12/5/2022 football Edit

ESPN producer embraces documentary on Charlie Ward's two-sport FSU career

Bob Ferrante • TheOsceola

Editor

Scott Harves has spent 25 years at ESPN, working on a wide range of projects. His love for college football has kept him busy, often working on pieces for College GameDay and College Football Live and at times bringing him to Tallahassee for games. A few years ago, Harves was talking with some ACC Network colleagues and the opportunity was too much to pass up.

“I just remember when I looked at the list of ACC schools, I just had Charlie Ward at the top of my list,” Harves said. “It was almost one of those, ‘Have we really never done anything to that scope on Charlie?’ So it was just always there.”

Harves committed to the Ward documentary, reading his book, “The Athlete,” and gradually watched every play from the 1992 Florida State football season.

“It really gave me a good sense of what I thought the casual viewer might be able to take away from a documentary on Charlie and that was getting a better understanding of where he came from,” Harves said. “That's sort of how it began and where my thought process started on a project.”

“Twice As Nice: The Legend of Charlie Ward” debuts on the ACC Network on Monday at 7 p.m. The one-hour show features interviews with Ward as well as three of his coaches: quarterbacks coach Mark Richt, offensive coordinator Brad Scott and basketball coach Pat Kennedy. Ward’s family members are also interviewed as well as fullback William Floyd and guard Sam Cassell. Harves said he and a videographer drove from city to city in Florida and Georgia over the course of two weeks to do all but one of the interviews.

Harves was director, editor and producer on the project. He dug deep into ESPN’s archives for interviews with coach Bobby Bowden and Ward. There’s also old video footage to complement details from interviews, such as police escorts at the Orange Bowl for Ward. The quality and quantity of the interviews made it a challenge to edit down to a 30-minute time show.

“When we started the project, it was going to be a half hour, short documentary,” Harves said. “And during the edit. I talked to a couple of our coordinating producers. I said, ‘I know we have more than a half hour.’ I just wasn't sure if we had all the archival stuff that we wanted to fill it out. I edited the first 20 minutes and I think we put our heads together. I said, ‘Yes, let's do an hour.’ The stories that people told us were great. We expanded it from a half hour to an hour just because we thought that the story was worth it.”

The documentary focuses on Ward’s football and basketball career and not just the 1993 season in which the quarterback threw for 3,032 yards and 27 touchdowns en route to winning the Heisman Trophy and leading FSU to the national championship. (The Osceola took a look back at the origins of the Fast Break Offense earlier this fall.) There is also an appreciation for what Ward did in basketball, hanging up his cleats and making a quick transition to the court.

“Are we ever going see a Heisman trophy quarterback being a point guard on a team that makes it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament?” Harves asks, laughing. “I don't know if we'll ever see that again.”

Even after expanding the documentary from under 30 minutes to just over 53 minutes, Harves admits there were still some good stories that hit the cutting room floor. But the project is one he’s proud of and thinks Ward’s candor over the course of a three-hour, sit-down interview as well as the time from others interviewed will resonate with fans.

“It's really fun to work on a project where everyone you reach out to for an interview says, ‘Oh, of course I'll do that. Of course I'll sit down and talk about Charlie.’ It really blew me away at how people love Charlie,” Harves said. “It was hard work but it’s been such a fun project to work on because everyone loves Charlie.”