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The Real Mike Greenberg By Guy With The Unfortunate Dye Job Special to ESPNRadio.com You think you know Mike Greenberg?
His biography is short but impressive. Born in 1967, Mike Greenberg was raised in the high-rise life of New York before heading to college at prestigious Northwestern. After four years of college, he graduated with a degree in journalism and embarked on a career in Chicago radio and television before joining ESPN in 1996. Now, he's a regular on SportsCenter and part of ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning show. But what do you really know about Mike, and in particular, his life before ESPN? We sent our investigative reporters out to find the truth about the real Mike Greenberg. And what we found was both shocking and disturbing. It starts in the piney woods of East Texas. The man known today as Mike Greenberg was actually born Michael Joe Bob Green of New York, Texas. His parents, Jim Bob "Bubba" Green and Molly Jo "Pookie" Green, raised little Mike on their ranch and fish farm, where he learned the finer points about bass, catfish, and crappie. In addition to the fish, Mike also helped out around the ranch: regularly feeding pigs, milking cows, and roping the occasional steer. In his early days, Mike kept busy with many extra-curricular activities. On weekends, he regularly attended youth meetings at the New York Baptist Church. He was a member of the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H Club. He was a regular at the county fair and even won second prize once with his sheep, "Namath." Boyhood friend and idol Weyman C. Wannamaker, Jr., explains the name: "He always thought (former New York Jets quarterback) Joe Namath was overrated. I remember him saying, 'Why is Namath in the Hall of Fame? All he really did was predict one big upset. He wasn't even all that good in that game!' So Mikey named the sheep after him." For Mike, though, sports and broadcasting were his true loves. And to his family, it was obvious early on that Mike would get into broadcasting. "Mikey just loved the radio and TV as a kid," said Molly Jo. "He used to watch Lawrence Welk every week. And then every night at bedtime, he would turn on his radio and listen to baseball games." While Mike is reportedly a fan of the Jets and Cubs, his mother tells a different story: "Mikey has been a die-hard Cowboys fan all his life, just like his daddy. He even had his room painted silver and blue as a kid. And the Cubs? Heavens no! Mikey has always followed the Cardinals. He even told me, 'Mamma, some day I'm going to be on the radio. Just like Jack Buck!'"
In high school, Mike attended La Poyner High School in nearby Larue, where he made his mark on the basketball court. Greenberg played four years as a point guard and led the team in assists as both a junior and senior, but the team never had a winning season. When asked about Mike's basketball career, former coach Ralph "Wiggles" Wiggum reminisced, "Oh yeah, I remember Mikey all right. He only had one pair of shoes, and lemme tell ya, those were really worn out by his senior year. His teammates all called him 'Iceberg'. Mikey thought it was because he was as cool as ice, but really it was because he moved as slow as a glacier on the court." Nevertheless, it was his play (and a mix-up in recruiting tapes) that earned him a scholarship to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
In his first year for the Demons, Mike averaged 1.3 minutes and 0.3 assists a game off the bench. But his promising athletic career came to an abrupt end when he suffered a career-ending big toe injury in a freak beer-bong accident at the Delta Tau Chi frat house. After much soul searching, Mike decided the next day to follow his childhood dream of broadcast journalism. He started out doing a graveyard-shift sports-talk radio show on the local college station, and quickly graduated to providing play-by-play for Mid-South Wrestling matches. "Mikey was a, well, an interesting radio guy," said WKKK station manager Arles Struvie. "I mean, he once spent a whole show talkin' 'bout Joe Namath bein' a sissy runnin' around wearing women's pantyhose. Said he probably used moisturizer and got himself a pedicure, too." Little did Mike know then how that broadcast would come back to haunt him. After graduating in 1989 from NSU with a 2.76 GPA, Mike decided to start his career in New York City. His hopes were immediately dashed, though, when he applied for a job at New York's sports radio station WFAN 660 AM. "Turns out the station manager there had heard about his little Namath rant," explains Struvie. "He blackballed him, told everyone in town. Told him no redneck was gonna come up there and do radio, especially one with bad hair and dry skin." Realizing that he was a victim of the dreaded East Coast Media Bias, Mike decided that to be in the game he would have to play the part. His plan involved portraying himself as an upscale Jewish New Yorker with a high-brow education. He began doctoring his image and his resume'. He dropped "Joe Bob" from his name and started going by just "Mike" to lose the Southern stigma. Then, in a nod to his "Iceberg" basketball days of glory, he add "berg" to his last name to make it sound "more Jewish." To his good fortune, many of the other changes were merely sins of omission. Claiming to be from New York was merely a matter of leaving out "Texas". "Graduated from Northwestern State" became simply "Graduated from Northwestern". Lies, yes, but it worked, and the rest is history. ESPN, not wanting to tarnish it's reputation by acknowledging its oversight in Greenberg's background check, has allowed Mike to continue with his public facade'. Co-workers and staffers continually assist in pushing Mike's public image and hiding his private life. One staffer, who wished to remain anonymous, provided a recent example. "Greeny was late coming to the show lately because he had a blowout. On-air, we all made a big deal out of how he couldn't change his own tire, y'know, really pushing this whole 'metrosexual' thing that's been going on lately. And sure, it was true: it did take the state police to help him out. But, y'know, it takes a lot of people to change a tire on one of those monster trucks Greeny likes to drive."
Another former co-worker provided us with this anecdote of Greeny's sporting ways: "Earlier this year, Greeny missed a whole show, and we told everyone it was because he was 'snowed in,' even though everyone in the whole crew had made it in fine. They gave him a hard time about it on the show, for the listeners, calling him a wimp and all. You know what really happened? He'd been swimming with some 'polar bear' club in Lake Michigan over the weekend and his flight back was cancelled." Even Greeny's notoriously finicky eating habits are part of the ruse, as the ESPN commissary staff knows. "Fruit? Bagels? Hah!", chuckled one server. "When we see Greeny coming, we know to get the usual ready: three chili dogs and a malt." One close associate was quoted as saying, "What, you think I eat all those Krispe Kreme donuts?" Even his local garbage collector knows the truth: "I'd never seen as many Pearl and Lone Star beer bottles as you get from that place," pointing over to the new Greenberg farm. When cornered at home on his John Deere, Mr. Greenberg only had this to say to our reporters: "These allegations are totally false and are obviously the product of someone with an unfortunate mind and an even more unfortunate dye job."
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