Series Description

Sports Night was a 30 minute comedy series on ABC about the cast and crew of a sports news program who attempt to produce a quality program while constantly being pressured by their network.

Sports Night Cast

Josh Charles .... Dan Rydell
Robert Guillaume .... Isaac Jaffe
Peter Krause .... Casey McCall
Felicity Huffman .... Dana Whitaker
Joshua Malina .... Jeremy Goodwin
Sabrina Lloyd .... Natalie Hurley
Kayla Blake .... Kim
Timothy Davis-Reed .... Chris
Greg Baker .... Elliott
Ron Ostrow .... Will
Jeff Mooring .... Dave
Suzanne Kellogg .... Alyson

Sports Night Trivia

Robert Guillaume suffered a mild stroke on the set while shooting an episode of Sports Night. Instead of Guillaume disappearing from the show for some petty reason for a while, they actually wrote his stroke into the scripts!

The fictional Sports Night program is in some ways similar to ESPN's "SportsCenter". This show's character "Casey McCall" played by actor Peter Krause was loosely bases on SportsCenter anchor "Craig Kilborn".

Series creator Aaron Sorkin originally conceived Sports Night as a movie but couldn't come up with a plot that made sense to him for a full feature length film. Changing his creation to a 30 minute episodic TV series solved that problem.

Sorkin lost interest in Sports Night in 2000 when another of his series, "The West Wing" had a first season of hit ratings behind it. He decided to abandon Sports Night with its less than stellar ratings to concentrate on keeping the quality of The West Wing as high as possible. ABC decided to drop the series due to ratings and Sorkin's exit. Several cable networks wanted to buy the series but all backed out when Sorkin absolutely refused any further connection with the show.

Episodes List With Original Air Dates

Sports Night - The First Season

1. Pilot Episode (9/22/1998)
2. The Apology (9/29/1998)
3. The Hungry And The Hunted (10/6/1998)
4. Intellectual Property (10/13/1998)
5. Mary Pat Shelby (10/20/1998)
6. The Head Coach, Dinner, And The Morning Mail (10/27/1998)
7. Dear Louise... (11/10/1998)
8. Thespis (11/17/1998)
9. The Quality Of Mercy At 29K (12/1/1998)
10. Shoe Money Tonight (12/8/1998)
11. The Six Southern Gentlemen Of Tennessee (12/15/1998)
12. Smoky (1/5/1999)
13. Small Town (1/12/1999)
14. Rebecca (1/26/1999)
15. Dana And The Deep Blue Sea (2/9/1999)
16. Sally (2/23/1999)
17. How Are Things In Glocca Morra? (3/9/1999)
18. The Sword of Orion (3/23/1999)
19. Eli's Coming (3/30/1999)
20. Ordinance Tactics (4/6/1999)
21. Ten Wickets (4/13/1999)
22. Napoleon's Battle Plan (4/27/1999)
23. What Kind Of Day Has It Been (5/4/1999)

24. Special Powers (10/5/1999)
25. When Something Wicked This Way Comes (10/12/1999)
26. Cliff Gardner (10/19/1999)
27. Louise Revisited (10/26/1999)
28. Kafelnikov (11/2/1999)
29. Shane (12/7/1999)
30. Kyle Whitaker's Got Two Sacks (12/14/1999)
31. The Reunion (12/21/1999)
32. A Girl Named Pixley (12/28/1999)
33. The Giants Win The Pennant, The Giants Win The Pennant (1/11/2000)
34. The Cut Man Cometh (1/18/2000)
35. The Sweet Smell Of Air (1/25/2000)
36. Dana Get Your Gun (2/1/2000)
37. And The Crowd Goes Wild (2/8/2000)
38. Celebrities (2/29/2000)
39. The Local Weather (3/7/2000)
40. Draft Day - Part 1: It Can't Rain At Indian Wells (3/14/2000)
41. Draft Day - Part 2: The Fall Of Ryan O'Brian (3/21/2000)
42. April Is The Cruelest Month (3/28/2000)
43. Bells And A Siren (4/4/2000)
44. La Forza Del Destino (5/9/2000)
45. Quo Vadimus (5/16/2000)