A new memoir penned by Emmis Communications founder and CEO Jeff Smulyan has earned positive reviews from a number of notable celebrities and athletes, including broadcaster David Letterman and former National Football League quarterback Andrew Luck.
The book, Never Ride a Rollercoaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs, and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur, went on sale in late November and chronicles the life of the stalwart radio broadcaster and the lessons he learned along the way.
Smulyan started and nurtured the careers of a number of top-name radio and broadcast personalities, including Letterman, who started his professional career at WNTS (1590 AM) when Smulyan was the general manager there.
“Meeting, knowing and working for Jeff Smulyan gave me the confidence to leave Indianapolis and seek fame and fortune in our sister city of Hollywood,” Letterman writes in the book. “I will never be able to repay Jeff for his faith, kindness and motivation. Please read the book and phone me.”
Smulyan is also credited with creating the first all-sports radio station in the country. The station, WFAN (680 AM) in New York City, was sold in 1991 for around $70 million — the most money anyone had paid for a single station at that time.
“Jeff Smulyan is a natural storyteller and makes me laugh out loud every time he shares the highs and lows of his life as an entrepreneur in sports and media,” Luck, who retired from the NFL in 2019, wrote in a testimonial for Smulyan’s book. (Luck played for the Indianapolis Colts; Smulyan, a native of Indianapolis, founded Emmis Communications there.)
Smulyan is also best known in the sports world for being the owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. While there, he managed the only father and son team to play professional baseball together.
“Jeff Smulyan brought fun to baseball,” Ken Griffey, Sr. and Ken Griffey, Jr. wrote in a testimonial. “If you read this book, you won’t play in the major leagues with your father or your son, but you will have fun reading it and you will learn some great life lessons.”
Never Ride a Roller Coaster Upside-Down is available wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Audible (audiobook version), Barnes & Noble and Powell’s Books. The memoir is published by Penguin Random House.
