’t.
"My dad said it was more about the principle, and the fact that I was
running up more fees in parking tickets. He asked me, ‘How do you have
so many parking tickets when you’re never on campus,’ and I said, ‘OK,
Dad – don’t be a smart ass.’”
At age 20, another factor of Chad’s declining interest for classes was
not from the countless girls he was supposed to be frolicking with
during his formative college years, but rather another vice: late-night
dormroom poker games, where the alcohol and bad plays never ran dry.
Although, the beginning of his most public days battling to learn how
to live in unison with a woman, then become happily married --- and
stay that way -- weren’t far behind.
Guilty as charged
Chad admits he hasn’t pursued any woman he’s ever dated or been married
to – rather it’s oddly been the other way around. And while he says he
was never the guy with the rat-tail, corny lines and bad breath in high
school who was constantly getting slapped by all the girls, he was the
first in line for a Sadie Hawkins dance.
“I’m not a social person and I’m not into one-night stands, so if a
woman showed interest in me, I was hers until she threw me out the
window,” Chad said. “Once I got a girl, I would just hold on for dear
life until she gave up. Hey, I might be a loner, but I’m not stupid! I
know I’m no Brad Pitt or Warren Beatty.”
The first to corner Chad was Jodi, whom he met at Maryland -- another
possible reason he dislikes the university. The two began dating in
1979, they were married in 1984, and by 1986 she’d offi cially “given
up.”
However, much of that had to do with the fact the go-getter,
super-sports journalist Jodi had fallen for at Maryland had given up
his passion when he graduated in 1981, and was trying a new line of
work that wasn’t exactly stable: stand-up comedy.
But Jodi wasn't laughing. And she wasn’t alone.
"I decided in 1981 that I’d had enough of sports writing and I wanted
to get out of it, so, naturally, I became a stand-up comedian. But
there was only one problem: I simply wasn’t funny,” said Chad with a
twinge of embarrassment in his tone, as if recalling his fi rst divorce
wasn’t painful enough; here he was reliving the “act” that helped bring
it down.
Near the end of the nuptials, Jodi enrolled in law school, while Norman
continued to work on his “set,” which contained a gamut of
observational humor, political puns, and --- of course --- sappy
one-liners.
“There were just nights when I would bomb, and it had nothing to do
with the crowd – and everything to do with my jokes,” he said. “I mean,
when I go back and watch a tape of it now, I cringe when I see what I
tried to pass off as comedy. It was awful! To give you an example, I
tried to close each of my shows with an impression of a Siberian Husky!
Let me say this again: a Siberian Husky!! Unless you’re Robin Williams
or Don Rickles, you were pretty much guaranteed to fail.”
Before Jodi bolted, however, she talked Norman off the stage and back
to the Post fulltime, writing a TV sports column that’s still famous
today called “Couch Slouch.” But by then, the marriage was beyond
repair. During Jodi’s second year of law school – a year Norman paid
for with $10,000 of his poker winnings from a local game he’d started
playing in with lawyers and car dealers – she left him.
“It’s bittersweet these days, because she went on to be a great
lawyer,” Chad began. “But looking back, I definitely was the first
person she successfully prosecuted.”
Undoubtedly, Chad pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, because not long after, he’d do it again.
Hello, ESPN. Goodbye, old life
From the time he got divorced from No. 1 in 1986 until the time he got
the call from ESPN in 2002, there’s a period of Chad’s life he calls
the “scrambling times.”
He left the Post in 1989 to join a new newspaper called the National
Sports Daily that was supposed to be a competitor to USA Today. But
the paper went under in sixteen months and, instead of returning to the
Post, he decided to infuse his love for writing with his passion for
stand-up comedy.
The result? A rash move to L.A., where he became a struggling sitcom
writer who sold just five scripts during the next ten years. Though,
they were respectable gigs: two episodes for ABC’s Coach, and three for
HBO’s Arli$$.
“Even shows like that, those were scrambling times, and I think my
father is still mad at me for leaving the Post,’ said Chad, who
riginally afforded the cross-country trek to LA with a salary from a
weekly column he began doing for Sports Illustrated when the National
Sports Daily folded. But he was so unhappy with the multi-layer level
of editing at SI and the way his work was butchered, he compares its
editors to “Olympic figure skating judges. One’s Russian, one’s
Yugoslavian – you don’t know what they want!”
As a result, Chad didn’t renew his contract, and these days calls his time with SI, “my worst career decision to date.”
However, that poor decision would rival his next one: Wife No. 2.
"I met Rhonda when I was working at the National Sports Daily,” Chad
recalled. “As with the last one, she asked me out fi rst. But unlike
the last one, which I thought would last forever, I knew fifteen
minutes into the marriage I’d made a horrendous error in judgment.”
This time, though, Chad actually was the one to call it quits, ending
the marriage less than a year in, and mentally noting experiences from
Wives No. 1 and No. 2 – experiences that became infamous for finding
their way into his work.
"Whether I was on the radio, or writing my NFL picks column, which I
still did during that time in syndication around the country, I was
always taking a shot at my marriages,” Chad said. “One time, when I was
doing a radio interview, the guy asked me, ‘So, Norm, I hear you got
remarried. How’s that workin’ out?’ and I replied, ‘Well, I’ve always
said I wanted to get married three times in my life, and I fi gured I
needed to get No. 2 out of the way so I could hurry up and move onto
No. 3.’ Let’s just say it didn’t score me any points.”
And that was OK, because he was about to score big with ESPN.
Divorced for a second time and doubting his future in Hollywood, Chad
got a call from former ESPN executive Mark Shapiro in 2003. At fi rst,
Chad was skeptical.
“I was like, ‘Huh? Televised poker? Yeah…I’m gonna have to get back to
you,” Chad said. “I thought they were crazy, and I was pretty sure they
only called me because I was the only guy they knew with a gambling
problem.”
Chad found out he would be paired with McEachern, an accomplished
sportscaster in his own right, who actually was a fan of Chad’s long
before they ever met.
“I used to look forward to reading the paper every Friday for his NFL
picks column,” said McEachern, who was equally as skeptical as Chad
about TV poker. “So I knew he was funny, I just didn’t know he was like
that without even trying. I think I’ve probably shared more laughs with
Norm than anyone my whole life, and we’ve only know each other five
years. It’s rare, but with him, whatcha see is whatcha get.”
Chad and McEachern eventually began discussions with 441 Productions, a
freelance company headed up by Matt Maranz and Dave Swartz that ESPN
hired to produce the show. Maranz and Swartz immediately felt the duo
was exactly what they were lookingto give poker a makeover.
“I say this in all seriousness: (Matt and Dave) deserve every bit of
credit,” said Chad, who actually wrote a memo to ESPN before meeting
Maranz and Swartz and told the network everything he felt needed to be
done to make the show a success, including the introduction of the
hole-card cam, the need to detail players’ background stories and
allowing them to be miked up. “I found out later that the new producers
never even saw my memo, but all those things (were incorporated), so I
felt good about my analysis.”
Of course, the idea and show taking flight also had a lot to do with a
guy named Chris Moneymaker, whose magical run in the 2003 Main Event
captivated audiences worldwide – with Chad right there calling the
action every step of the way.
“This is beyond fairy tale – it’s inconceivable,” was the quote Chad
used to describe Moneymaker – a quote that runs in loops on every ESPN
poker broadcast at the opening of the show and is infused in the brains
of every amateur poker player out there dreaming of one day winning the
big one.
Right away, others – especially pro players – began taking notice of
Chad, even if they didn’t always like what they were hearing.
Just ask Phil Hellmuth.
“Sure, Norman’s attacked me, and the things he said about me even in
the first year were brutal at times, but I’m gonna be honest: I loved
it,” said the notorious ‘Poker Brat,’ who easily has taken more on-air
ribbing from Chad than anyone else in the history of ESPN’s telecasts.
“My parents hated it and still don’t like him – my dad even said he was
gonna ‘pop him’ – and it bothered me that the other players constantly
teased me about it. But, hey – what can I say? The guy has probably
made me $10 million, all while turning me into the bad boy of poker –
and I love being poker’s bad boy.”
But perhaps the storm Chad helped brew which drew the biggest uproar
was with poker pro Josh Arieh during the 2004 Main Event, when Chad at
times berated Arieh for his unsportsmanlike antics, and at one point
quipping he hoped the third-place money Arieh won would go toward
buying him “some manners.”
“In the poker world, that whole thing was a pretty big deal,” said
Negreanu, who – despite being known as both a gentleman and gracious
loser at the table – takes Arieh’s side. “But Norm was new, he wasn’t
an accomplished poker player or analyst, and he was learning. So, I
think after a few of the players explained that, ‘Hey, we’re owed a
little more respect than that. We put up our own money, there’s a lot
at stake here and we have a right to act how we want, to a degree,’ I
think he realized he crossed a line. And it hasn’t happened since.”
Negreanu then laughed before adding: “But I love all the wife jokes. I hope he keeps doing those.”
The Arieh incident not only drew ire from players and fans, but a Web
site called firenormanchad.com suddenly appeared and T-shirts were
printed with the same slogan pasted across the front.
Chad’s response?
"A lot of the criticism I received was legitimate. I didn’t discuss
strategy; I didn’t go into which plays were correct, and which weren’t.
I avoided those things because I tended to sound stupid, rather than
informative. Sometimes, the producers will tell me to go back and talk
about why a player limped with J-10 off-suit under the gun, and I say,
‘Why don’t you go back and do it?’ Why? Because I sure as hell don’t
know, and I really don’t care!” Chad said. “I had my own idea of how I
wanted to do this (when I was hired), and it was going to be more about
things like, which player had the best haircut, winning with grace and
losing with grace, all while poking fun at myself. And two years in,
there had been very little direction or changes iven to us by the
producers, other than to tell me things like my joke about Mussolini in
Episode 3 was no good.
“Otherwise, it was pretty much ‘We like what you’re doing – keep doing
it.’” Doing his thing, however, turned Chad into an overnight celebrity
– something he still isn’t all that comfortable with.
“I’ve done a lot better work in my life than poker on ESPN. Yet, it
seemed to be a carnival everywhere I went at first,” Chad said. “It’s
calmed down since, but to think I was suddenly someone important
because I was on TV, talking about the color of some guy’s shirt,
seemed ridiculous. TV fame is stupid, and I struggled with that
intellectually for a while. I was suddenly more important than I used
to be because I was on TV? I mean, it’s not like I came up with a cure
for Polio!”
Maybe not, but because the highest-rated poker show happened to be the
one Chad helped birth, few would argue his impact on “one of the
oddest pursuits ever in Western Civilization.” And certainly not the
guy Chad says has the “toughest job in the world because he has to sit
next to me for eight hours a day for four straight months.”
And with a half-hearted laugh as if he is always ready to chuckle at
anything Chad says, McEachern playfully agrees, then throws the
compliments right back.
“Norm is about as unique as it gets, and I applaud anyone who can do
something new and fresh in this industry. It’s rare,” McEachern said.
“As much credit as the producers and ESPN deserve, there’s no doubt in
my mind he’s the backbone of the show.”
‘I needed some new material’ (sponsored by Wife No. 3)
Five years since Norman Chad made his debut on the television
airwaves, he’s a bit older, hopefully wiser, and as of recently,
married for the third time.
Chad’s new love’s name is Toni – and he promises this one will be his last.
“I just got remarried, Lon,” Chad said during a recent 2007 WSOP broadcast, “What can I say? I needed some new material.”
And Toni doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’ve tried to impose my will on him, but it doesn’t matter: He refuses
to listen,” she laughed. “I tell him all the time that one day I’m
going to bound and gag him, write his column how I want to see it
written, and then throw on my Norman Chad mask and go down to ESPN and
do some of my own material.”
Norman and Toni, who have known each other for years, got married at
the RIO All Suites and Hotel Casino the day before the 2007 Main Event
started, and the duo now lives in LA with Toni’s two kids. Toni runs a
catering business year-round (she actually caters for the ESPN crew
during taping sessions),while Chad spends more than half the year in
New York sitting in a sound studio –where 95 percent of the WSOP is
produced, rather than Las Vegas as it would appear – with a pair of
headphones and a mike in front of a massive movie screen, calling all
the final table action on tape.
“On average, a final table is 140 hands; we’ll show about 15,” Chad
explained. “We’ve seen the tape of the full action beforehand, but we
don’t see the final cut until we sit down to tape, so nothing we say is
rehearsed or scripted. It’s a grueling process sometimes with 10- or
12-hour taping days, but the final product is always worth it. And even
today, there are times when we stop and Lon and I will just look at
each other and just say, ‘Can you believe we get paid for this?’”
How long Chad gets paid, however, is up in the air at the moment. His
contract with ESPN expires “in 2009 or 2010,” he says, meaning there’s
no guarantee of a return. Many pros are quietly calling for new blood
in the ESPN booth, saying now that the viewing public has been heavily
educated on how to play poker for the last five years, it’s time to
turn it over to a pro who can take the show to the next level.
“I think everyone was surprised when they found out that ESPN had hired
two guys to call poker who knew very little about it,” Hellmuth said.
“Of course, then we found out that ESPN’s coverage wasn’t all about
poker, but instead it was also about the characters and the stars of
the games. After all, you can’t have a sport without stars. But at this
point, I think people are ready for more analysis, which also means you
lose a lot of your audience. So it’s a double-edged sword.
But, for Chad, it’s really not.
“Hey, I’ve had a wonderful ride and if it ends, it ends. For all I
know, this poker ‘schtick’ the last five years has prevented me from
accomplishing something great or better,” Chad said. “About every five
years, though, I do like to challenge myself again to keep from getting
stale because it diminishes your return on creativity. Chances are,
you’re not going to get better, and likely a little worse. Right now,
I’m just going to enjoy the next few years, and reevaluate after that.”
Until then, he plans to savor life with the new missus, travel from
coast to coast, and continue to amuse and enlighten poker viewers
around the world.
Unfortunately, he’s a little too busy to entertain any possible
speaking engagements at Maryland in the near future – if they’d even
have him.
“I’ve been asked by education institutions all over the country to come
and speak to journalism and broadcasting classes, but never once has
anyone from Maryland contacted me and invited me back for so much as a
homecoming parade,” Chad said. “I only hear from them when they want me
to clear up some old parking tickets.”
As for where Chad’s next ticket is punched still remains to be seen.
But like a degenerate gambler who’s always looking for that next piece
of action, Chad says he’s up for anything.
“If the Home and Garden Network called me tomorrow and told me they
wanted to do a new reality TV show on gardening and they wanted me, I
might say, ‘Cool, let’s go!’” Chad quipped. “I don’t know much about
gardening --- except make sure you bring a light set of jewelry!”
If that happened, surely George Costanza would be proud.
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