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13 September, 2012

JUMANJI!

   In honor of SportsCenter's 50,000th show today, here is my personal favorite behind the scenes story.
I was producing the 2am show with Craig Kilborn and Larry Beil as the anchors. We were waiting for a college basketball game to end so we could go on the air. During a commercial break in the game, an ad for the Robin Williams movie "Jumanji" came on the air. I got in the ear of both guys and said "One of you should use Jumanji as a dunk call on highlights." Craig thought it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard while Larry thought it was funny and was really excited to use it.
   When the game was over and the show started, it just so happened that Craig had the first highlights in the show, which were hoops highlights. On the very first dunk in the very first highlight, Craig yelled "Jumanji!" He also had the next two highlights and used the catch phrase repeatedly.  Larry couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it.
   In the first commercial break Craig explained that he thought since Larry liked it so much, he would steal it, mostly just because he wanted to mess with Larry. It ended up becoming one of Craig's favorite catch phrases. Apparently Robin Williams liked it to, because a few weeks later Craig got an autographed framed Jumanji movie poster for Robin.

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