Watchdog

"USC was one of those big schools with not a lot of practical application. So I didn’t do much until we had a sports broadcasting class where you took your own tape recorder to a football game and tried to practice it.

"When I left school I found a local cable news show that was done out of a junior college, so I worked on that show for like half a year. You did everything, you worked the cameras one show, you anchored, but you also did field reports. That’s where I kind of started out.

"They had decent enough facilities where people made tapes and got hired out of this thing.

"I’ll always remember this moment: Even though they were rinky-dink, they had decent press credentials. I remember the Rams were still in Anaheim at the time. You basically had to enroll back into the junior college to be a part of this show, so there I was with a college degree back at junior college taking this one-unit class, and the teacher / producer of this show was like, there’s a chance to go interview John Robinson of the Rams, who wants to do it?

"And I remember thinking, oh, I gotta lug the camera around and make sure to get the sound right and this and that, and I thought, oh, that should not be my reaction. My reaction should be, I have to get that on my tape. And I just remember from that moment I thought I don’t want it bad enough to do this.

"There was a guy I used to do stuff with by the name of John Le, and he’s now in Asheville, North Carolina, he’s like this big fish in a very small pond but he loves it there. And one of the broadcasts we were doing I was anchoring and something went wrong and I made a joke about it on air, which was to tape, but he was very impressed by that.

"He said, 'See how he made a little comment there, he’s quick on his feet.' And I thought oh, I don’t want to be Dan Rather, I want to be Chevy Chase, I don’t care about [sports journalism], even though I love sports. So I thought I’d focus my energies on [comedy]."