The B/R Interview: Matt Iseman

Matt Iseman is the host of Sports Soup, an original series on VERSUS. The show gives viewers a candid perspective and realistic insight into the sports world. 

Pulling material from anywhere and everywhere in the realm of sports—pre- and post-game shows, press conferences, local media, and off-the-wall places—Iseman will call out athletes and coaches, announcers and analysts, anchors and reporters on their comments and actions and make sense of the nonsensical and anything that deserves a closer look.

You can catch Sports Soup Tuesday nights, 10 p.m. ET on the VERSUS channel. To learn more about the show, watch clips, and cast your vote for The Best of Sports Soup, check out www.versus.com/sportssoup.

Here are some excerpts from the interview.

MT: I’ve read about your background and the unique path you took in becoming the host of a sports comedy show. Can you tell that story for us?

MI: I went to Princeton University, where I was a varsity pitcher, which I’m not bragging; I realize that’s like playing chess at the University of Miami. 

And when it looked like I wasn’t going to get a multi-million dollar signing bonus, I ended up applying to medical school.

So I went to Columbia Medical School in New York City and got my M.D. While I was there I had a friend doing stand-up comedy, and he started dragging me to open mikes. One night, I decided to go on stage and give it a shot, and I just loved it. 

At the time, I didn’t give it too much thought, and from there I went to the University of Colorado for my residency.  I was going through my residency, and I just kind of realized that my heart wasn’t in medicine.

I decided to take a year off; I was doing internal medicine and thought about switching to emergency medicine, but I decided I just wanted to clear my brain and do something totally different and re-evaluate where I was headed in life. 

So I figured I’d go out to LA and try stand-up comedy because that was the total opposite of anything I was doing at that point. 

I didn’t know anyone out there, and I just started doing it. Every night going out to coffee houses, clubs, and bars. Literally anywhere and everywhere; I even did stand-up in a sex shop one night in LA. 

But I loved it; I was as happy as I’d been in years. I enjoyed getting on stage and making people laugh, and was fortunate enough to start making a living from it. 

At that point the decision was pretty easy not to go back to medicine. It was certainly not the career path I envisioned, but I’m happy with what happened after all the twists and turns. 

MT: It’s really a great story; how you were able to trust your gut and reinvent yourself?

MI: I like to think I’m kind of the comedic version of Madonna. That’s something I’ve learned about this business. You have to have the confidence that at the end of the day I’d rather bet on myself than on anything else. I believe I’m funny enough, I believe I’m good enough, and darn it, people like me. It’s like a motivational thing here [laughs].

MT: What brought you to Sports Soup on Versus?

MI: I had hosted some stuff before at E! and had always been a fan of Talk Soup, which is now called The Soup, so when I heard they were doing a show like that but with sports, I just thought that it was a perfect fit given that I had played sports my whole life and was now doing comedy. 

What I really like about Sports Soup is that while some of things we cover, like Pacman Jones or Plaxico [Burress], are horrendous, everyone involved with the show still loves sports. 

And at the end of the day, as much as we’re making fun of the events that go on in the world of sports, we’re still all watching the games, the pre- and post-game shows; we love guys like Charles Barkley 'cause, my god, he makes my job easy.

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