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Todd Gallagher
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Todd Gallagher is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, filmmaker, and comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

. He is best known for his comedic commentary and elaborate social experiments. He has worked with ESPN and is known for his book "Andy Roddick Beat Me With a Frying Pan: Taking the Field with Pro Athletes and Olympic Legends to Answer Sports' Fans Burning Questions". His writing and comedy tend to be irreverent.

His experiments have been featured on and in a variety of outlets including The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Rolling Stone. Gallagher has appeared as a guest on numerous national radio and television shows, including appearances on CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

, Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...

, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

, Fox Sports
Fox Sports (USA)
Fox Sports is a division of the Fox Broadcasting Company . It was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League games...

, E!
E!
E! Entertainment Television is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by NBCUniversal. It features entertainment-related programming, reality television, feature films and occasionally series and specials unrelated to the entertainment industry.E! has an audience reach of...

, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

.

Early life

Gallagher was raised in Greensburg
Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Greensburg is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States, and a part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. The city is named after Nathanael Greene, a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War...

, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. At the age of 14 he won the grand prize twice on the ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

 quiz show Dream League.

Early career

At age 21 he became the youngest coach and Director of Player Personnel in the history of pro basketball for the United States Basketball League
United States Basketball League
The United States Basketball League , often abbreviated to the USBL, was a professional men's spring basketball league. The league was formed in 1985. The final champions are the Kansas Cagerz, who won the title game on July 1, 2007.-History:...

's New Hampshire Thunder Loons. His basketball experience led to a series of writing assignments in Australia. He then returned to the United States where he wrote for ESPN, conducting interviews with people throughout the sports and entertainment world, including Ice Cube
Ice Cube
O'Shea Jackson , better known by his stage name Ice Cube, is an American rapper and actor. He began his career as a member of the hip-hop group C.I.A. and later joined the rap group N.W.A. After leaving N.W.A in December 1989, he built a successful solo career in music, and also as a writer,...

, Ludacris
Ludacris
Christopher Brian Bridges , better known by his stage name Ludacris, is an American rapper and actor. Along with his manager, Chaka Zulu, Ludacris is the co-founder of Disturbing tha Peace, an imprint distributed by Def Jam Recordings...

 and Frankie Muniz
Frankie Muniz
Francisco "Frankie" Muniz IV is an American actor, musician, writer, producer, and racecar driver. He is known primarily as the star of the FOX television family sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. In 2003, he was considered "one of Hollywood's most bankable teens". In 2008, he put his acting career...

. As a television writer and producer he has sold, developed, and run various shows including an MTV special about the movie "Dodgeball
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, commonly referred to as simply DodgeBall, is a 2004 American sports comedy film produced by 20th Century Fox and Red Hour Productions, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, and Rip Torn...

" with stars Ben Stiller
Ben Stiller
Benjamin Edward "Ben" Stiller is an American comedian, actor, writer, film director, and producer. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara....

 and Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn
Vincent Anthony "Vince" Vaughn is an American film actor, screenwriter, producer and comedian. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before attaining wider recognition with the 1996 movie Swingers...

.

Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan

Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan: Taking the Field with Pro Athletes and Olympic Legends to Answer Sports Fans' Burning Questions (Random House, 2007), Gallagher's first book humorously answers some outlandish questions about sports, such as "Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?" (Chapter 1). A number of professional athletes including Andy Roddick
Andy Roddick
Andrew Stephen "Andy" Roddick is an American professional tennis player and a former World No. 1. He is currently the second highest-ranked American player, behind Mardy Fish....

,, Maurice Greene
Maurice Greene (athlete)
Maurice Greene is a retired American track and field sprinter who specialized in the 100 meters and 200 meters. He is a former 100 m world record holder with a time of 9.79 seconds. During the height of his career he won four Olympic medals and was a five-time World Champion...

,, and the NHL's Washington Capitals
Washington Capitals
The Washington Capitals are a professional ice hockey team based in Washington, D.C. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . Since their founding in 1974, "The Caps" have won one conference championship to reach the 1998 Stanley Cup...

, participated in live events for the project. Gallagher states the athletes were not paid to participate and went along with the experiments because they were fascinated to find out the answers themselves. The book has been described as "a weird amalgam of serious inside-the-ropes research germane to the games and of ludicrous just-outside-the-asylum performance art." Praise has come from the New York Times, International Herald Tribune
International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...

, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, and Washington Post, and the book has been excerpted by several publications. Commercially, the book has sold well, reaching number one amongst all sports books on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

.

Shaq Vs. Controversy

The Washington Post has pointed out similarities to the ABC show Shaq Vs.
Shaq Vs.
Shaq Vs. is an American reality television show produced for ABC by Dick Clark Productions and Media Rights Capital starring American basketball star Shaquille O'Neal. It began airing on August 18, 2009....

 and Gallagher's book saying the book and the show have "precisely the same premise" and are that a TV show based on the book Gallagher was trying to sell was "the exact same show."

Gallagher appears in both seasons as a producer of the show.

Playground Challenge

His "Phelps Challenge," where he challenged Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps
Michael Fred Phelps is an American swimmer who has, overall, won 16 Olympic medals—six gold and two bronze at Athens in 2004, and eight gold at Beijing in 2008, becoming the most successful athlete at both of these Olympic Games editions...

 on ESPN radio to a $50,000 bet that he could beat him in any event outside of the pool, was turned into the "Playground Challenge" by ESPN. In it, he takes on pro and Olympic athletes in playground events. In a challenge against former NFL player and MLB all-star Brian Jordan, Gallagher won in games of 1-on-1 basketball and whiffle ball yet lost the overall competition by a score of 4-2.

Todd vs. High School

On "Good Day LA," Gallagher announced that for his latest experiment he was heading back to high school as a student in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2009 for a book and documentary called "Todd vs. High School." Despite being a National Merit Scholar and Mensa level genius, as a high school student Gallagher was kicked out of multiple schools and barely graduated because of his low GPA. His goal in going back to high school was to see if he could get a 4.0, succeed athletically, and get along with his teachers and his parents.

On an “Inside Edition” feature, Gallagher stated he finished with a 3.8 GPA and was transformed by the experience. A documentary film of Todd’s experience is set to be released in the fall of 2012. The film features a number of celebrities including Taylor Swift, Jason Segel, and Sidney Crosby.

External links

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