By Jae-Ha Kim
Tribune Content Agency
July 1 , 2014
For ESPN sportscaster Chris Fowler and his wife, Jennifer Dempster, travel is a way of life. “We never get sick of it,” says Fowler, 51. “Travel really is our vice, moreso than any possessions. We will spend money to enjoy a nice trip and see a place we haven’t visited before.” Fowler, whose duties include hosting “College GameDay” and ESPN’s tennis coverage, also is Brent Musburger’s play-by-play replacement for ABC’s “Saturday Night Football.” Raised in Colorado, Fowler is based in New York. Fans may follow him on Twitter.
Q. Which sporting event would you like to travel to for work?
A. I’ve never covered the Olympics. I’d like to do that.
Q. What work trips stand out?
A. I’ve been fortunate in the past 27 years to take a lot of assignments in a lot of different places. I’ve even been to East Berlin when the wall was up and we had to go past Checkpoint Charlie. The police followed you everywhere. It was similar to being in the Soviet Union before (Mikhail) Gorbachev broke down the barriers, and we were accompanied by the KGB. It was amazing to be in Gorky Park and Red Square. And within the United States, I’ve been to every state but Alaska.
Q. What are some of your favorite destinations?
A. Paris is my wife’s and my favorite city. We also travel a lot to Australia for tennis. You travel to a lot of very wonderful places when you cover tennis — London, Palm Springs, Miami. It’s very different from college football, which I also cover. Africa is a favorite place to go. We’ve been there a few times. We honeymooned in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. We weren’t roughing it there.
Q. Since you travel so much for work, do you try to stick close to home when you take personal vacations?
A. Not really. We don’t have kids, so traveling is a hobby for us. I sort of feel most alive when I’m in nature and far-flung places. Fortunately, our lifestyle allows us to take long trips and go to lots of nice places.
Q. Which city that you’ve reported from had the most enthusiastic fans?
A. Seattle was up there. The University of Washington is one of the top stadiums for noise and the fans are very rowdy. The noise cascades down on top of you from the stands. I was impressed. It’s a beautiful stadium and has the best tailgating spot in the world. People bring their boats up.
Q. Where would you travel back to for the food?
A. I’d go back to almost any winery in Bordeaux or Tuscany. Food is a big priority for us. Wherever we go, we try not to waste a meal. We’ll do research and ask around and find great places to eat with a great view. We’ve found that places that produce great wine are also great places to eat. So we’ve been all over the French countryside. We definitely splurge on wine and food when we travel. I think that the food was phenomenal in Peru. There are other reasons to go there, of course, but the food really is amazing.
Q. What was the first trip you took as a child?
A. We did a lot of family road trips in the station wagon. We drove through New England, where I was introduced to lobster with a bib and tasting maple syrup from a tree. My dad was a college professor, so we didn’t do extravagant overseas trips. But it was fun. Me, my brother and parents in the station wagon driving all across America.
Q. Do you and your wife enjoy the same type of trips?
A. Not always! There are lots of trips that I would say wouldn’t be her cup of tea. Mountaineering is my hobby. Nepal is seared in my memory. When a mountain speaks to you the way it does to me, I can’t find a more beautiful place. Never in a million years would she want to do that. It’s roughing it and sleeping in the cold for three weeks and eating ramen noodles. That’s not for everybody, but I love it.
Q. So how do you both compromise?
A. I go to Australia every year for work and we manage to combine two great trips after that. We went to New Zealand for a few weeks one time. Work exposes you to places where you can tack on wonderful personal trips. The tennis calendar has a two-week gap between the French Open and Wimbledon and we make good use of that. It’s very cost effective, too, when one airline ticket is taken care of through work.
Q. Are you an adventurous eater on the road?
A. I am, but I’m not reckless. I will eat off a street cart. I have a bit of an iron stomach. I’ll eat any kind of stuff out of the sea. I love shellfish and like to sample the local cuisine and drink whatever the local beverage is. But you do get more prudent as you get older. I have gotten sick and knocked sideways a few times eating food you shouldn’t eat. I ate some bad yak meat in Nepal. After three weeks of eating nothing but noodles, I ate the yak meat on the last night. I had been warned not to. It was unrefrigerated meat and I ate it anyway. It was as disastrous an experience as you can imagine. I got about as sick as you can be. It was long-lasting and violent. Western medicine struggled to diagnose it. My brother got ill, too. That was not a fun plane ride back.
Q. What is on your travel bucket list?
A. There’s a long list of places I haven’t been to that I want to get to. I scuba dive and I’m drawn to pristine islands. I want to go to the South Pacific and French Polynesia. I want to go to Tokyo. I want to visit the fjords of Iceland. I would love to visit Korea, China and Vietnam. Most of my trips for work take me to Europe, where we are well traveled. There are so many places I want to visit and so little time. We’re guaranteed nothing. I have the mentality of not putting things off and I’m pretty restless about wanting to see more places than I have time to get to right now.
Q. What are your favorite cities?
A. Capetown is spectacular. In terms of European cities, Paris is my favorite. We’ve been there a few dozen times and got engaged there. I feel very at home in Paris. Prague. I’d like to take my wife there. She’s not been there yet. We tend to spend more time outside of the main cities. Once you’ve been to a place a few times, you look for those off-the-beaten-track experiences.
Q. What place do you think is underrated?
A. I love Chile, though I wouldn’t say Santiago is a favorite. I like going to Patagonia. I think South America is a wonderful, underrated place that more Americans should try. For scenery, it’s just an awesome place.
Q. Do you speak any foreign languages?
A. I fumble around in French and Spanish. I try to brush up before I go. Getting more proficient in languages, mainly in Spanish and French, is on my list of things to do. It would help in covering tennis. If I could change one thing, it would be to be proficient in four or five languages.
© 2014 JAE-HA KIM
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
Nice article as I admire Chris Fowler and his ESPN duties. He is also spot on about South America as I just returned from Santiago, Chile yesterday after having spend eight days there as well as in Mendoza Argentina. What a fantastic part of the world.
Interesting article appearing in the Chicago Tribune, Sunday, July 6, 2014. Mr. Fowler states that he had to go past Checkpoint Charlie and the police followed him everywhere. Quite amazing. I went through Checkpoint Charlie in 1971 and spent the entire day traveling through East Berlin. The main thing at Checkpoint Charlie that the guards were interested in was the amount of money you were taking in/out of the sector. Absolutely no problem traveling about. The only “incident” was that, for some reason, a guard asked us not to take a picture of Hitler’s Bunker location. We had no feeling at all that we were being followed.
Perhaps Mr. Fowler might be interested in explaining his comment. I personally am very skeptical that this happened.