Ernie Johnson recalls faking his way through World Cup highlights
Ernie Johnson has spent greater than 4 a long time at Turner Sports protecting every part from the NBA to the NFL to Wimbledon to the NCAA Tournament, and was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2023. His colleagues have described him as the most prepared person in any room he walks into. That status was not constructed in a single day, and Johnson himself is joyful to let you know in regards to the second that in all probability finest illustrates how far he has come.
There was a time when he was only a newcomer at TNT who had by no means lined soccer, knew virtually not one of the gamers, and was handed a shot sheet for a Yugoslavia spotlight with one line of data on it.
“One of the things I remember too — look, I was a newcomer to the game,” Johnson mentioned forward of the USMNT-Portugal pleasant earlier this week. “I’m attempting to be taught who these gamers are. It’s not like I may have a look at a recreation and say, ‘Oh, that is so-and-so, and that is so-and-so.’ And I bear in mind we’re doing highlights of a recreation in progress that includes Yugoslavia towards anyone. And lots of our people engaged on the World Cup did not know the actual recreation both. But here is a spotlight of a recreation nonetheless in progress. They hand me a shot sheet with one play that mentioned ‘Hugo hits put up.’ “That’s amazing.”
The one and solely Ernie Johnson reminisces on his early days protecting World Cup motion pic.twitter.com/FM2h7e7A9c
— TNT Sports US (@TNTSportsUS) March 31, 2026
Johnson had simply joined Turner Sports in 1989 when the community handed him one in every of his first main assignments: internet hosting TNT’s protection of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. He had come to Turner from native information, spending years as a basic task reporter and weekend sports activities anchor in Atlanta earlier than getting the decision. Inside the NBA was brand-new — it had launched the identical yr he arrived on the community — and Johnson was nonetheless determining what sort of broadcaster he can be at this degree. Soccer was not precisely in his wheelhouse. It wasn’t actually in anybody’s wheelhouse at an American sports activities community in 1990, which was a part of the issue.
The United States had not certified for a World Cup since 1950. The sport had virtually no footprint in American sports activities media, no established infrastructure for protecting it, and no actual base of institutional information to attract from. The broadcasters who knew soccer effectively had been uncommon, and those who did not — which was most of them — had been largely improvising their way through it.
What Ernie Johnson had for a Yugoslavia spotlight — a recreation, he famous, that was nonetheless in progress after they went to air — was a shot sheet with a single solitary line written on it.
“I don’t think I can go on the air just with that, but I faked my way through it somehow,” Johnson mentioned.
