ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen dies, a DePauw University grad who never forgot his roots

INDIANAPOLIS — Bill Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN and a 1954 graduate of DePauw University who pushed to get the legendary Monon Bell football game on national TV, died Tuesday after a battle with Parkinson's disease. Rasmussen was 93.

Rasmussen's death comes 48 years and two days after the moment he blurted out a really crazy idea that not only changed his life, but entirely shifted the way people consume television, launching the 24-hour news cycle.

"Bill was a remarkable man — a visionary and an innovator who conceived the idea of a network entirely devoted to sports," ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement announcing Rasmussen's death. "Quite simply, none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Bill’s passion and all the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit he put into building ESPN in the late 1970s."

It was Aug. 16, 1978, and the traffic was Friday afternoon gridlock on Connecticut's Interstate 84 as Rasmussen and his son, Scott, made their way to a birthday party on the New Jersey shore.

As they sat at a standstill, the two started talking about possible programming for their newly-acquired 24-hour access to a satellite transponder from RCA, a cutting-edge, newfangled technology few knew much about.

Rasmussen was a 45-year-old former sports broadcaster and public relations executive who had been fired three months before from his job as communications director for the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association.

He was looking for a new way to blend his love of sports with technology."So, they were sitting in traffic and stuck and just brainstorming and spitballing," says Ken Owen, former anchor at WRTV and WISH-TV and a friend of Rasmussen. "And Bill came up with the idea of 24-hour-a-day sports.

"With that, he became a major architect of that quantum shift in the way television presented itself."

In July 1979, Rasmussen was named chairman of the 24-hour cable sports network. In September, ESPN launched in Bristol, Conn., with 80 employees working inside an unfinished building on less than an acre, which was purchased sight unseen.

As ESPN’s founder and first president, Rasmussen shaped the early successes of the company and laid the foundation for its future.

Under Rasmussen’s leadership, SportsCenter debuted, followed by around the clock sports programming and groundbreaking coverage of the early rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in the spring of 1980, which drew national attention for the upstart cable network.

"Bill was our George Washington and a good friend," said ESPN anchor Chris Berman, who joined the network three weeks after its launch. “He was such a grateful person, and every sports fan can be grateful for Bill. He wasn’t a glass half-full guy. His glass was always overflowing with optimism. He greeted everyone with a smile, and we can all smile knowing Bill’s legacy."

Rasmussen, a humble, modest man who never seemed to grasp the gravity of his ESPN founding, talked about the early days of the network in a 2019 interview.

"It all started with a $9,000 credit card cash advance," Rasmussen said. "That doesn't go too far when you're buying satellite time and paying people, but it all worked out pretty well." 

William F. Rasmussen was born Oct. 15, 1932, in Chicago and raised in nearby Columbus Manor, Ill. From the time he could play sports, Rasmussen did, but he especially liked baseball.

After high school, Rasmussen passed up an invitation to a minor league affiliate of the Detroit Tigers and headed to Greencastle, Ind., to attend DePauw University where he was a Rector Scholar majoring in economics and on the baseball team.

In 1954, after graduating from DePauw, Rasmussen served in the United States Air Force then later earned an MBA from Rutgers University.

Rasmussen’s career in media began in 1962 at WTTT radio in Amherst, Mass. In 1965, he moved to WWLP-TV, Springfield, Mass., where he spent eight years as sports director and two years as news director, working on football, basketball, baseball and hockey play-by-play assignments on both radio and television.

In 1974, he joined the New England Whalers, lost that job in 1978, then Rasmussen found himself in a car stuck in traffic with an outrageous idea.

At first Rasmussen and his son launched a network showing Connecticut sports to state residents, but they quickly switched to a 24-hour national sports network.

With financial backing from the Getty Oil Co., a programming contract with the NCAA and an advertising agreement with Anheuser-Busch, then the largest sponsorship deal in cable history, The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (changed to ESPN, Inc. in 1984) launched in 1.4 million homes at 7 p.m. September 7, 1979.

"From Day 1 to today, more than four decades later, SportsCenter — the program that has aired the most episodes in television history — has been the backbone of the network and its signature show," ESPN said in a statement, announcing Rasmussen's death. "(It) redefined the genre of sports news on television."

Owen, a 1982 DePauw graduate, remembers watching ESPN's debut from a house on the same campus Rasmussen called his college home.

"You couldn't have imagined that ESPN would become the cultural force it has become," Owen says. "It's just an iconic brand."

ESPN came on the scene at a time when stations signed off "when you just assumed that nobody wanted to watch television overnight," Owen said. "But the score changed with ESPN. Bill was a visionary because all the stuff that followed, including CNN."

Rasmussen's time at ESPN was short-lived. He left the network in October 1980 and became a sports and media consultant. Throughout his life, he had his hand in many start-up ventures in sports, often involving media, but his immense contribution to the television landscape with ESPN followed him.

In 1994, Rasmussen made Sports Illustrated’s “Forty for the Ages,” a list of sports figures who significantly altered and elevated the world of sports in the second half of the 20th century. USA Today called him "The Father of Sports Television."

Back home in Greencastle, Ind., Rasmussen was so much more than that.

"Bill was a tremendous representative of DePauw,” said Rasmussen’s long-time friend Bill Wagner, assistant athletics director for communications. "His entrepreneurial spirit and vision made the world better. His positive attitude was unmatched and lifted everyone around him. I will miss his friendship. We lost a true legend and pioneer."

After leaving DePauw, Rasmussen never forgot the university. He came back often to help, to speak, to talk to students, to champion the school, and that included his beloved Monon Bell football game between DePauw and Wabash.

In 1977, with Rasmussen's encouragement, ABC aired the Monon Bell as a regional broadcast. In 1979, the same year ESPN launched, CBS' Charles Kuralt did a feature on the game during his "Sunday Morning" show.

It never failed. If DePauw needed Rasmussen, he was there, Owen says.

In 2017, Rasmussen returned to the university for a week on campus that included interacting with students, working with the business school, attending the Monon Bell game and sitting down with Owen for the Timothy And Sharon Ubben Lecture Series "Finding Your Passion, Realizing Your Dream."

"And he did not charge a dime," Owen said. "If I had a student reach out and say, 'How would I get ahold of Bill Rasmussen?' I'd say, 'I'll reach out for you.' And I'd call Bill and he'd go, 'Oh yeah, give them my number.'

"He's a very modest guy. He was not at all bashful. Bill was a salesman, but he was very modest."

Two years after his DePauw visit, Rasmussen revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019. Rasmussen became an ambassador through the American Parkinson Disease Association and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

"When he went public with his Parkinson's diagnosis, he was very deliberate about it, because he was determined not to make it about him, but to help people," Owen said. "And that's a real tribute to him, because he was 86 years old. He could have just quietly gone into the night."

Instead, Rasmussen made it his mission to try to create change for others, continuing to make public appearances to bring awareness to the disease.

"I think of all the people I've known in my life, Bill might have been the greatest impact player," Owen says. "He had a brilliant mind, and he used it for good."

Rasmussen is survived by two sons, Scott (Laura), Glenn and his daughter, Lynn Van Hollebeke, and her husband Louie, seven grandchildren, one great grandson and one great granddaughter. He is preceded in death by his wife Lois of 56 years (2011) and his brothers Robert and Donald Rasmussen, sister Vivien and grandson Justin Van Hollebeke.

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Hunsinger on X: @danahunsinger33. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.   

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen dies, a DePauw University grad who never forgot his roots