Chris Cillizza says he was a bit lost when he got laid off by CNN almost two years ago. “I didn’t see it coming,” he says. “I know everybody always says, ‘I saw it coming’ and that they had all these plans for it. Nope. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t have all these plans for it.”
A period of reflection followed. Cillizza says he’d always wanted to get into sports journalism, but interning with George Will when he was a student at Georgetown University led to a job with the Cook Political Report, then the Washington Post‘s once-separate digital newsroom, then the Post itself, then to cable news. “I don’t want to be 75 and be like, Why did I never write about sports?” he remembers thinking.
So last year he wrote a book about US Presidents and sports. And this November he’ll have a new show on DC’s Monumental Sports Network where he’ll interview politicians and politics-adjacent people about their own athletic experiences and fandom. The show doesn’t yet have a title or a more specific air date, but network honcho Zach Leonsis sees it as a way to expand the network’s audience beyond live events and sports analysis to another side of Washington. “If we’re going to be a local network in Washington, DC,” he says, “it seems very organic for us to have some sort of crossover appeal where we can blend sports and politics together in a very humanizing and friendly way.”
Cillizza’s show will be a part of a brand refresh for the network, which announced a new app called Monumental+ on Tuesday. Monumental Sports Network’s parent company, Monumental Sports, owns the Capitals, the Wizards, the Mystics, and quite a few other entities, and two years ago it bought NBC Sports Washington from Comcast. If you don’t have cable or satellite and want to watch those teams, you can subscribe directly to the network, which also offers programs like the Sports Junkies and an interview show from veteran sports broadcaster Rachel Nichols. Leonsis hopes Cillizza’s show will add to the value proposition of the network, which costs $200 per year to subscribe to (new subscribers will also get perks including a pair of Caps or Wiz tickets, multi-view, and discounts on tickets and merch).
Cillizza’s already booked guests like US Senator Ben Cardin and US Representatives Greg Steube and Mike Quigley. He sees it as part of a larger project to better understand politicians. Tennis’ customary sportsmanship shaped George H.W. Bush’s approach to life, he says, while Richard Nixon often bowled alone. “I think we are way better off having a more nuanced understanding of who they are,” he says of elected officials. Cillizza views sports as “a key to help unlock who these women and men actually are.” (He’d love to get former President Obama on the show: “I think Obama has said this, and I think he’s totally right,” he says. “Within ten minutes you can tell what kind of person someone is based on pick-up basketball.”)
That may sound like the type of analysis that drove some people nuts when Cillizza was on CNN, but it fits with an optimistic theory of Washington that many people here share, or at least used to share. “There is space in the congenial middle where we can like treat people as human beings,” he says, “which does not seem like it should be a controversial idea, but I think has become one more and more in the last decade.”
For Cillizza, the book, this show, his Substack publication, his YouTube channel, and his other new gig contributing to Scripps News are just ways to do what he loves. The online audience he nurtured over his years at the Post and CNN is still sizable, and maybe they’ll enjoy watching him hit the ice with Quigley or talk Baltimore sports fandom with Cardin. “I would never wish being laid off on anyone,” Cillizza says, but because of it, he says, “I do think there’s a clarity that came to me.”
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
