Inside E:60’s profile of NY Giants star wide receiver Victor Cruz
Editor’s note: ESPN celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, running Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, by highlighting the contributions of Latinos in sports. Tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, E:60 profiles New York Giants receiver Victor Cruz, who is of Puerto Rican and African-American descent. For more information on Hispanic Heritage Month on all ESPN platforms, click here.
Victor Cruz’s meteoric rise to NFL and media stardom is one of the features showcased in the latest episode of E:60, ESPN’s award-winning news magazine.
E:60’s production team visited Cruz’ old Paterson, N.J. Fourth Ward neighborhood to learn more about his roots. He shares insight into how he managed to escape a violent neighborhood, overcome becoming a two-time college dropout as well as personal tragedy to triumph as an unlikely New York Giants’ Super Bowl hero.
Also featured in tonight’s episode: a profile of Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander; a high school senior with a rare disorder that only affects 1 in 250,000 newborns every year; and the Washington Nationals’ “Race of Presidents.”
For more on the Cruz story, please visit Esquire.com, where E:60 reporter Rachel Nichols writes that in spite of several obstacles, the Giants star has “still got that strong upward trajectory as a player.”
Lisa Binns, E:60 feature producer, gives us some insight into how the Cruz piece came together.
How did the idea to profile Victor Cruz come about?
As the NFL season approaches, we consider different athletes to possibly profile. Aside from Victor being a breakout star, he’s got an interesting backstory. He’s overcome some obstacles, some self-imposed, and has become an improbable NFL star.
Name one thing fans will learn about Cruz that they don’t already know.
What they’ll learn here is that he owns his mistakes. [For instance,] he makes no excuses for the obstacles that he placed in his way when he failed out of school [UMass] and the trouble he had trying to get back into school.
Cruz’ grandmother Lucy Molina, who was an important influence in his life, passed away Sept. 10 at the age of 77. Were you able to make note of that event in the feature?
I was editing the feature Sunday [Sept. 16] while watching the Giants game [against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers] on another screen. We knew that his grandmother had passed and that he had said that his first touchdown after her passing would be dedicated to her. [Cruz scored on 80-yard pass from Eli Manning in a 41-34 Giants’ victory]. We raced to get the video dropped into the piece, and ESPN [reporter] Bob Holtzman got a sound bite from Cruz on what he was thinking when was in the end zone.
