New KET documentary supplies fresh look at Jim Host’s legendary drive

Some time back, when Shae Hopkins, the executive director and CEO of Kentucky Educational Television, reached out to Jim Host to request a lunch meeting, the venerable Lexington sports marketing and media mogul thought he knew what was coming.

“I thought she was looking for money (in the form of a donation), honest to God,” Host said last week.

Instead, Hopkins asked Host to agree to be the subject of a KET documentary. The project that ultimately arose from that request “Jim Host: Game Changer” will make its debut Tuesday (Oct. 17) at 8 p.m. EDT on KET affiliates around the commonwealth.

The documentary covers well-known ground in recounting Host’s pioneering role in, essentially, creating the business sector that came to be called collegiate sports marketing. Host’s involvement with the national tourism industry, state of Kentucky politics and University of Kentucky athletics are also among the topics chronicled.

From previewing the film, two things about Host’s life and work were especially striking.

First, it’s hard to imagine many people have had a more profound impact on the city of Lexington in modern times than has Host.

Either through his business, his work in politics or via his extensive civic engagement, Host played roles in the financing and construction of Rupp Arena; the opening of the Kentucky Horse Park; the acquisition of the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games; as well the preservation of the Lexington Opera House, the Henry Clay law offices and the Mary Todd Lincoln house.

“I never talk about some of that,” Host said. “If you have the opportunity to be involved in (preserving a city’s history), you need to do your best.”

A second aspect of Host’s life on vivid display in “Game Changer” is his unrelenting drive to achieve.

Even now, at age 85, Host said he rises each morning between 4 and 5 a.m. Using sports parlance, Host said. “My motor’s still good. It’s my wheels that are bad.”

As he did throughout his business career, Host continues to organize his days by working off a list he compiles of the five things he wants to accomplish on that particular day.

Host said the source of his drive traces back to his childhood and his parents, Beatrice “Bea” Host and Wilford “Will” Host.

As a child, “my family, we moved all the time,” Host said.

His mom, Host said, was a strict disciplinarian who demanded the best from him.

“My Dad worked in a tannery all his life. He worked the liquor vats to scrape hair off of hides,” Host said. “Every night, he came home, he smelled so bad.”

During his high school years in Ashland, Host said his family “didn’t have enough money to buy my (school) books.” Host worked nights at the YMCA to earn money for books as well as to buy the clothes he wore to school.

“I didn’t have a car,” Host said. “I always rode with others, thumbed (hitchhiked) or rode the bus.”

Long before Host, a fire-balling pitcher, had earned one of the first two baseball scholarships offered by the University of Kentucky and subsequently had an injury-shortened stint in the Chicago White Sox minor league system, he had determined he was going to work as hard as it took to be able to live a more expansive life than he had known as a child.

“I just determined I wanted to break out of all that,” Host said. “Does that tell you about drive?”

Having built a career filled with profound achievements plus a few miscues and controversies, Host said he lives without regrets.

“I have absolutely no regrets over anything I have ever done,” he said. “How can I have regrets? I can’t do anything about (the past). All I can do is take what errors I have made — of which there have been many — and look forward with what days I have left (to live). I don’t know how many days I have left, but whatever (the number of) days are, I am going to make them as absolutely productive as I can.”

Last week, when he attended a preview screening of “Jim Host: Game Changer,” which was co-produced by Justin Allen and Beth Kirchner and is narrated by Tom Hammond, Host said he was so overcome with emotion he could not subsequently speak to other guests.

“First time in my life I wasn’t able to respond in front of a crowd,” Host said. “But I was too emotional. I never get that way, but I was after (seeing the film). They did such a terrific job telling the story.”

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