This article originally appeared
in The Local Voice #207.
To download a PDF of this issue, click here.
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After receiving unexpected notoriety from appearing with Wright Thompson in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary The Ghosts of Mississippi and a brief cameo in Parts Unknown starring Anthony Bourdain, Wright Thompson’s hat will soon host its own daytime talk show. The show will focus on the latest trends in sports uniforms and interviewing prominent celebrity accessories.
Executives at the Bristol, Connecticut-based sports empire made the announcement on Monday citing a huge surge in its popularity since it was first introduced to America.
“Ever since we first caught a glimpse of the fedora resting smartly on top of Wright’s head, casting silent indignation at 1960s Mississippi, our ultimate desire has been to see more,” said Ilan Ben-Hanan, Vice President of Programming and Acquisitions.
The hat’s show will resemble the typical format of a 30-minute show with a rundown of the latest sports and non-sports news, interviews with prominent sports personality’s accessories, and wacky segments in which the hat pokes fun at viral videos of faux pas.
“Think ‘79 Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ home jerseys,” Ben-Hanan said with a grin. “Zoikeys!”
Although the move is being christened as the hat’s “coming out party,” some worry Thompson may be unable to step in front of the camera without his trusty sidekick. After first meeting in Little Havana while the journalist was searching for a former burnout boxer, the two struck up a relationship that would last for almost ten years.
“Without that hat, there is no Wright Thomspon,” the Southern Writer-in-Residence at ESPN said during an interview with a bartender at a dive in Charleston, SC. “And I’ll take another on the rocks.”
Friends say Thompson will keep on ticking and might even make another highly-anticipated appearance on some- or really any- show that films in Oxford if given the chance, but it won’t be the same. Dan Wessler, an Oxford transplant and long-time admirer of Thompson’s work says it is essentially the end of an era.
“Wright without his hat is like Stuart Scott without his droopy eye or Lou Holtz without his lisp. What will he do now, solely write articles? With that face and voice? I don’t think so.”
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