HIS SUCCESS WAS NO LONG SHOT
Former Parkland quarterback Joe Fortenbaugh now calls plays on ESPN betting shows
Joe Fortenbaugh remembers the 1998 Parkland High football season well. He was the quarterback of the Trojans that year and recalls an early-season loss to eventual PIAA 3A champion Central Catholic early that season, an October defeat to Whitehall and a late-season run that included a District 11 championship victory over the Zephyrs — plus a state playoff loss to Central Bucks West.
Game by game Fortenbaugh remembers the details as if they happened last week, not 22 years ago.
It is with the same laser focus that Fortenbaugh brings to the ESPN show “Daily Wager” that centers around sports betting.
He is a regular contributor on the show hosted by Doug Kezirian and broadcast from the brand-new ESPN studio at The LINQ + Experience in Las Vegas — where 39-year-old Fortenbaugh lives with his wife and two kids.
He’s also the co-host of a new digital sports betting program called “Bet”
and has joined the cast of “GameDay,” an ESPNRadio show that broadcasts every Saturday.
Fortenbaugh, who graduated from Parkland in 1999 and Penn State in 2003 after spending two years at Widener — where he continued his football career — is fulfilling his longtime goal of working in sports.
His journey to having a national platform on television and radio is a story of persistence and passion and included stops in San Diego, Las Vegas and San Francisco, with a return to Allentown mixed in.
Originally, he wanted to be a sports agent and sought an internship with San Diego-based Jack Bechta, the agent for current NFL star George Kittle.
“I moved to San Diego and enrolled at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and I heard about Bechta, who had a good reputation as an agent,” Fortenbaugh said. “When I got to San Diego that August, I put together a cover letter and resume and mailed it to him every single
day for a month.
“If I didn’t hear from him, I was going to keep mailing it to him, but then I was going to start calling him every day. If that didn’t work, I was going to start showing up at his office every day.”
After 26 letters, Fortenbaugh got a response and an internship that lasted several years while he was in law school. But a career as a sports agent didn’t materialize and Fortenbaugh came back to live with his parents in Allentown and got a job as an intern with the IronPigs in their inaugural 2008 season.
“I had a law degree, but I was making $500 a month as an IronPigs intern because I wanted to keep myself in sports while I was trying to figure out the next step,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bechta started a website called “National Football Post” and asked Fortenbaugh to run it.
“I got to write about fantasy football, statistics, and I am a big fan of analytics and did a deep dive into that,” Fortenbaugh said. “I had a lot of freedom to write about whatever I wanted.”
But it was about that time that Fortenbaugh wanted to cover the sports betting side of football. With $2,500 to his name and a maxed-out credit card, he moved to Las Vegas.
“I was basically taking a bet at that point that sports betting was eventually going to be legalized, and when it was major networks would need people to talk about it,” he said.
While still writing for NFP, Fortenbaugh attempted to talk with every sports book director in Las Vegas and experts who made a living on wagering.
“I always liked betting on games and knew a little bit about it, but now I wanted the advanced education on it,” he said.
But Fortenbaugh said he has also always loved to talk, and his career took another turn whenhegot a call from Jason Barrett, the program director for sports-talk 95.7 “The Game” in San Francisco.
Fortenbaugh got a gig on the morning show in San Francisco and moved to the Bay Area in 2014. He was flourishing there until ESPN called.
“In the summer of 2018, sports betting became legal and the floodgates opened,” Fortenbaugh said. “While my focus was on radio, I was doing a sports betting podcast and writing stories on sports betting. Opportunities started popping up at a lot of different places, but as someone who grew up watching Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, I kept hoping ESPNwouldworkout.”
It did, even though his audition was canceled by the birth of his second child. Fortenbaugh was hired in March 2019 and a full-time opportunity arrived this past summer that included “Daily Wager” on ESPN, “Bet” on ESPN’s streaming platforms and “GameDay” on the radio.
“It’s ironic that I was in Vegas, went to San Francisco for radio, and when sports betting opened up it brought meback to Vegas,” he said. “
“Daily Wager” airs Tuesday-Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. and there’s an additional show Sunday at 9 a.m.
“I don’t want to say it’s the SportsCenter for sports betting, but it’s a very informational show,” Fortenbaugh said. “We’re going to try to hit on all the big games that night because it’s a lead-in to the games starting at 7. Whether it’s ‘Monday Night Football’ or ‘Thursday Night Football,’ we want to not only talk about those games but guide you in the right direction and show you how the betting markets are reacting.
“We’re not just throwing picks around. Wewant you to have a shot at winning.”
For years, leagues such as the
NFL publicly distanced themselves from sports betting but now embrace the industry.
“The Denver Broncos have multiple partnerships with sports books,” Fortenbaugh said. “The league office never wanted to talk about it or acknowledge it [before], yet the league would issue injury reports.
“Who was that for? The gamblers.”
Fortenbaugh noted past sports gambling scandals and said no one wants to compromise the integrity of the product in this era.
“But after the law was repealed, everyone realized how much of a lucrative windfall it was going to be,” he said. “Right now we have 18 states that have legalized sports betting, and by the end of this election we could be up to 25.
“There are projections that by 2025 we could have 40 states with legalized sports betting. So it went from the shadows and no acknowledgment of it to everyone embracing it.”
Fortenbaugh is embracing his role on ESPN. His advice to those wanting to put down a few bucks on a game: “I recommend to people whocan’t afford to do it as their fulltime job to look at it recreationally and as entertainment. Doit responsibly and have fun with it.”
As for Fortenbaugh, he’s definitely having fun and still pays attention to what’s going on in the Lehigh Valley,wherehestillhasmanyfamily membersand friends.
“I keep an eye on everything back there, especially the football team,” he said. “I remember running the scout team preparing for Jim Morgans and the Wing-T he ran at Central Catholic. I remember they kicked in our teeth in.
“But now I see offenses have changed and they’re going fivewide and throwing the ball all over the place. A lot of things have changed, but I stay in touch and still follow football, wrestling and all the great things back there.”