A day after the Buffalo Bills defeated the Las Vegas Raiders in early October, Christine Lisi had a few choice words for popular ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard, who had questioned the validity of Josh Allen and the Bills’ hot start.
At the end of one of her on-air segments, in which Lisi typically reads an unusual fact, the ESPN Radio anchor reminded listeners that Tweety Bird is a man.
“Sort of like Dan,” Lisi retorted to Le Batard, the gregarious host of a morning radio show on ESPN Radio.
“That,” she added, laughing, “was for Dan questioning the Bills.”
Lisi doesn’t usually go out of her way to poke fun at other on-air personalities at ESPN. But as a diehard Bills fan and a Olean native, Lisi had to defend her home turf.
“I usually stick with the script, but with that moment, I couldn’t resist,” Lisi said, laughing. “It was rag-on-Dan day. I love Dan, so it doesn’t really matter what everybody thinks of Josh Allen, but as long as the Bills keep winning, that’s all that matters. And if people don’t want to give credit to the Bills, oh well!”
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Lisi might be one of ESPN’s most vocal Bills fans, but she’s also one of ESPN’s longtime voices, as she is in her 20th year as a radio anchor with the network.
You’ll probably hear her dulcet inflection recapping the news in sports on ESPN’s morning and afternoon radio shows hosted by Mike Greenberg, Mike Golic Jr. and Chiney Ogwumike. Or you might hear Lisi pitching fun and factual asides during Le Batard’s show, one of the the more popular national sports-talk radio shows. She now lives in Connecticut, but Lisi still has plenty of pride in her Western New York roots.
Sometimes you’ll see her wearing a SUNY Geneseo T-shirt during a simulcast, a nod to her undergraduate years. She started her broadcasting career at local radio and television stations in Western New York.
During spring breaks and vacations in college, she worked at 1360-AM (formerly WMNS, now WOEN) in Olean, where she anchored and edited radio shows, wrote commercials, disc-jockeyed and covered Bills training camp when it was held at SUNY Fredonia.
“At the time, when they had local stations doing neat things like that, I was so blessed to have all those experiences,” Lisi said. “And I was so fortunate to have people who gave me those opportunities.”
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She originally joined ESPN in 1995 as a production assistant for two years, but went back to radio for three years at stations in Springfield, Mass., and Hartford, Conn., before rejoining ESPN in 2000 as a weekend update anchor.
She worked on Dick Schaap’s Saturday morning show, “The Sporting Life with Dick Schaap." But things got really fun on Le Batard’s show, which originally aired Sunday mornings.
“He brought me in and we’d really do silly stuff on the air, like games with listeners that were something like, ‘Who wants to be an idiot?' or ‘Who’s this mystery guest?’ ” Lisi recalled. “If Dan had enough, he’d say, ‘Christine, give them the mystery clue!’
“And now, I’m indebted to Dan for doing that. The element of fun is really important. You want to be right, and you want to be informative, but want to have fun at work. It’s a nice break for everybody, especially now in 2020, if you can make people laugh. I love laughing with Dan and the show, and it carries over and it makes life a little lighter.”
There’s plenty of legwork, though, in her job. As Lisi spoke with The News recently, she was also in the process of reviewing scripts for afternoon broadcasts. Her work as a radio voice doesn't happen solo, either. Lisi is quick to credit her coworkers who are working on assignment desks and monitoring news wires for the latest updates in sports. As sports returned after lengthy stoppages because of the Covid-19 pandemic, so did Lisi’s workload, but she still finds a rush in delivering facts and information in a window of about 90 seconds.
“There is so much news now,” Lisi said. “We went from nothing for four months in sports, and now everything is happening. The challenge thing is trying to include the most important news, because my updates are fairly short. The challenge is always to write concisely, and to get that information in. And to get it right.”
But football came back, and with that the Bills, a team that has stoked Lisi’s passion since her childhood in the Southern Tier. She still talks about watching the Bills beat the New York Jets, 9-6, during the 1988 Thanksgiving weekend, a game that helped the Bills win the AFC East title. She still remembers legendary Bills broadcaster Van Miller exclaiming, “It is fan-demonium!” after Scott Norwood’s field goal gave the Bills the win in overtime.
“And I see so much of that in this Bills team,” Lisi said. “I’m hoping this is the start of something like those years for the Bills.”
The Bills lost their next two games after the win in Las Vegas, but Lisi had some fun with Le Batard’s sidekick, Jon Weiner, after the Bills’ win last weekend against New England.
“Do you feel good after an ugly win like that, Christine?” Weiner, also known as Stugotz, asked Lisi. “I guess you should.”
“I do!” Lisi exclaimed, “6-2! Remember what Nick Foles, the eternal philosopher, said. He would rather win ugly, than lose pretty.”
Lisi said it with the vigor of a diehard Bills fan.
