Inside his 1928 craftsman home overlooking Lake Washington, Kenny Mayne spent his final day of his latest visit to his native Northwest playing phone tag with a few suits at ESPN.
Headed back to Bristol, Conn., to tape a series of SportsCenters, they were trying to move his 9 a.m. flight earlier to 6 — company policy to save ESPN some money.
"So I finally go, 'Lady, we make like 90 billion dollars,' " Mayne says with his signature dry irreverence that's bounced across ESPN airwaves for the past 23 years. He logs thousands of miles a month in the air, flying between his homes in Kirkland, Wash., where he lives with his daughter when not on SportsCenter duty, and West Hartford, Conn., where he lives with his wife of three months when he is.
Mayne hears more from his ESPN bosses about his travel than his Twitter account, from which he's raised thousands of dollars for relief efforts around the globe. But there also come frequent — if sometimes ambiguous — criticisms of President Donald Trump.
You might remember that his ESPN colleague and friend, Jemele Hill, served a two-week suspension after appearing to suggest on Twitter that fans boycott Dallas Cowboys' advertisers. That came a month after she called Trump a white supremacist. In the tweet that led to the suspension, Hill was responding to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' comment that he would bench players who knelt during the national anthem.
On that day, Oct. 8, Mayne sent 41 tweets. He wished sister Leslie happy birthday. He sent a facetious message to ESPN colleague Marty Smith. There were a couple pictures of Colorado, where his daughter was playing a softball tournament. And he tweeted "I dissent" in reference to the Vice President Mike Pence walking out of that week's 49ers-Colts game after players knelt for the anthem.
"The rule is fuzzy, because it's all subjective," Mayne says of ESPN's policy. "I've said a few things today someone could say, 'Oh my God, you attacked the president.' I think I said it in a clever enough way that I didn't say 'I hate this man.' ... I think I'm still on the right side of the line — whatever the line is."
The so-called line that Hill crossed but Mayne hasn't isn't abundantly clear. A new policy released by ESPN in April read: "We should avoid personal attacks and inflammatory rhetoric" and "refrain from overt partisanship" but that "outside of hard news reporting, commentary related to political or social issues, candidates or office holders is appropriate."
ESPN declined to comment for this story.
Mayne isn't so much looking to engage with people on Twitter. Hill, he says, "fell into the trap of getting into a back and forth with somebody," which too often devolves into inflammatories "(and) your blood boils for the moment."
Still, "I think most of us really aren't as separated as he wants us to be," Mayne says, referring to Trump.
Mayne says he's not a huge fan of social media, in large part for that reason. He has 345,000 followers on Twitter but no presence on any other platform. He says he likes to tweet for the writing practice. But it's proven to be more than that.
Some of Mayne's observations: 1) Fox News is "state television"; and 2) no mention of fake news goes without him noting the Central Park Five and Obama birth certificate conspiracies that he says Trump "propagated."
On that same Sunday, Mayne's last tweet of the night began the bidding on an invitation to the after-party of Muhammad Ali's penultimate fight — and his last in Las Vegas. Mayne ushered the fight while attending UNLV, where he was a backup quarterback, and later got Ali to sign it. After a couple days of bidding on Twitter, Mayne had raised $1,200 for a medical-relief fund that goes toward victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
It was the latest item of Mayne's extensive memorabilia collection that he had put up for bid on his Twitter account. He's put up more since — a Ken Griffey Jr. autograph, a signed piece of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s race car — and plans to continue.
His basement is stocked with hundreds of items ranging from his first ESPN check and lone NFL contract — he signed with the Seahawks in 1983 but failed his physical because of an ankle injury — to a commemorative ball from Marshawn Lynch's bowling tournament and the jersey he received for raising the 12th Man flag in 2008.
Upstairs, he has prominently displayed the commemorative Champagne bottle he received for hosting the Seahawks' Super Bowl ring ceremony — still unopened — and a framed Pearl Jam set list. He likes to play with the football Jerry Rice personally gifted and signed for him, currently laying on his couch. At the edge of his dock is a bench from old Sicks Stadium.
In all, Mayne estimates he has raised about $25,000 for charities donating to relief efforts in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, the Virgin Islands and families of the victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas — all without taking anyone's money. Instead, he asks winners to send receipts of their donations to charities. The money has gone to, among others, Global Giving, the Red Cross, and funds set up by former NBA player Tim Duncan and Houston Astros outfielder Carlos Beltran. Often, Mayne matches the donation.
His efforts even spawned a dinner event in Bellevue, Wash., that raised $7,000, enough to buy 400 water filters for families in Puerto Rico. A month after Hurricane Maria, one-third of its citizens don't have access to clean drinking water."
Mayne's philanthropy reaches further back than his Twitter auctions. Since losing a cousin at age 27 to PTSD, Mayne has been a staunch supporter of veterans' causes. His favorite charities include Growing Veterans and Race for a Soldier. He's also a yearly contributor to Northwest Harvest.
Mayne receives the same criticism on Twitter that many NFL players do for their protests during the national anthem — which Mayne says he endorses wholeheartedly.
"They're challenging us to stand up to the principles the flag represents," he says. "We have these great ideals that were written by Thomas Jefferson 200-some odd years ago, and we've never quite lived up to them."
"Like I told Jemele, I'm not trying to win the Woke Award this year," Mayne says. "I don't know, I'm not adopting some stance to be righteous in a certain way. I'm just looking at the world fairly."
Although he was, technically, a professional quarterback, he got into sports only because that's the job his original employer, Seattle's extinct TV station, KSTW, gave him. He's still more passionate about hard news. ESPN originally passed on him because he "couldn't name the fifth pitcher on the Cubs." Still can't, he says.
But now, after more than two decades with the Worldwide Leader and about 10 months into a new contract, he'll head to the airport in the morning, maybe talk politics with one of the melting pot of strangers he shares the security line with and tweet a picture of Mount Rainier from the sky.
For an hour the next night, he'll deliver sports highlights with a loquaciousness unlike anyone else.
For the other 23, he won't be sticking to sports.
