• Matt Iseman from Sports Soup on Versus

Sports Soup is patterned after Talk Soup/The Soup but with a sports twist. The show is hosted by Matt Iseman who took the easy route to television fame. He went to Princeton University, and then got his M.D. from Columbia before ditching medicine for comedy.

I talked to Matt by phone last week about the show, how he became a sports fan, and who we will probably never see him go after on Sports Soup. Check it out after the jump.

HG: Matt thanks for giving me some of your time.

MI: HG thanks for having me.

HG: Your show, Sports Soup, was built in the model of Talk Soup, The Soup. What’s it like carrying the torch of the concept into the sports world?

MI: It’s great when I look at Kinnear, John Henson, Aisha Tyler, and now Joel McHale.. The good news is, they’ve all done well so I’m just hoping to ride on their coattails. One great thing is the show works obviously for pop culture but I think it’s the format that works so it’s nice heading into it knowing that we’ve kinda got a proven format. I think if you’re a sports fan too, it really makes sense. It’s fast paced, clip based, you won’t get bored and sports fans are used to watching clips so instead of commenting on them we’re going with a little bit different angle and trying to be funny and even if we’re not at least the clips are entertaining.

HG: How did you become a sports fan or are you a guy pretending to like sports to pull a paycheck?

MI: I’ve been brainwashed with sports since I was a little kid. I grew up in Denver. My dad had season tickets to the Broncos, the Colorado Rockies when they were a hockey team before they moved to Jersey. One of my vivid early sports memories is standing on a chair at McNichols Arena chanting Jim Craig sucks. It was about ‘81 or ‘82 because it was right after the Olympics. But I’ve loved sports all my life. I played baseball, football, basketball growing up, skied too. I played baseball at Princeton and then kind of became a doctor. That ended up not being the correct career choice so I quit, started doing stand-up, and fell in love with comedy. When they said there was a show that was combining sports and comedy for me it was in my wheelhouse and I’m just glad I got the nod.

HG: I’m glad you brought up being a doctor. You retired from the profession due to a love a comedy…

MI: I like retired. That’s a good way of putting it. I’m like Michael Jordan, I might come back.

HG: You could go back couldn’t you?

MI: Well my license is still current but if I’m the guy who’s saving you… I don’t think you’ll make it. One of the keys in life is knowing what you’re supposed to do and I don’t think I was meant to be a doctor. I think I was meant to be the host of a show that mocks sports.

HG: Did your parents make you pay back the med school money?

MI: It’s a confidential agreement I have with my parents. They can pretend that I don’t exist and I don’t have to pay back the money. No, I was pretty fortunate that financially I did well out here with commercials and my grandparents helped out with medical school but just thank God that I’m not working for the man anymore.

HG: On the show you guys take shots at everybody but is there any temptation to just record ESPN 24 hours a day and rip them?

MI: I think ESPN is certainly easily to mock. They’ll have three, four, five people in the field constantly so there’s going to be some good moments. I still enjoy ESPN, here’s the thing. With the show, we poke fun at everybody. Terrell Owens, Drew Rosenhaus, Olympic gymnast, bull riders, bass fisherman, and yeah broadcasters. But at the end of the day we’re not looking to get anyone fired. We’re not looking to pull the rug out from under them and say they’re horrible at their job and they shouldn’t be doing it. We’re really just saying ‘listen there’s some stuff worth laughing about.’ When Tony [Kornheiser] tries to translate Spanish on MNF and offends people of Spanish decent, we’re not trying to get Tony fired, that’s funny. That was hilarious. If they hang themselves we’re gonna give them the rope and show it for everybody to laugh at.

HG: On The Soup right now, Joel McHale has Tyra Banks as his old reliable. Is there an athlete or broadcaster that we can count on you going after every week?

MI: Can we say the Dallas Cowboys in general? That’s the great thing about sports, it’s gonna be somebody new every week. Terrell Owens could be our guy but unfortunately the Cowboys aren’t winning to give him enough press and he hasn’t had a blow-up so people are overshadowing him. John Daly passed out in a Hooters. They said he had to go home. I’m pretty sure Hooters is John Daly’s home. It’s where he belongs. With the NBA starting, Charles Barkley is huge. He’s gold. He really is. He was talking about getting a colonoscopy on TNT the other night. Really? Thanks Charles. That’s exactly the imagery we want so with sports, it’s somebody new every day.

HG: You guys did a bit with Sarah Palin and Zamboni. How loosely does sports have to be mentioned for it to air on the show?

MI: Here’s what I’ll say. We have no journalistic integrity here but when Sarah Palin speaks about, even jokingly, naming her kid Zamboni, then my God that’s gotta go on the show. We’re not looking to go anywhere but the world of sports. If sports gets introduced in politics, if it gets introduced in modeling, if John Mayer picks up a baseball bat at a concert, then it’s fair game.

HG: Do you keep up with blogs?

MI: I read Awful Announcing, Deadspin, and others. Also, we’ve got a crew of people who’s job it is to watch sports, to scour the web, to find everything. Now we know, even with 25 people watching Tivo’d sporting events 10 hours a day we’re still gonna miss stuff. People email us things and we’re definitely looking at blogs to make sure we don’t miss anything. We’re certainly not the ones claiming that we found a lot of the stuff. The blogs are way ahead of it. Obviously they can post something real-time. Six seconds after TBS airs Steve Harvey instead of Game 6 of the ALCS it’s on the web. So we realize the blogs are gonna be the first frontier but hopefully we can do the job of bringing the clips to the masses a little more.

HG: As far as the web goes, we kind of do the same thing with blogs. Sometimes we actually want people to get fired or at least embarrass the hell outta them. It’s the snarky nature of the internet. With that said, where can I go to find some embarrassing stuff on you and get you fired?

MI: I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff, but the good news is with this job doing stuff that’s ridiculous is probabaly just street cred. So at this point I’m not sure that there’s much on the web that I’ve done. You can embarrass me sure, but my pride and self-esteem have gone out long ago. I’m just in this for the humor so if it makes people laugh then I’m down.

HG: Cool because I was checking out your Wikipedia page and it says you appeared on General Hospital “ironically” as a kidnapper and a rapist. That’s a solid role.

MI: I was always worried about going out to the bars in L.A. and a girl would finally recognize me from something, and it turns out it’s for being a date-rapist. There’s no chance she’s accepting a drink from me at that point.

HG: I’m trying to understand what exactly made it ironic..

MI: If it wasn’t that would be something that could get me fired I imagine but as far as I know most of my girlfriends have hung out with me willingly.

HG: So you’re not a kidnapping date-rapist, you just play one on TV. Now that you’re in the business of poking fun at people do you worry about bumping into any pissed off athletes?

MI: We already had an encounter with Michael Strahan. We were poking fun at the pregame show and Strahan ran into one of our producers and he was laughing about it. I love the athletes that get it, that have a sense of humor about it like ‘Look I screwed up, you put it on there, that’s fun.’ And at the end of the day hopefully that’s what the show is. It’s gonna make people laugh about it but we love sports and we’re gonna tune in and watch next week. As much as we mock them I’m there Sunday morning with my NFL Sunday Ticket watching as many games as possible.

HG: Are there any athletes you’re trying to stay away from in case they don’t “get it”?

MI: None. Well maybe some of the MMA guys cause I think they’re insane. But hopefully the athletes have too much to lose to beat up a basic cable host. There’s no limits on anything but with the Isiah Thomas reported overdose we were like ‘You know, there’s probably not a ton of humor in that’ so we’re just gonna let that one lie.

HG: All right Matt thanks for everything. Before I let you go why don’t you go ahead and plug the show.

MI: Ok thanks. I would love to have everybody tune in to Sports Soup every Tuesday and Thursday night on Versus, 10 p.m. East Coast time. If you don’t like the show, email me and let me know why. If you love the show tell your friends. We’re definitely having fun and HG I appreciate the chance to spread the word.