Written by Sandy Stevens
As the second oldest in a family of eight kids, Paul Molin started wrestling as so many do.
“We’d moved from California to Indiana, and I joined a freestyle program for kids,” he said. “All (four) boys started in around second grade. Dad (Doug) officiated tournaments and helped run practices; Mom (Paula) scored, and the girls scored.”
But Molin, now 27, learned more than just technique from the sport.. What he learned as a wrestler, he maintains, helped propel him to a job with ESPN and an Emmy in May.
“It almost sounds like a cliché to a point, but when people think of wrestlers in general, they think of work ethic,” said Molin, an associate producer for ESPN. “They think, ‘We don’t have to worry about it. It’s going to get done.’
“I definitely had had opportunities given to me because they know that whatever they give me is going to get done –and done right to the best of my ability.”
Molin won his award for an ESPN/ABC “tease,” a short piece that hooks viewers into the main program, at the 27th annual Sports Emmy Awards in May. The 90-second spot, a preview to last spring’s World Figure Skating Championship in Moscow, was up against teases for ESPN’s coverage of the Little League World Series, the Gravity Games on NBC and Fox’s Super Bowl opening.
At Indiana’s Martinsville High School, Molin and a friend produced their school’s television show. The 1998 graduate was involved in wrestling, cross country, track and pole vault and was also a school newspaper photographer.
He went on to Indiana University, where he earned a degree in telecommunications. Using a video camera, he made successful commercials for local bars that were shown on local TV stations while he was still in college.
His road to ESPN began at Northwestern University, when former NU wrestler Jack Griffith talked a friend, Al Killion, into volunteering as a clock operator for the University Nationals. Killion, who is a freelance operations producer for ESPN, helps produce, among other events, the NCAA Wrestling Championships.
As clock operator, Killion found himself sitting next to the mat judge — Doug Molin.
“He saw that I was wearing a shirt with an ESPN logo,” Killion recalled, “and he said, ‘Oh, my son’s in TV.’ I thought, here we go again!”
Killion soon learned, however, that the son’s talent was the real deal and hired him on. “Paul drove himself around to games,” he said. “We paid him mileage and as little as we could get by with.”
Eventually, he hooked Molin up with Lingner Group Productions, to which ESPN out-sources some of its programming. Then Molin met the ESPN producers from Bristol, Conn.
Molin, whose responsibilities do not include producing live TV shows, has gone from being a video editor to an associate producer. Now he communicates with writers, editors and the people behind the cameras.
“I kind of orchestrate and I’m responsible for all of it, but I don’t actually do those things,” he said. “The creativity part of it is pretty endless, but I work with some of the best people in the industry.”
“None of this would have happened if Paul weren’t very good,” Killion stressed. “He’s very talented; he’s got a great eye.”
Molin’s brother, Ben, 24, also an IU graduate, is doing work for ESPN similar to what Paul did when he was starting out. Ben has been working on “The Mike and Mike Show” on ESPN-radio, as well as ESPN 360.
Killion, who recently hired former Indiana University wrestler Coyte Cooper for some part-time weekend work while Cooper attends grad school, said he applauds the wrestlers’ work ethic.
“During football season, we hire15 to 20 students for big games, and in a lot of Big 10 communities, I hire wrestling team members, he said. “By and large, they are more focused. They do the job; whatever the task is, they take care of it.”
After wrestling through his senior year of high school, Molin enjoyed wrestling with a club in college. “There were about 15 of us who would roll around in practice and get in shape,” he said.
He keeps in touch with some coaches in the Bristol area, he explained, and looks forward to helping them with practices and workouts whenever he can fit them in his schedule.
“Wrestling’s kind of addictive,” he said. “Even now, I’m trying to get back in it.”
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