I Built a Masterpiece and Then I Fell Apart: The Michael J. Whelan Story

By Tucker Booth

[Authors Note]

Many people have asked me, almost every day, how this story about the former VP of Production and Executive Producer of The Golf Channel, Michael J. Whelan came to fruition. My honest answer — fate, incredible luck, persistence, and happenstance.

Months ago Michael and I developed a relationship when I wrote my first story on legendary sportswriter Rick Riley who had just dropped his book about golfing with Trump. Whelan was a friend and fan of Rick’s work and he accidentally stumbled upon my Twitter site. It was nothing more than Whelan saying to me by a tweet, “great job.” Coming from this acclaimed Emmy award producer and writer, I was blown away with encouragement.

Our limited relationship then gradually evolved into something more substantial when I wrote my second story, the highly read and controversial article on Golf Channel iconoclast, Peter Kessler. Whelan had earlier heard my podcast pertaining to Kessler and the evolution of Golf Channel and wanted me to get the facts right. He was cordial enough to give me hours of his time on how The Golf Channel was truly created and the role Peter Kessler and others played in its early days. The photographic information that Whelan had was mind-blowing. At times I felt like I was talking to the “Rain Man.”

Whelan had over 1,500 pages of journaled notes from his 5 years at the network that he had frenetically scribbled in his numerous notebooks. And I mean incredibly detailed, copious documents. Whelan was exact, honestly reflective and funny. He was full of anecdotal information and as I would soon discover, he was also emotionally complicated.

Why, I wondered had Michael gone over 20 years without talking about his masterful creation? How was it that no accredited writers hadn’t gotten to him by now? How is it that The Golf Channel scrubbed any information or credit to Whelan for what he accomplished? I thought to myself, what if Saturday Night Live did a retrospective on their show’s history and intentionally left out Lorne Michaels?! Why would they do this to him? Even if he left on faulty, controversial terms…he was still “the guy.” Shame on those who pretended he didn’t exist. I knew immediately that this was the story that needed to be told.

The problem was that Michael had for decades been working on his own memoir and he wasn’t about to purge his life to a non-accredited wannabe journalist. But I’m one hell of a persistent, wannabe journalist!

The complexity of Whelan runs so deep and his trust for people is almost non-existent. In many ways, he’s somewhat hermit-like when discussing things that are personal and intimate to him. But as our days turned into weeks, then weeks into months, we developed a trusting, true friendship and he eventually opened up to me. Not just about his stint at the Golf Channel, but about his entire life.

As I listened to his words, I was slack-jawed and mesmerized by his story — holding on to his every word as if I were reading a well-crafted novel. I couldn’t wait to read the next page. Every day, as we talked, all I could think was, “holy shit! This story needs to be told. And so, the five-month journey began.

I made a promise to Michael that I’d tell his story correctly, with integrity- the good, the bad, and at times the ugly.

For this story, I spoke with more than a dozen current and former Golf Channel employees. Some spoke openly. Others, because they’re still employed spoke with anonymity. I also spoke with dozens of people who worked with Michael prior to the Golf Channel. Specifically, at HBO, CBS and NBC. I spoke to a few people who grew up with Michael in northern California. I spoke to those who went to high school and college with him. With his permission, I spoke to his doctors, therapists, and psychiatrists. I was provided with his medical records dating back to 1994 to the present. I did my best to reach out to those Whelan worked for and in some cases, I surprisingly never heard back from a few.

While Michael will never say it, after all of my interviews and research, I’m deeply disappointed how a few people, who today are wealthy and comfortably living the good life in retirement wouldn’t even reach back to me to thank the man who created it all.

But as my story will show, an individual with severe mental illness scares a lot of people away. This is a heartfelt story of a high functioning creative genius who has battled abandonment, low self-esteem, complicated learning difficulties, speech impediments, severe bipolar depression, cancer, and a suicide attempt.

So, as Whelan would probably want me to say, let’s roll the tape in 5,4,3,2,1…track audio — this is the Michael J Whelan story. I Built a Masterpiece and Then I Fell Apart.

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BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

The constant repetition of medical apparatuses informed the staff that precarious things needed to be monitored. The sounds became annoying after a while. The lights in the room were dim, yet always on. Alongside the industrial hospital bed, there were chords hanging down from above his head for the nurse’s call button. There was an IV solution attached to a port in the patient’s forearm.

Hovering next to the bed was an electronic machine, sitting on a cart, with odd wires leading from it. A bouquet of flowers sat on a bedside table. An aqua-colored water glass stood near him with a bent straw in it. All next to a half-eaten tray of food with a big metal cover on the plate. A telephone displayed a flashing red light.

The door leading into the room was propped open, with nurses and orderlies walking by; their sensible shoes squeaking on the pristine tiles. A TV hung in the corner, tuned to a cable news program. Wires were glued to his chest and jutting up to his neck. The back of his hospital gown was non-existent, giving everyone in sight a clear view of his bare, naked ass.

Michael’s eyes slowly opened. He woke up to the pungent smell of hospital disinfectant invading his nostrils. The room was silent apart from the BEEP, BEEP, BEEP of the machines, telling him he was alive. He squinted in an attempt to sharpen the blurred images before him. Michael glanced around and took in the deserted, blue and white hospital bedroom. (How long had he been there?)

He shut his eyes, trying to remember what had exactly happened.

Then it all hit him with a bang. The memory of it began to invade his soul and occupy his thoughts. Why did he bring himself to the ER? What was he thinking? Now he was surely fucked. Mike knew the staff at the mental health unit was not going to take his suicide attempt lightly. All he wanted to do was to return to his home, jump back in his own bed, hit reboot and forget the entire night; but that was too late.

Would his tragic death have left behind mourners grasping for answers? When the person in question is a high-profile celebrity known to have struggled with mental health issues, it’s tempting to fall back on the age-old trope of the “tortured genius.” It’s an idea deeply embedded in modern culture; the TV executive, the painter, musician, poet, novelist or comedian who excels in their field while simultaneously being tormented by internal demons. When employing this logic, the coexistence of creativity and mental illness is not a coincidence. The talent and the pain are thought to be inextricably linked. The torment is part of the gift. These competing thoughts seemed to be Michael’s cross to bear.

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Michael’s suicide attempt was one of the most calm and peaceful moments of his entire life. He believed in his heart that the worry, shame, hopelessness, and crushing fear were all going to be over soon. He would no longer suffer alone. While he didn’t believe in God, Whelan surely believed in eternity. He knew he was going to a less violent place.

What had he done? When the EMTs came to his home Whelan looked totally exhausted, limp. Michael’s three dogs lay alongside him. They had saved him. Maybe they were his angels. Death was so fucking close – knocking on his door. Thankfully he didn’t answer.

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Hours earlier an emotionally baked Whelan had gone into the garage of his Florida mansion and run a hose from the exhaust pipe into his car window. Then he started the engine, closed his eyes and laid back in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t drunk or on drugs, just emotionally done. In a strange way, he was peaceful. Michael was tired of feeling sad, hopeless and numb. Earlier that week he had even bought a book called “Final Exit” that was a how-to manual for taking one’s own life.

As he began to slip off to the afterlife, Michael was jolted out of the stupor by his barking dogs. These were the guttural, panicked cries of animals who knew that danger was imminent. At first, Michael tried to ignore the cacophony but soon his heart went out to the canines. He realized that if his dogs were to die, and he somehow failed to expire, he would never forgive himself for hurting them. This compelled him to turn off the car and rush inside to comfort them. Once they were calm, he called 911.

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In February 1994, sitting in his HBO corner office in midtown Manhattan and looking out the window onto Bryant Park while the New York snow fell, Michael became somewhat hypnotized. As he stared out at the snowflakes, he was transported back decades earlier to a similar time when he was 8 years old on Christmas Eve. Young Mike was staring out of his living room window in Monroeville, Pennsylvania with his younger brother and his sister, waiting for their father Danny to come home.

In his office, Whelan had the same feeling as he did way back then – a feeling of anticipation…he couldn’t wait for his dad to arrive. He hadn’t seen him for days.

He was excited to see his father, who was involved in professional sports. His dad was the trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he traveled a lot. Or, at least he said he did. In the offseason, his father spent a lot of time going down to Ft. Myers, Florida and getting ready for Spring Training with the Pirates. But on this particular evening, Mike and his siblings thought their dad was coming home to spend Christmas Eve with the family.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Suddenly they saw the lights glaring as a car pulled into the driveway. Danny Whelan got out of his 1960’s Pontiac Catalina and manually opened their garage door. He then drove the family’s station wagon into the garage. The children and their mother waited for him to come up the front steps with anticipation as he had done so many times before.

Danny never came up the steps. Instead, a set of headlights came into view. A taxicab appeared in the street and drove into their driveway. Without looking back their father got into the cab, and to the family’s horror, it drove away. With the taillights fading into oblivion, all four of them went downstairs to the garage. There rested the still warm station wagon. The only new item in the abandoned car was an envelope with $500 cash stuffed inside of it. Michael’s mother Hazel dropped to her knees and sobbed hysterically. 8-year-old Michael consoled her to the best of his ability.

That was the last time Michael Whelan saw his father for almost six years.

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From that Christmas night, Michael was never allowed to be a child again. In the 1960s divorce was taboo and never to be talked about. No family did it. What took place behind closed doors remained a secret for those that lived inside. He wasn’t that surprised that his parents broke up; he had heard them screaming and fighting for far too many years. In a way, Whelan knew it was inevitable. He was a victim of their marital violence. Still, the way his dad left that snowy evening was an incredibly bitter pill to swallow.

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The other way that Christmas Eve horror changed his life was that Michael credits it as the genesis of his career as a storyteller. He was ashamed that his father was never going to come home again, and for months and years to come when pressed about where his dad was by the neighborhood kids, Whelan would make up creatively grandiose stories about his father’s whereabouts.

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“Big Time” Danny Whelan was indeed a very famous person in the world of sports. Danny had been a great third baseman for the Boston Red Sox organization in the 1940s before World War II prematurely ended his career. After returning to a hero’s welcome after the war, he started out as the physical therapist for the Rochester Red Wings baseball team in the late 1950s. With the Red Wings, he essentially created the position of trainer as a more important position than just physical therapist. Danny took over many new responsibilities and changed the dynamics of what the trainer was expected to do in professional sports. He became not only the physiotherapist but also the personal assistant, consultant, psychologist, minister, rabbi and priest for the players on the team. Due to these innovations, he became recognized very quickly by the professional sports world.

In 1959, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh took a liking to the Whelan patriarch and offered him a job with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a trainer for the underdog Pirates when they won a massive upset championship in the 1960 World Series over the New York Yankees. It was the first time that a World Series was won with a walk-off home run, when Pirates Second Baseman Bill Mazeroski drilled a Ralph Terry fastball over the left-field wall at Forbes Field. This made Danny one of the most popular men in the Pittsburgh area.

Most boys grow up playing whiffle ball with their friends. Michael grew up playing catch with Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Hank Aaron.

Unfortunately for the Whelan family, that was also the Series where their celebratory father fell in love with another woman, while the Pirates were playing in New York.

Danny decided that being single with a young girlfriend was a better life for him than continuing in an estranged marriage with 3 kids. A family and all its responsibilities were not in Danny’s DNA. Within a few years of this fledgling affair, their dad left the family on Christmas Eve and initiated the dissolution of his marriage.

Michael and his siblings would move with their mother back to Northern California, where they were originally from, and moved in with their grandparents. Their dad remained in the Pittsburgh area. It became a tale of two very different lifestyles.

As days turned into years, Danny would soon become good friends with the New York Knicks basketball organization, and in 1966 Knicks coach Red Holzman offered him a job. At that point, he transitioned to become an NBA trainer with the Knicks.

Beyond Danny Whelan’s impressive resume, he also was one of the most colorful, storytelling raconteur characters in the history of professional sports. He was a New York celebrity and indeed a character. He set a record in 1969 for most technical fouls ever by a trainer in one year with 6 techs. He also became known as Red Holzman’s right-hand man on the sidelines.

The Knicks won championships in 1969 and 1971 (the latter during the iconic 7 game series where a badly battered Willis Reed returned in game 7 to inspire the Knicks to beat the Lakers).

Michael was a ball boy on the sidelines for the Knicks during both championship series. However, these memorable opportunities offered by his dad were few and far between.

While his father’s accomplishments and celebrity reputation were sources of pride for young Michael, there was an admittedly strange dynamic that ensued as a result. People would heap praise on Danny in front of his son while Michael would secretly ruminate on the fact that his dad was not a very good husband or father to his children. This secret ate at him and made him resolute to not grow up to be like his absentee pop.

Danny had a gift for many things but telling his children that he loved them was not one of them. Maybe he learned that intimate inability from his parents. Nevertheless, the deficiency had a long-lasting impact on Michael.

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During Michael’s adolescent years, while Danny Whelan continued to enjoy the spoils of his success, the rest of his abandoned brood struggled in California. Living in Marin County, one of the most affluent areas in the U.S., Michael’s mother Hazel battled and scratched to make ends meet for her children. She worked twenty-hour work shifts as a waitress, while she and her three children lived in a 300 square foot home with one bedroom and one tiny bathroom. Until Whelan was 18, he shared a roll away bed in the living room with his brother. It was a situation that humiliated him his entire childhood.

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As young as 12 years old, Michael was left to care for his brother and sister while his mother worked. Psychologists label this phenomenon “emotional parentification”, where a child takes on the role of the parent. He got his siblings bathed, fed and in bed, and he was left alone in a dark, empty box…fearful and afraid. He suffered unbearable anxiety and panic attacks. Michael would shiver and shake until he cried himself to a light sleep. His adolescent anxiety was overwhelming. The only time he felt safe was when his mom returned home in the wee hours of the night from her double shift.

“I would pretend that I was asleep so not to worry her,” Whelan recalls, “I was supposed to be the man of the house, helping my mother. But who was taking care of me? No one! The result was that I grew up suffering in silence. Tremendous anxiety, panic attacks, and fear. Those feelings became a constant companion. A child needs to feel protected. Their body, psyche, and belongings should be safe and secure. Because a child is helpless and dependent on their caregiver, they require a parent in this predominantly unknown and sometimes dangerous world. I had none.”

Due to all their emotional instability and economic uncertainty, Michael’s mother also developed a crippling alcohol addiction.

According to Michael:

She drank because she was overwhelmed with her life. She quickly realized she was underqualified for work, so she took an $18,000 a year job and struggled horribly. At 42 she was diagnosed with breast and lymphatic cancer. All through the treatment she continued to work with no help from my father. My sister and I took care of her. There were no GO FUND ME sites in the ‘60s and ‘70s. She was left to fight an arduous battle by herself. Yes, she drank – far too often and too much. But I could only imagine how desperate, sad and fearful she must have felt. My mother never got a break. She struggled every day of her life until the day she died. Looking back there were too many days that I tried to rescue my ailing mother. I was too unqualified and unprepared. A child should never have to take care of a dying parent. I understand why my mother drank. I also understand why I grew up so emotionally fucked up.

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On top of being plagued by his broken home Michael also struggled at his elementary school:

I remember realizing I wasn’t like other kids in grade school,” Whelan ruminates, “I couldn’t pronounce words that my friends could because I was a stutterer. I also had broken teeth from a baseball accident and suffered severely from dyslexia and ADD. As I struggled to read and express myself verbally, I grew terrified of being called on in class. I felt as if I couldn’t get a word out without being made fun of. The stuttering was horrific. Every test I took, I failed. Thank goodness for my imagination.

Since reading was such a struggle for him, when Michael was called on by his teacher to give book reports he would make everything up. He had a photographic mind for details. Having already had considerable practice lying to people about his home life, Michael would let his imagination go and spin fantastic yarns about pretend books he’d never read. This worked for a while until finally, one teacher realized no such book existed and reprimanded him for his academic fraudulence.

Even so, while lecturing him on the error of his ways, the teacher also acknowledged how impressed she was by his elaborate hyperbole and his ability to entertain the masses.

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From Whelan’s childhood journal:

The thoughts of a stutterer. The moment you realize you’re different. Your whole world changes. You speak and strange looks are given to you. A child stares at you and wonders what is wrong with you. You are entering school wondering if you will ever make any friends. Will someone play with you? The cry of a little boy or girl. Your voice is not being heard because others can’t understand you. The frustration of school. Finding yourself in a different class, away from the usual, regular kids. Pulled out of the classroom and into another. You’re in a new class now. A new teacher enters. You are introduced to a speech therapist. You are now wondering what is wrong with you. Why are you different? Why were you born this way? Why can’t you speak fluently? The silent scream of a child is now growing inside me and things are getting worse. The fear of being called on in class. Do everything you can not to be called on. Ask to go to the bathroom just so you don’t have to read a paragraph or passage in class. Trying to avoid the laughter and the finger pointing. The torture of having no choice but to do a speech or presentation in class. Fear comes all over you. Sweat is pouring down because you are nervous. I’d pray to God to for help, but I stopped believing in God the day the priest put his hands down my pants.

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Michael is adamant he was not molested but something happened one Sunday afternoon that changed his view on religion and God forever. He was groomed and touched inappropriately by a so-called holy man. After a typical Catholic Mass service, Michael was left alone with his church’s local revered priest. He had taken a liking to the boy. They talked about sports, the youngster’s pro baseball dreams, and how the child didn’t have a father in his life. Michael was learning to trust him.

As he put away the sacred chalice, the priest came up from behind. The man pulled the boy closer to him and put his hands down Michael’s pants. For one brief nanosecond, it felt good, but the child regained his senses and reacted quickly. Michael spun around, stared at his attacker in utter shock and then ran from the church as fast as his little legs could run. He ran straight home and tore past his mother, who was getting ready for her waitress shift. She asked what was wrong? Humiliated and confused, he said nothing.

After his assault, Whelan was dumbfounded about what to do. He was only 11 and felt scared and alone. He had always detested the Catholic church. He hated the Latin verbiage and despised being inside on a Sunday, instead of out playing baseball. Michael’s school and mother had forced him to become an altar boy. He fucking hated it.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family, his very survival became based on his ability to lie confidently and without pause. The boy had to be quick on his feet and always measure the consequences of potentially saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. That day he was molested, Michael had his innocence taken from him. He felt denied any sense of community and knowing what it meant to be protected.

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Regardless of all the traumatic setbacks he suffered, young Michael was a tremendous athlete and eventually excelled as a student and baseball player. After he left the Catholic church, Whelan would play baseball games on Sunday mornings, 100 feet from his former church. The priest who had assaulted him would regularly storm out of the parish and curse the boy for his sacrilegious behavior; vowing Michael was headed straight to Hell. In exchange, the boy would flip him off and then channel his rage into an increasingly mighty swing.

By high school, Whelan had overcome his stutter and reading disabilities and had become a popular, well-liked student who ironically received a scholarship to play baseball at St. Mary’s College.

At St. Mary’s, Michael continued to excel at baseball while studying Liberal Arts and Biology. However, as he neared his senior year, he knew that he wasn’t strong enough and fast enough to pursue a professional baseball career like his father. Though it broke his mother’s heart, he decided to give up his dream of being a major leaguer and expand his horizons.

Whelan bemoans:

It devastated me when I realized that I wasn’t going to be a professional baseball player. My mother, for as long as I could remember, pressured me to be a professional baseball player – (usually when she was drunk) – that way I could save her. Get her and my brother and sister a decent home and “fix” her terminal cancer. All the pressure was on me. No young boy should have this kind of unexpected pressure. I couldn’t do it and I spent decades feeling guilty.

Hazel Whelan died just before Michael’s 22nd birthday. It broke Michael’s heart to pieces. He never got over it.

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After graduation, Whelan headed to New York where, after a few years of graduate school study, he was accepted to NYU’s medical physical therapy school. He planned to go into orthopedics.

As fate would have it, one night while at a party with a girlfriend, the aspiring doctor met the president of CBS Sports. The network big shot knew Whelan’s father Danny from the New York Knicks and took a liking to his wunderkind son. By the end of the party, Mike was told if he decided not to follow in his dad’s footsteps that he had a job working for CBS. This offer excited the college grad.

Michael’s girlfriend at the time was an actress. While dating her he got to see behind the scenes of various production rooms and tapings of shows. The comradery that he saw exhibited during the production on these sets appealed to Mike. In many ways, they reminded him of sporting events. Whelan was also a natural writer who had kept a journal through most of his life. After receiving the offer from CBS he mulled it over for 5 weeks and then (much to the chagrin of his father) decided not to attend NYU.

Instead, he took a job as a production assistant with CBS Sports in New York City.

When Danny Whelan learned of his son’s decision to pursue televised sports as a career, he threw him out of the house and cut him off financially. The old man claimed that the young man had lost his mind turning down a future in medicine.

For the next several months Mike was essentially homeless.

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Early on while working for CBS Sports, Whelan was sleeping at the YMCA.

Fortunately, soon thereafter a good friend of his moved into the New York tri-state area and had a big enough home for a roommate. The friend invited Michael to move in with him and graciously enabled the aspiring producer to finally carve out some semblance of normalcy in his new life.

The CBS Sports job hummed along for three years with seemingly no end in sight. Whelan was a quick study and excelled as a production assistant. Then, abruptly in year three, he was unexpectedly let go. This was especially troublesome because Michael had been enjoying the work so immensely that he hadn’t thought to come up with a backup plan if he lost the job.

Two weeks later his first big break came along.

Michael got a phone call from HBO Sports saying that he had come highly recommended to them. HBO was producing a prime-time boxing event featuring Middleweight Champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler and they needed a production assistant for fourteen days. Whelan jumped at the job and soon after met future HBO Sports President Ross Greenberg and Rick Bernstein. These two men Whelan credits for his success.

The Hagler shoot went well and before he knew it fourteen days turned into a fourteen-year job.

Whelan quickly rose through the ranks, going from production assistant to one of the top three producers on staff, eventually being promoted to the Director of Sports Production for HBO Sports. He was responsible for the production of “World Championship Boxing”, “Inside The NFL”, Wimbledon coverage, and their award-winning sports documentaries that stood out above the rest on television.

HBO was the only broadcast facility at the time that didn’t rely on commercial sponsorship. This allowed the producers to make mini sports movies that could run in their entirety versus traditional sporting events that required regular stops for advertising breaks.

During this fourteen-year window, Michael J. Whelan launched his career as an Emmy award-winning producer, writer, and director.

The wind was finally at his back.

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HBO in the 1980’s and 1990’s was predominantly known for its World Championship Boxing broadcasts. As Whelan exclaimed to me: “We did the best boxing events on Planet Earth!” These legendary fights included Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and Iron Mike Tyson. Tyson’s reign of dominance made pro boxing officially popular again after a slow decline that coincided with the end of Muhammad Ali’s career. The reason why people became so excited about boxing again had to do with Tyson’s nearly unblemished record of knocking his opponents out cold in spectacular fashion.

Whelan knew the champ well and was in the production truck the night of one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

Mike Tyson was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when he flew to Tokyo, Japan to take on a 40-1 challenger named Buster Douglas. Michael and the crew flew to the Tokyo Dome to cover the event. Early on once he had arrived in Japan, Whelan realized that Tyson had decided not to take the fight very seriously. The HBO production staff were staying a floor above the champ and were privy to all the partying Iron Mike and his entourage were up to in their suites.

Douglas had tragedy strike when his mother passed away days before his training camp began. Fueled by this angst, he trained harder than he ever would before or after and came into the fight that night nonplussed by his tomato can reputation.

To the world’s shock and surprise, the lovable underdog knocked out Tyson in dramatic fashion.

According to Whelan:

A television control truck is a very calm, organized, chaos instrument. You’ve got a control room where you’ve got a producer, a director and the graphics people and then Rick Bernstein and I oversaw all the replays. All the replays people saw that night Rick and I were producing from a second truck. Normally it’s a very, very calm situation but on this night, Buster Douglas was winning the fight. He went as far as to knock Mike Tyson down. There’s that great scene from a handheld camera where Tyson’s on his knees and he’s trying desperately to put his mouthpiece back in. The control truck (for the first time in the history of my career) became a fan. The screaming, the yelling, the cheering, the OH MY GOSH…it was very hard to maintain an environment where we did our jobs professionally!

Michael and his contemporaries were always hoping for transcendent moments like the Douglas upset and it surely hooked him on his love for being a sports storyteller. Twenty years later he and his former co-workers still talk animatedly about it and consider it the greatest upset in boxing history.

Fantastic boxing coverage such as the Tyson/Douglas fight recently earned Whelan and his production team a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award.

During his stint at HBO Sports, Michael won Emmy Awards for boxing, “Inside The NFL”, and documentaries about legendary sports figures. He also won an Emmy for his part in producing the tennis events at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

However, shortly after the Olympics, Whelan was about to be offered an opportunity that proved to be his most Herculean effort yet.

Michael was about to tasked to build a network television masterpiece that has remained a household name ever since. While exhilaratingly challenging it would also nearly destroy him.

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Flash forward to the aforementioned snowy day in February 1994, as Michael stared out his New York office window hypnotized by the falling snow. Gazing into the frozen onslaught, he had a conversation with himself. He was getting sick and tired of his life being controlled by severe weather and dreamed of living somewhere more temperate. That said, he had no idea how that would be possible with his work.

Soon after this episode, Whelan went to the bathroom and moments later Bob Greenway pulled up next to him at the next urinal. Greenway looked straight ahead and said discretely: “You know, there’s something going on in my life and I might have something for you.” Whelan was a bit surprised to be approached about something so hush, hush in a men’s room but he managed to ask what the opportunity was. Bob replied: “It’s not finalized yet…I’ll get back to you.”

Greenway respected Whelan immensely and knew how much Michael loved golf. As the Senior Vice President of HBO Sports Programming Bob’s job was to secure and negotiate the rights of events that Whelan and his crew would produce.

Over 14 years of working closely together Whelan and Greenway became good friends and enthusiastic golf buddies. While they lived in the New York area and didn’t get to play very much, the two executives were always swinging clubs in the office and talking about golf. The two had a very special relationship.

Michael speculated that Bob had been offered a job at another network and that Bob was thinking about trying to take his friend with him. After the bathroom talk, nothing was revealed for another five weeks. Finally, in March, Greenway called Whelan into his office and told him that he had just been hired by Joe Gibbs and was going to become the Senior Vice President of Programming and Production for their new network, “The Golf Channel”.

Bob told him that of all the people he knew, Michael was the most creative, and he wanted him to move to Florida with him and develop the entire look of The Golf Channel.

While Whelan was excited about the new job opportunity, he was frightened when Greenway told him that Gibbs and IMG wanted The Golf Channel designed, programmed, staffed, and running by the following January.

By comparison, Roger Ailes was given 18 months to create and conceive Fox News. Michael, on the other hand, would have a little less than 6 months to do practically the same amount of work with less help.

“It’s hard enough to put on a one-hour television special in the time I was given,” Whelan declares, “let alone create a 365, 24/7 television network, but I was up to the challenge. I kind of figured that there wouldn’t be very many opportunities in one’s life to create a network….Not a show, not a program, but an entire network. I said I was absolutely very interested in the job.”

Before leaving HBO, Michael went and talked with Ross Greenberg to see if they might be willing to counteroffer with a “boatload of money.” Ross made it clear to Whelan that this offer from The Golf Channel was a once in a lifetime opportunity. In Greenberg’s opinion, Michael would be crazy to turn down the chance to leave his fingerprints and DNA on an entire network, and with a well-known love for golf, this seemed like a perfect match. Whelan agreed but still was saddened by his HBO departure.

In early April 1994 he accepted the job.

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That summer Whelan oversaw the production of Wimbledon tennis for the final time.

On his way to London, Mike spent many hours in his seat trying to etch out his vision for what The Golf Channel was going to be and what it would look like. He knew he had to bring in a glamorous, high-end quality of production that also felt instantly intimate to their viewers. In his mind, this network needed to virtually transport the audience to the 19th hole – the post-round gab session at the bar where each golfer regaled one another with the highlights and lowlights of the round.

His first big epiphany was that The Golf Channel would have a staple franchise group of shows that people at home could actively participate in. The viewers could call in and talk not only with the host but also with the A-list guests: the best players, designers, architects, club manufacturers & instructors. The original blueprint revolved around getting The Golf Channel’s potential audience initially addicted to contributing to the bedrock shows they were wheeling out first.

This first batch of shows that Whelan created were “Golf Talk Live”, “Golf Academy Live”, “The Viewers Forum”, “Golf Central”, and “Golf Today”.

Beyond the live interactive shows, Whelan also realized that he had access to a vast library of classic golf footage as well. He greenlit reruns of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, travel shows, and past PGA Tour documentaries.

Michael also knew that The Golf Channel needed to incorporate other celebrities who loved to golf too. This would eventually lead to the hiring of Ann Liguori, who was already well established in the New York media world. Ann had the ability to book high profile guests ranging from presidents to movie stars.

If I’m not mistaken, Ann might have been the first woman ever to host her own prime time sports show. We needed her. She created millions of dollars of industry PR that grabbed the attention of so many golf enthusiasts.

When contacted by phone Liguori recalled: “Michael reached out and believed in my abilities to host what became ‘Conversations with Ann Liguori’ at a time when women in sports broadcasting were rarely asked to host and do a production of that magnitude. It was a pleasure working with Michael. It would not have happened without him and I’m grateful to him for that!”

Most of the concepts for The Golf Channel were conceived on that 6-hour flight to London. He mapped them all out frantically on a cocktail napkin like a microcosmic, manic John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.

Once I got going, I couldn’t stop creating. If one could have looked inside of my mind it would have looked like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Six hours of idea, after idea, after idea. The creative high was overwhelming.

After Wimbledon, Whelan flew straight to Las Vegas where he cranked out one last fight for HBO. As soon as they wrapped in Vegas, he caught a red-eye flight to New Jersey. The moving truck was there waiting for him. He packed up his home, sadly said goodbye to his father and then boarded a plane to Orlando, Florida.

With that, he left the northeast behind forever.

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Within a short time of arriving in the “sunshine state,” there may have been an ominous warning that Michael staying back in New York with HBO would have been a better idea. Michael is not religious, he’s barely spiritual. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, the supernatural, sasquatch, abominable snowmen or UFOs.

But he still talks about one evening in the first few weeks of his arrival in Orlando that to this day continues to send chills up and down his spine.

One evening, after a long day at work, Michael and a few colleagues went to dinner at a local eclectic restaurant called Café Tu Tu Tango. The restaurant was full of art, artisans, musical performers and painters.

There was also, that night, in the corner of the bar, a very attractive tarot card reader. After a few cocktails, Whelan was convinced by his cohorts to have her “read his future.” Whelan obliged.

The session began lightly, bantering flirtatiously back and forth, but the lightness suddenly took an ominous tone as the reader began to flip the cards in front of Whelan. He began to uncomfortably squirm in his seat. Just a few minutes earlier he had gotten himself all psyched up for the reading – after all, it’s one that advertised understanding his potential and what he could give to the world. He had done all his homework; he’d asked the right questions and he’d cleared his mind to accept the messages that he would be given. He waited with anticipation as she flipped over his card – and suddenly his hopes and dreams were dashed.

She drew the 10 of Swords, a card with particularly disturbing imagery. The gruesome picture shows a corpse with ten swords driven through the cadaver from the head down to the legs. Now Michael was supposed to make the connection between what his greatest value was, and one of the most traditionally negative cards in the deck.

The reader was hesitant to speak but eventually told Michael that he had made a huge mistake moving to Florida. Nothing but bad luck, pain and disaster would follow Michael during his new move.

Normally I wouldn’t have paid any attention to her reading,” Whelan recalls, “but her words penetrated my being. My body was full of fear, chilled to the bone. I felt like what she was telling me, possibly even warning me, was real. I smiled, said my goodbyes and got the hell out of there. Still haunts me 25 years later. Like a Stephen King or M. Night Shyamalan horror film, any time something negative or bad happened over the next 5 years, I flashed back to that night. I should have loaded up my horse and got the hell out of Dodge – as quickly as possible!

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Whelan arrived at The Golf Channel office, the building was bare, save for 3 employees and a dry erase board. His first thought was, “what the fuck did I get myself into?” However, this was Michael’s empty canvas. The one he always imagined he’d have. He had less than half a year to paint a masterpiece.

The clock was ticking.

Michael started by transcribing the notes he had scribbled on the airplane napkin to the dry erase board. Then he fastidiously began plotting out all the shows he had come up with, the people he needed to hire for various positions and how to afford these moves on the shoestring budget he was given.

This was not going to be HBO level production money.

His first significant hire was coordinating producer Paul Farnsworth – Whelan’s right-hand man. With Paul’s help, Michael hired 15 on-air announcers and approximately 100 production people. He also designed every single set and worked with multiple composers from around the world to develop the theme music for the shows. He hired and assisted renowned artist/designer Steve Johnston to create the entire graphic look for the network.

“I pretty much had a 30,000 square foot, blank canvas of production studio,” Whelan wistfully recalls, “I worked pretty much 19-20-hour days of designing sets and figuring out the ways that the shows would look and sound and feel.” This grueling trend of burning the candle on both ends would continue throughout his tenure at The Golf Channel.

Once the content and aesthetic were solidified Michael began plugging in the people who would anchor the shows. These hires included the iconoclastic Peter Kessler, Brian Hammonds, Kraig Kann, Lynda Cardwell, Jennifer Mills, Mike Ritz, Tom Nettles, Scott Van Pelt, Kelly Tilghman, Adam Barr, George White, and Rich Lerner.

Whelan also hired former New York sports journalist Ann Liguori, who became the first female to host a prime time network sports show with her successful, celebrity-driven “Conversations with Ann Liguori”. Her ability to attract big names was very important in the early days.

He brought in former ESPN2 producer extraordinaire Keith Hirshland to be the head of his live golf tournament production. Whelan also hired a plethora of other top-notch producers and documentarians to flesh out the team, Jeff Hymes, Lee Siegle, Jay Kossoff, Warren Rogan, Chris Lincoln, and Emmett Loughran. They also convinced programming genius, Peter Gordon from HBO to come on board. The major spots were in place.

With the help of Steve Johnston, they also wrangled two of the best promotional producers in the industry, Kenny Taht, and Robin Cowie. These two would later go on to produce The Blair Witch Project. Taht and Cowie added that much needed promotional flair to the network.

Paul Farnsworth reminisces that from the beginning:

No matter what the project, Mike always had a vision for what he wanted and was driven to accomplish his goals. He always brought incredible passion to whatever he was involved in. As a boss, he wanted to be surrounded by people who had a similar drive and commitment to quality. He used to have a saying ‘there are no small jobs’ and by that he meant no one was too big to be concerned about little things that mattered. Here he was, VP of Production, and he was sweeping and cleaning the studio the night of the launch of the network. He also had a great eye for acquiring and developing talent. He took a lot of raw, unknown, untested people and polished them into stars.

Finally, Michael had his pieces in place. Now the biggest conundrum was getting all those people to Orlando while also scrambling to get a 24-hour a day network off the ground.

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Former Golf Channel personality (and current ESPN star analyst) Scott Van Pelt described Michael in the early days this way:

Whelan was fascinating because he was this dynamo. If you were to close your eyes and picture what would a TV executive from HBO look like…it would look like Whelan. A guy that was immaculately dressed and had this really confident persona, but not off-putting…like a cliché or someone you didn’t like. You were immedaietly drawn to him. He had this aura of a guy who was going to launch a network and had this great belief that it would happen.

Initially, Golf Channel’s founder Joseph Gibbs had thought people would pay to subscribe to the network, like HBO. Gibbs banked on the fact that there were enough die-hard golf fans who would shell out $4.99 a month for unprecedented televised access to the game. However, early on it became clear that this business model was not going to work. To the owner’s credit, they astutely changed direction.

“They pretty much call it The Heroin Syndrome,” Michael quips, “We’re going to give away our product for almost free…in fact, we’ll pay you. At some point, you’re going to fall in love with it and we’ll be in a position then to call our shot.”

Right off the bat, the pressure was immense for Whelan. Beyond the expectation to crank out dazzling content that would impress advertisers and distributors, he was also worried about the financial livelihood of the people he had hired. Every day Mike would hold his breath when it was time for Gibbs to make payroll. Somehow each week they stayed afloat (often from Gibb’s own pocket).

During the early days, Whelan worked up to 20-hour days. He would arrive with the janitors at dawn and often leave after 9pm. These were fearful and anxious times. Whelan could never have imagined how stressful and taxing this project would be. Though he kept it all to himself, the hectic schedule took its’ toll on his mind and body. “Of all of the things I was not prepared for, being the boss of a network was at the top of the list. Never in my wildest dreams could I have prepared for the amount of work and sacrifice getting this thing called The Golf Channel was going to take.”

In many ways, The Golf Channel during the inception years was The Wild West. Many people I spoke to for this piece have echoed that metaphor. Seeing as this was the virtual environment, everyone flew by the seat of their pants and medicated any angst with late-night booze sessions at Sam Snead’s Pub. While Michael was 100% business during work hours, he admits spending too many hours wildly imbibing with his co-workers. They worked hard and partied harder. The only people the Golf Channel employees knew, were the people they worked with.

According to Scott Van Pelt:

We were all kind of on a bit of a joy ride. Certainly, no one dreamt then that it would become what it is. It’s like everyone went to Florida like we were mentally going to be on vacation, and then you realized after a bit, oh shit…this is where we live and work! We’ve got to pull ourselves together, man. Plenty of dinners turned into late nights. I don’t want to paint the picture that people were behaving recklessly. It wasn’t like that. It’s just mentally you didn’t go there knowing it was going to become what it became. It did over time and then people knuckled up and got down to what they were good at. The Wild West is a pretty apt description.

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After talking to scores of men and women who were at The Golf Channel at the very beginning, they all agree – if not for the production aspect of the company, led by Whelan – The Golf Channel would have imploded immediately and probably have been gobbled up by another network or the PGA Tour. There would be no Golf Channel as we know it today.

Joseph Gibbs, with all his business brilliance, and the rest of his executive management team, were far behind the eight balls in organizing the corporate side of The Golf Channel. The Human Resources department, for the most part, was nonexistent. Most of the early employees had no idea where to go if they had any issues or concerns. If someone had an error in their paycheck or needed to take a sick day they went to Whelan. Most people used him not only for production guidance, but he was expected to have all the other answers as well.

There is no doubt that when starting a new company of any sort one’s core values are the fundamental beliefs that drive their business. They are guiding principles that should remain constant. Even as one’s company grows their core values should remain the same. Core values can also serve as a moral compass. Some of the more common core values are integrity, trust, excellence, respect, responsibility, and teamwork. The company was new, young and in some of the most important areas of corporate development, unprepared to manage the hundreds of employees that clocked in at The Golf Channel’s main offices. Whelan was their loveably gonzo leader.

We’ve all met them. People who just get along effortlessly with everyone – those incredible individuals who seem to glide through life on a permanent high. These are the people we are all slightly jealous of because they are always doing something interesting or they always seem to have another amazing adventure to share. We can’t stay jealous, though, because they are just too damn likable. When other people discuss them, they often use the word: charming. That was Whelan. He had an incredible way of making everyone feel important. What he also did brilliantly was to find the most socially disengaged people, those that were afraid to fit in, and make them feel special.

In a way, Whelan was like Anthony Robbins or, any of the world’s best motivational speakers. When he spoke in front of a group of people, he was captivating, confident and mesmerizing. He convinced everyone that The Golf Channel was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Joseph Gibbs was a brilliant businessman. Michael Whelan was the captivating creator, entertainer, and motivator.

Whelan recollects: “At the end of my marathon workdays, I’d make my way home and try to get some rest. As I laid in bed my thoughts would speed up and I would end up lying in bed for hours watching pictures on the inner sides of my eyelids. That’s how I created. Sometimes words were present, and I read them as if engrossed in a good novel. If I were asked to read them out loud, they would not make any sense. They were a fascinating blur of words and pictures; snatches of poetry and music. My mind moved so quickly. I became impatient with myself and those around me who seemed to be moving and talking so slowly. That’s how I’d often create. These were LSD trips without the LSD.”

Despite the long hours and wild weekends, the network began to find an audience and grow exponentially. The only memorable hiccup came early on when Arnold Palmer was scheduled to be a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. When his impending appearance was announced the entire Golf Channel staff was exhilarated. All Palmer had to do was give the fledgling station an on-air plug and The Tonight Show’s demographic would likely take interest in their work.

On the night of The King’s cameo, Whelan hosted a viewing party at his apartment. The buzz was enthusiastic and jubilant leading up to Palmer’s spot. However, when The King finally gave his interview, he shockingly never once mentioned anything about The Golf Channel. By the time The Tonight Show went to commercial everyone at the party was silent.

According to Michael, for the next few weeks, everyone was on edge at the office, wondering if Palmer’s perceived snub was a passive-aggressive kiss of death.

Soon thereafter it became clear that the withhold was not a coded message.

Things continued to trend in a positive direction and Palmer remained a stoic backer of The Golf Channel. For whatever reason, The King had just decided not to talk about his passion project in front of millions of potential viewers that night.

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Whelan elaborates:

Depression is something that has been a lifelong sidekick of mine since I was old enough to know that there was something wrong with me. I’ve always felt different. I’ve always felt sad. I’ve always felt lonely, insecure, unattractive. If you looked at me and talked to me you would never guess that these were issues that were lifelong companions of mine, but they were serious issues that I never knew how to deal with. As I got into my 30’s they started to manifest a little bit more. At HBO there was no doubt that I had some serious mental issues that I was trying to deal with. One of the things about the entertainment business is that most of us work hard and then we play even harder. I think my issues were never those that people would look at on Monday through Friday and say that this guy had some issues. I was very good at hiding my bipolar disorder. I am an incredibly high-functioning individual. But there was no doubt that on the weekend I would like to go out with everybody and party pretty intensely to where there was no doubt it was causing some problems in my life.

As The Golf Channel’s fame continued to grow Michael was already struggling with the emotionally crippling symptoms of bipolar disorder. An illness that most people will never be able to understand.

Author and editor of The Bipolar Battle, John Poehler explains Whelan’s challenge this way:

Michael has bipolar disorder type 1. Type 1 is the direct descendant of manic depression. Think of mania and bipolar depression on a pole. Mania is at the top and bipolar depression is at the bottom. Traditional symptoms include inflated self-esteem, motor agitation, inability to speak fast enough to keep up with thoughts, extreme inattentiveness, sexual indiscretions, compromised morals and values, little to no need for sleep, hallucinations, and delusions.

Poehler goes on to list:

Other symptoms and behaviors of bipolar depression include insomnia, eating too much or too little, loss of interest in things once seen as enjoyable, darker thoughts, pulling back from friends, reduced ability to keep up with personal hygiene and suicidal ideation. Identifying early signs is a slippery slope to cover. Many of the same symptoms can be seen among a number of different mental illnesses. (If you think you may have bipolar disorder) my suggestion is to contact a doctor to address your questions.

Whelan’s journal entry from 1994 sheds some light on his struggle:

Mental illness is a force field that enacts, on each person in its’ grip, an altered reality that is either seductive or oppressive…but always inescapable. It often leaves families, or in clearer moments, the individual, to wonder about why – the great why – they’re tuned differently. I myself wonder about the wellspring of my mental illness, about how it is that the brain’s compass spins like an out of control top. Mental illness is experienced by one in five Americans in any given year, according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness. I am one of those five.

Paul Farnsworth affirms that some staffers nicknamed him “The Viper” a name that Whelan despised:

There was no question that Mike burned with intensity…he worked long hours and dealt with hundreds of issues every day. He could be a very intimidating person…he as in a position of power, always dressed impeccably, and didn’t have a lot of patience for people who didn’t bring a passion to their work. Mistakes were one thing…those could be fixed…but to gain respect, you had to have some desire. So, he could be tough on some people. He would sometimes put on this “tough guy’ persona when he had to deal with someone who needed some tough love. Truth is, Mike is a real softie at heart…and despite the expensive suits, network exec mentality, “Viper” persona, he really cared about the people he worked with. There were times when he was tough on someone but felt bad about it afterwards…and he would seek reassurance that his tough love was the right way to get things straightened out.

By the time The Golf Channel was making good money and gaining television traction, Michael Whelan needed help. In his production years at HBO, there was an adequate human resources department with health care plans that covered mental health treatment. He also had Ross Greenburg and Rick Bernstein to talk to — they were like his brothers. The Golf Channel, on the other hand, was still playing catch up in these areas. Even if Michael had wanted to seek treatment options, they weren’t available until years later after the network launched. Add to that a social climate where bipolar disorder was considered an unemployable taboo and Whelan continued to suffer in silence.

Just when business seemed to be booming on the surface, office scandals were about to severely exacerbate Michael’s maladies.

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In April 1997 Vicki G. Nantz, a former associate director at The Golf Channel, filed a lawsuit in Orlando U.S. District Court alleging that TGC had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Equal Pay Act. Nantz specifically singled out Michael Whelan and Paul Farnsworth, claiming they had not given her comparable pay raises to a less experienced male co-director.

The Golf Channel eventually settled the case with Vicki Nantz, and she continued on with a promotion to a director position. Whelan, on the other hand, felt unfairly attacked and strongly denied any discrimination on the part of Farnsworth or himself. Regardless this began further intensifying his bipolar disorder. The mood swings and paranoia increased.

Many have told me that Vicki Nantz suing The Golf Channel broke Whelan’s heart. He was the one who was instrumental in making sure she had ample opportunities to develop her career. It was known to all that Michael always had an open-door policy. Regardless of how busy he was he always had time to meet with any of his production team. Managing over 100 production staff was an overwhelming task. 100 people, 100 salaries, 100 performance reviews.

Whelan always valued his production personnel like a coach would with a depth chart. He had A players who he couldn’t do without. B players who had a great, bright future and C players who were unfortunately dispensable. Whelan valued Vicki as a strong B player soon to be a star. He compensated employees not only on their production skills but what they also brought to the table regarding their ideas and production concepts to grow the network in ways he hadn’t thought of. He loved employees who thought outside the box. Michael often said that ‘when you have two people who think alike you don’t need one of them.’

Michael affirms he would have been more than obliged to meet with Vickie if she had any concerns. If she was unhappy or, believed she deserved more money, he would have certainly met with her and listened to any of her concerns. But that opportunity was never afforded to him, nor anyone else for that matter.

“ Everyone at The Golf Channel believed they should be making more money. Including me. I’ll never understand why she sued The Golf Channel. If her purpose was just to attack me, to make me look bad, inconsiderate, non-caring…she did a great job in the short term!” he laments. “But I knew differently. I knew her potential – I really liked Vickie, a lot, but it was just another indication that it was time for me to begin to pack my bags.”

Around the same time frame another disgruntled employee, who had months earlier been let go by TGC, decided to retaliate against the company and drag Michael’s name into an even higher profile lawsuit.

In the second suit former Golf Channel producer Martin Jenkins (son of the legendary golf writer Dan Jenkins) sued TGC in Orlando state court, alleging that he was fired because he blew the whistle on several high-ranking employees. This case garnered more attention because it challenged parts of Florida’s employment-at-will doctrine. Jenkins argued that even though he had not written down any of his recollections, The Golf Channel shouldn’t have been allowed to fire him because he had made oral complaints to them about company malfeasance.

Amongst Jenkin’s allegations were salient claims that Paul Farnsworth and Michael Whelan had solicited free golf equipment from suppliers, and that Whelan had sexually harassed several female employees at The Golf Channel.

Whelan absolutely denied the sexual harassment claims. These were women who didn’t even work for him. While meeting with his superiors he admitted that during some of his late nights partying at Sam Snead’s Pub and during other off the clock occasions he had consensually gone out with and sometimes dated female co-workers. Michael strongly maintained that at no time were these advances unwelcome or any more inappropriate than two single, consenting adults having a good time after a night on the town.

The Golf Channel executives conducted a thorough investigation of Jenkin’s allegations and found no sign of harassment. Instead, they classified his trysts as “inappropriate behavior” with fellow employees. They asked Michael to make a formal apology in front of the company, detailing that he was struggling with alcohol abuse issues, and then take a two-week leave of absence. Dejectedly, Whelan gave the mandated Mea Culpa speech and served his suspension.

After extensive conversations with Whelan and Paul Farnsworth, neither man considered Whelan’s romantic actions to be importuned. Like many men in the era before the Time’s Up and Me Too movements he simply didn’t consider pursuing his close-knit “family” of female co-workers out of bounds. If anything, he took interest in them because these were the only people he knew and could relate to in the Orlando area. After working hand in hand with them under the same roof for over 18 hours a day, unwinding with these ladies later, over drinks and dinner, was a logical leap.

It should also be noted that none of the women named ever leant their names to the Jenkins lawsuit. According to Whelan, while some of them expressed regret for hasty decision making, none of the ladies laid the blame at his feet. Legally speaking there is no record of any further complaints after the Jenkins lawsuit was resolved.

Multiple sources I spoke to confirm that the Martin Jenkins firing was not initiated by Whelan. They all assert that Paul Farnsworth was the one who had issues with Jenkins’s lack of production and leadership of his production unit. Whelan was asked to back Paul up when he demanded that Martin be fired or, he’d consider quitting. Jenkins realized that Michael was the lightning rod that could make for a lawsuit. To a man these sources all maintain that Farnsworth had the problem with Jenkins, not Michael.

A former Golf Channel female employee, who was willing to comment on the early days, had strong sentiments about Whelan’s harassment allegations:

The Golf Channel never had a corporate fraternization rule as well as any HR Department to assist their employees who might be suffering from ADA related issues. Their naivete was a disaster waiting to happen. TGC did a disservice to all its employees by not creating a safety net to protect them. But with all the things they had to do, I can understand how things might slip through the cracks. Why are HR safety nets so important? If employees don’t feel safe talking to their managers or feel like safe, free individuals about mental health issues, then there’s an indication that there’s something wrong with the corporate culture.

She goes on to assert:

I remember it like it was yesterday. The CEO sent out a company email and had everyone meet in the main studio at 3PM. More than 100 employees attended. No one knew why they were there and then they saw the CEO, Gary Stevenson, and Whelan enter. Whelan looked exhausted, defeated, crushed, so very sad. The opposite of how he normally carried himself. Moments later Stevenson had Michael tell the entire company that he suffered from depression and that he had a substance abuse problem (a complete violation of the ADA). Whelan heartfully announced that if he hurt anyone while battling his demons – he was sincerely sorry for his actions. He also was forced to tell everyone that he’d be getting personal help. You could have heard a pin drop that afternoon. Everyone was shocked. This was so unexpected. A few people were holding back tears. People were stunned that they were even privy to what everyone believed should have been a private, corporate dealt with the situation.

After Whelan’s mea culpa, his office was lined with fellow employees — many wanting to embrace and support Michael for his bravery. I’m sure there were a few people who were licking their chops having just witnessed his apology and embarrassment, but, most of us felt that Michael was being singled out, punished, crucified for what the entire company was doing. I got to know Michael pretty well during his time at the Golf Channel and I never saw him, ever “hurt” anyone. He never acted inappropriately at work. Never! He never made unwanted advances or made anyone feel uncomfortable. Michael was a consummate professional. So what, he was a bit eccentric, unconventional. What creative ‘genius’ isn’t? So what if he had a good time when he was off the clock. We all did. Even those who Whelan reported to were known to have a good old time at the end of the day. We all needed the break.

Michael just saw the world differently. I’m heartbroken that he struggled to battle his depression alone while making sure everyone else was taken care of. He never asked for anything. It was all about others. At the end of the day, I wonder if anyone ever inquired whether or not HE was okay. It’s horrible that out of hundreds of people, two or three disgruntled individuals were given enough oxygen to shatter his career. For all of us who cashed our paychecks, we’re all fortunate that Michael had the vision and fought for all of us. We all have our issues; we all make mistakes. Michael wasn’t perfect. But who and the heck is? It’s called being human. Michael’s imperfections were just played out on center stage. Shame on those who shattered his life!”

When I asked Whelan what his recollections were on that earth-shattering day, he refused to comment. He wouldn’t say more than, “I did what the Golf Channel felt appropriate. I owed them an apology for any embarrassment I caused them. I’m sorry I put them in that position” Many others would disagree.

The female employee concludes:

Most of those people who received enjoyment from that horrific incident were quickly saddened and shocked to see how much The Golf Channel changed once Whelan left. There was no more heart and soul to the network. It was just a business, nothing special any longer. And in regard to all of those who attacked Michael unfairly, well, most of them were gone shortly after. They no longer had an advocate in their corner.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to put the genie back into the bottle once it had been released. The rumors were now a part of the everyday work environment at The Golf Channel. Whelan had spent his entire life battling his demons while making sure he did his best to respect the thousands of people who worked for him. Now that reputation was tarnished. Or, at least in Whelan’s head it was.

He was a major advocate for fairness in the workplace. He was the executive who made it clear to Bob Greenway and Paul Farnsworth that he wanted TGC to be evenly represented with women in production positions, and a diversification of people of color. Whelan fought hard to have women on-camera hosts and to have Dwayne Ballen, an African American from North Carolina host their Golf Today show. He wanted the network to be a multi-cultural mosaic. He wanted drastically to change the negative perception that golf was an “all-white men’s” sport and network. To the secrecy of many, Whelan often refused personal raises in order to keep low-level production personnel. He was an advocate for equal opportunity and when the allegations surfaced about Whelan’s personal life, it destroyed him.

By the time Whelan began serving his suspension his bipolar disorder was raging. Michael’s depression had officially gotten the better of him and he was now at its’ mercy, hanging on to his sanity by a thread. The depression, anxiety, and sadness took on an elevated life of their own.

Though he continued to work at TGC for a couple more years thereafter, this stressful and scandalous period was the beginning of the end of Michael J. Whelan’s run at The Golf Channel.

It also nearly cost him his life.

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Whelan and The Golf Channel decided to mutually part ways in 1998. By this point, Michael’s depression was so pronounced that most of Michael’s close colleagues knew that their original architect wasn’t well. Whelan ended up accepting a severance package from TGC and disappeared into the sunset, rarely to be seen ever again. It was also the last time he would work in television.

Farnsworth recalls:

As the situation with TGC deteriorated, Mike’s mental health deteriorated as well…he became erratic at times. He was clearly down and depressed…the love and passion that he brought to the job had been drained and he was bitter about the treatment he had received. He didn’t have the same patience or passion. After he was let go, he just felt betrayed by the company…he always wanted it to be a family and he felt like the family turned their backs on him. It crushed him.

The devastation Farnsworth describes indeed became Whelan’s cruel mistress when he left The Golf Channel. Michael’s descent into full-time self-destruction was immediate. At first, he was okay, but, then as the days passed, he began to slide – there were days without shaving, showering, proper nutrition and leaving his house. The drinking became intentionally chaotic. Friends and loved ones began to worry for his safety. His dear friend, Rick Bernstein Senior Vice President of HBO had heard disturbing rumors and flew to Orlando to check on his well-being. What he found was disturbing. Other friends had police officers drop by the house from time to time to check on him as well. Within a year of his departure from show business, Michael was fantasizing about the end of his life.

Whelan remembers it this way:

At the end of my tenure at The Golf Channel, my sadness was exacerbated to frightening levels of existence and continuance…with each and every day passing by like a tropical storm, I began looking over my shoulder with fear. Is someone coming after me again? Or, is someone this time coming to save me? Just like they do in every movie, or in every wonderfully written book. Did I have a Clarence the Angel like George Bailey did? The truth be told, no one threw me a life preserver.

Months passed without anyone talking to me. I had always been there for everyone. My home was their home. I took care of so many people. All the times I had invited people to my house for Thanksgiving and Christmas when they had no place to go, well, what happened to all those people? I received no cards, no calls, no concern for how I was doing. I was quietly hoping that HBO would call and hire me back, but, that never happened. I felt as if I had a scarlet letter pinned to my chest. My sadness was unbearable. It’s dangerous to allow a depressed individual to isolate.

Michael then chose the unthinkable. That Christmas Eve he ran a hose from his exhaust pipe into his car and nearly committed suicide. The burning, passionate genius that consumed his every waking hour was nearly extinguished twenty years ago.

If not for those barking dogs.

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BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

A recovery story is a messy thing. Michael has had dozens of beginnings, false starts, and no final ending. Once he was released from the hospital after his suicide attempt, he spent years going through seemingly endless severe low points. There was more self-harm and neglect and a Herculean mental wrestling match to find the true desire to live.

Somewhere amid the disarray Michael finally reached out for the help he desperately needed. This was not a quick fix. Whelan sought the council of many doctors and tried a profusion of different medications, with varying results. After a while, through intense psychotherapy, he began to feel more normal and his emotions began to balance out. He found new fulfilling work in the timeshare industry. Yet, Michael ardently emphasizes that every day since has still been a battle with his frenzied psyche.

Just when things seemed the bleakest a major ray of hope beamed through the clouds in Michael’s mind. Whelan reconnected with a past on and off again love named Rebecca and began building a healthier future with her by his side.

“Rebecca and I have been best friends for 50+ years,” Whelan gushes, “we were high school besties. We always loved one another but geographical distance and my selfish career kept us apart. In 2003 we finally decided that we were better together as life partners than bi-coastal lovers. She had been by my side during my extreme depression and my remnant of my Golf Channel career. She has been my #1 supporter in my new career in the timeshare industry. Rebecca and I should have gotten together decades ago, but I blew it. But things happen when one is ready. I had to move through my selfishness, my addictions, my severe bipolar, for me to be able to accept her unconditional love. We have two children together. Six grandkids. For 50 plus years, she had always been a part of my day to day existence. Even if she wasn’t at times with me physically. She is now and always has been my reason for becoming a better man, a husband, a father and a friend. Just like my father did. Without her, I know for a fact I would not be alive. Everyone I’ve met thus far in my life has played a part in my story. And while some have taken up chapters, most just scribbled notes in the margins. Rebecca is the one I wanted to grace all the pages of my life with. From the day I met her more than 50 years ago – she changed my life for the better. I’m so sorry it took me so long to get my shit together. “

He also managed to make amends with his estranged dad.

When asked, he reminisces about his father this way:

Big Time Danny Whelan was loved by so many. It took my father and I decades but as time passed and we both grew up we both made amends for our love lost. At the end of his life he really became a better man, a great father, a better grandfather and a true friend. Forgiveness is a powerful gift. When he died, I was truly at peace with our relationship and heartbroken that I lost my only remaining parent.

Danny Whelan’s funeral was quite a spectacle. Bill Bradley, Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and Phil Jackson were the pallbearers along with Michael. The New York Post ran a glowing obituary detailing Danny’s legacy. NYC had lost a beloved son.

At long last Michael finally had the family structure he had been denied as a child and yearned for at The Golf Channel. What is considerably more marvelous is that the man who hadn’t wanted to live has now transformed into an enthusiastic survivor. Whelan now participates in and supports mental health awareness charities and has become a champion for saving the lives of displaced animals.

Michael credits the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal in 2007 for expediting his need to make a difference:

In 2007 we nonchalantly invested in a company whose purpose was to break up east coast puppy mills and relocate (non-kill) all animals. After some time, I became the chairman persona non grata of all east coast animal rescue centers. I have personally raised $3.5 million to break up the illegal puppy mills, relocate the animals and get them the necessary veterinary help. We have 15 veterinarians donating over $2 million per year in medical services. We now have over 500 foster families and have 10 animal rescue centers who work with us to relocate all animals. We also have 6 family-owned farms that will take in all cats and dogs that we cannot find full-time homes for. Since 2007 we have saved and homed over 3,000 dogs and cats.

From this writer’s vantage it seems like, after all his lonely predicaments, Michael J. Whelan ended up being Clarence the Angel.

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While Rebecca and his family gave him purpose and direction, Michael’s battles were far from over. A few years after their marriage, after finally finding a sense of vitality and purpose, Whelan would again be tested by another of life’s humongous curveballs.

In 2012 he was diagnosed with cancer and was told that his chances for survival weren’t great. Once again, the man who for years had flirted with death decided he wanted to fight for his life.

I began to feel sick, not right. Incredible night sweats. Incredibly lethargic. Difficulty peeing and finally pain in my rectum along with blood in my urine. After hoping things would get better, I went to my primary care doctor who immediately sent me to an oncological urologist. He ran a battery of tests and immediately checked me into the hospital where he removed 61 biopsies from my rectal area. I was diagnosed with non-invasive prostate cancer. I was given 3 options for the cancer and the best treatment option was given to me.

I decided on removal radiotherapy. The cancer was advanced and had spread. A lot of surrounding tissue had to be removed. First, I had to use a catheter for 7 months. The chemo wasn’t horrible. Lost my hair but I looked good bald. The major problem came when I contracted a dangerous side effect disease in my lung that also went to my bloodstream. The next day I went down, actually died, as my breathing stopped due to the collapsing of my lungs. Rebecca was constantly rushing me in and out of hospitals. I had weeks to live until I found the right doctor who knew how to treat this secondary disease.

Michael’s new doctor was able to treat his ailments and before long Whelan was on the mend. He had faced down the prospect of a medical death sentence and come back stronger for it. The creative genius had found yet another way to restore himself while rewriting history in the process.

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Since 2012 Michael has looked at every day as a gift and he cherishes the opportunity to bless others with his love, generosity, insight and enduring story. While he maintains that his life is not perfect (and his bank account nowhere near what it could have been had he stayed in the entertainment world) there is plenty to be grateful for.

Now in the twilight of his life, Whelan admits he is well into the third act of his movie. When he looks back there is plenty to be proud of. Many say that he is the Leonardo Da Vinci of The Golf Channel. He has won Emmy and Peabody Awards for his work at HBO and NBC SPORTS. He launched the careers of hundreds if not thousands of industry professionals who remain relevant today. He has weathered childhood abandonment, abuse, scandal, disgrace, suicide attempts, cancer scares and a lifetime of bipolar depression. But most importantly he has paid his dues, bigtime and now helps others find ways to take back their lives too.

Scott Van Pelt sums it up this way:

I’m indebted to him. I’ll always root for him. I know he has had some trials and tribulations. I think everybody roots for that final, triumphant act for him in whatever capacity he wants it to be. I hope for Michael that the final act for him has him walking off the stage appropriately.

Paul Farnsworth adds:

When I think about Mike, I think about the things we went through together and all the things he did for me. He was a mentor to me when I was freelancing at HBO Sports and took me under his wing at The Golf Channel. He gave me opportunities and trusted in my abilities. But more so, we shared a lot of good times together…brainstormed a lot of ideas, played a lot of golf, worked hard together, and laughed quite a bit. I owe a lot to Mike Whelan… a lot of people do.

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While finishing the writing of this piece Michael J. Whelan sent me a text that wraps things up succinctly:

By far the great majority of the people who go through even the severest depression survive it and live ever afterward at least as happily as their unafflicted counterparts. Save for the awfulness of certain memories it leaves, acute depression inflicts few permanent wounds. I have struggled through Tucker’s attempt to tell my story. Sometimes I have been pissed that he’s opened deep-seeded wounds that have taken me decades to suppress. Depression and PTSD have a way of disappearing and then rearing their ugly heads.

Many times, throughout this process I’ve wanted to quit. I’ve gotten angry, sad, ashamed, and times a clear realization that I still deal with very low self-esteem. My story is one that I planned to write on my timetable, not Tucker’s. Therefore, a lot of the story is incomplete, saving particular details for a later time. But I think you get the gist how the balancing act of high-end creativity, genius, mental illness, suicidal thoughts and hope for a better life work interwoven with one another. With bipolar disorder, I’ve learned that the magnificence of spring indeed follows the icy coldness of winter. I’m convinced that I’ll trudge through the difficult times and make my way through the emotional fog that blocks most of my sunlight that I call hope.

The big question in life is, who are you when you’re not famous anymore? Are you a good person or an asshole? Have you learned from your mistakes, or, do you continue to hold an unnecessary grudge…which is like peeing in your pants, only you feel it. I knew I was a wonderful, kind, generous person. It just took me a long time to believe it. When things end so fucking unexpectedly, it’s so hard to remember how it all began.

Looking back, I am thankful that Bob and Joe gave me that unique opportunity at The Golf Channel. I hold no grudges against anyone. I also forgive everyone for the way things played out. And I also forgave myself…that was the hardest thing to do…learning how to love myself.

I have to laugh because nowadays at The Golf Channel I’m considered somewhat of an urban legend. I was the perfect person at that perfect time to do a perfect job in creating what now is a billion-dollar enterprise. I’m not sure what the bigger mystery in life is: how were the great pyramids in Egypt created, or, who was the guy who created the entire look of The Golf Channel? Both seem to be a mystery to many.

Today is okay. I’m blessed to have someone in my life who I’m over the moon for. I can say that I finally know what love feels like. I’m blessed that I’m surrounded by just a few of the many dogs and cats who we have given a second life to. I’m lucky that cancer and all the secondary maladies I’ve overcome haven’t defined me and I’m lucky that I have a different career where I feel accepted and appreciated. And I’m still thrilled that I can hit most of the fairways most of the time.

I thank my lucky stars that my dogs Chester, Harris, and Bentley barked wildly on that Christmas eve night, stopping me from committing suicide. And I’m grateful that maybe today I’ll save one hopeless soul who is certain that they have no reason to live. I’m living proof that we all serve a purpose in this great experiment we go through called life.

FADE TO BLACK.

ROLL CREDITS.