I recently ran into Owen Youngman, one of my former bosses at the Chicago Tribune. It reminded me I had yet to post Vince Doria’s entry in the My First Job series.

Doria has enjoyed an illustrious career. He was the sports editor of the Boston Globe in the 1980s, when the section hummed with big names like Will McDonough, Peter Gammons and Bob Ryan. He served as a top editor at The National and ultimately landed at ESPN, where he now is senior vice-president and director of news.

Yet as is the case with virtually everyone else, it started humbly for Doria. Back in the early 70s, he was the sports editor of the Ashtabula (Ohio) Star-Beacon.

It turns out his small fledgling staff included the young Youngman brothers: Owen, who went on to become at top editor at the Tribune; and Randy, the long-time sports columnist for the Orange County Register.

Here is the latest edition of My First Job:

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I was just out of school at Ohio State and planned on going to law school. I was working part-time for the Columbus morning paper. I walked in a fraternity house and this guy has a want ad. It was for a job as sports editor in Ashtabula. I said this might be a lark for six months before I go to law school.

I’m not expecting much at that paper. One of my staffers was this kid who still was in high school. Owen Youngman. He’s keeping statistics. He’s got this matrix for the high school tennis team.

His brother Randy was writing for the paper. Both went on to do some pretty good things in the business. We had a great sports section, unlike anything ever seen in Ashtabula, nor seen since.

The sports editor did everything. You wrote columns, you covered games. You laid out the paper. You edited all the material. The paper was very sports oriented. We ran all these big tournaments; golf, tennis, etc..

If you were the sports editor, you also ran all of those tournaments. On a typical day of a tournament, you’d come in at 6 in the morning and put the paper together. It would go to print at 10. Then you would go out and run the tournament. It would go all friggin’ day until 7-8. Guys would be drunk, everything else. Then you’d come back in and write up the whole thing.

They also had a wire service. After writing the story, you had to put it out on this old teletype machine that looked like it was leftover from WWII. Now it’s about midnight. We’re in there, and Owen and Randy and I have all these tennis balls. Nobody goes home. We’re throwing tennis balls all over the place.

I tell Owen, ‘I bet you when they took that press out, they found some tennis balls.’

I got to do everything. As much as the writing aspect, the ability to lay it all out was a terrific experience. I went from there to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

We had a great time in Ashtabula. By the way, there was an 8-year kid who lived down the street: Urban Meyer.

It doesn’t get any bigger for Rich Eisen Sunday than being the lead horse for the NFL Network’s coverage of the Super Bowl. He will host an 8 1/2-hour pregame show surrounded by current and future Hall of Famers. All in all, not a bad gig.

Yet once upon a time, Eisen was a raw anchor trying to make a name for himself in Redding, Calif.

In a Super Bowl edition of My First Job, Eisen recalls a particularly rough night when he was just breaking into the business. And I’m sure he will be delighted that I found a Youtube clip of him delivering the sports in 1995. His hairstyle, like mine, definitely has changed.

Here’s Eisen on his first job, which led to an eventual call from ESPN:

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When I was in college, I did stand-up at the student union at Michigan once a month. It has made everything else I’ve done in my career very easy. Nothing comes close to the intensity and nerves of doing stand-up comedy. Going on the road–anybody who does that for a living has my utmost respect.

I decided maybe I could combine the things I love, which is sports and comedy, and get on SportsCenter.

I started in Redding, Calif., KRCR, the ABC-affiliate on election night of ’94. It’s about 3 1/2 hours north of Sacramento. It was like an episode of Northern Exposure, a Jew in the mountain community.

On Saturdays in a small outfit, there’s just me, the news anchor and one person working the tapes. One night, nothing went right. Tapes were going to black and sound bites weren’t working and the graphics were brutal. At one point, I looked at the camera and said, ‘I’m broiling in my own sweat.’ It was one of those boom-goes-the-dynamite moments. I decided to talk about the elephant in the room.

How soon did you get to ESPN?

I was in Redding for 1 1/2 years. I sent a tape to a head hunter in ’95. Al Jaffe of ESPN called me and said he saw my tape and wanted to interview me. That was five minutes after an agent from William Morris called me and said he heard I was an up-and-coming sportscasters.

I said, “OK, if you say so, I’m about to drive 60 miles to cover a volleyball game. I’m not feeling hot at all.”

I called my brother and said, “You’re not going to believe what’s happening…”

I get off the phone and the phone rings again. The guy said it was Al Jaffe.

I’m thinking to myself, ‘It’s not Al Jaffe. My brother called my friends in Staten Island and told them to call me.’

It really was Al Jaffe. So I almost carpet F-bombed Al Jaffe the first time I talked to him. Luckily, I didn’t.

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Eisen went to ESPN in 1996 and stayed in Bristol until 2003. Then he made the big move, jumping the WWL to become the voice of the NFL’s new start-up network in 2003.

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