There are no millions at stake, no home, no car, no big prize.
Just a job. And some fame.
From 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, ESPN will hold auditions for its new reality series, Dream Job, hoping to find the next SportsCenter anchor.
The series will start with 10 national finalists, and one by one (week by week) the field will be pared through voting by viewers and a panel of judges. The survivor will receive a one-year contract as an ESPN anchor.
Not bad work if you can get it. And so far, plenty have tried to get it.
Auditions have been held in 13 cities, including New York and Los Angeles, which kicked off the process. Roughly 1,000 hopefuls showed up for those, and 300-500 auditioned at other sites such as Pittsburgh and Buffalo.
You are eligible if you are 18 or older and a U.S. citizen.
But be prepared. You will have to take a written test of your sports knowledge, provide play by play and sound bites and stand out in a round-table discussion.
Those who impress will be invited to return for a second day. Then it's on to regional contests in November and December, and on to Bristol for the series premiere in February. At each location along the way, a celebrity panel of local athletes and professional casting agents for shows such as Fear Factor and The Bachelor will decide who moves on.
Professionals need not apply, says ESPN spokeswoman Keri Potts. But other than that, ESPN says bring it on.
Already, the casting calls have produced a dead ringer for Yogi Berra, a guy showed up as Charlie Chaplin and another wore a giant red fedora. One woman handed out her publicity photo, which showed her, ahem, sans clothes. Another guy provided a beefcake photo of himself, claiming he had the perfect SportsCenter physique (you know, for those 3 a.m. shirtless SportsCenters that are so popular).
But the majority of the anchor hopefuls, Potts said, "are the slick-looking, right out of college or broadcasting school type ... very professional looking."
Potts said the final 10 will be a combination of the goofy and the serious, and for the sake of entertainment, I sure hope so. Imagine 10 square-jawed, blow-dried pretty-boy know-it-alls mashing numbers and arguing: Pete Rose or Joe Jackson? Gale Sayers or Jim Brown? Yankees or Mets?
If any situation ever called for a guy in a big red fedora, that's it.
