​ESPN Founder Bill Rasmussen died Aug. 18 at 93 from the effects of Parkinson’s disease. (Photo by Marc Serota)Getty ImagesIn August 1978, Bill Rasmussen was stuck in traffic on Interstate 84 with his son, Scott, trying to solve a problem: They had plans for a sports cable network and enough satellite capacity to cover 8,760 hours a year. What could possibly fill all that time?Scott offered an answer that sounded almost absurd: play sports all day.From that traffic jam emerged the blueprint for what became the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, soon known by its initialism, ESPN.That brainstorm established Rasmussen, who died Aug. 18 at 93 from the effects of Parkinson’s disease, as a founding father of around-the-clock sports television and helped change how generations of fans consumed sports.“He had an idea, and he had a dream,” Bob Rauscher, who launched NFL GameDay in 1985, said. “And he made it happen.” Vince Doria, ESPN’s longtime vice president for news, said Bill Rasmussen’s vision and persistence were essential to turning the idea of a 24-hour sports network into reality. (Photo by Frank O’Brien/The Boston Globe)Boston Globe via Getty ImagesFrom Traffic Jam To ESPNRasmussen’s broadcasting career began in western Massachusetts in the 1960s, before he became communications director for the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association. After being fired alongside the entire Whalers front office in 1978, Rasmussen began exploring the possibility of creating a cable sports operation of his own.His original concept was a local Connecticut cable channel that could carry University of Connecticut basketball games, following the model of MSG in New York and WGN in Chicago, according to Vince Doria, ESPN’s now-retired vice president for news. Rasmussen was reminded that once the signal was sent to the satellite, it could be received well beyond Connecticut. That realization expanded the possibilities dramatically, Doria said, even though not everyone saw the idea’s merit.“Everybody thought it was a nuts idea at the time,” Doria said“Play Football All Day”Rasmussen had already incorporated E.S.P. Network when the idea crystallized during that August 1978 road trip, he recalled in a 2012 Forbes interview.“Scott finally said something like, ‘Play football all day, for all I care,’ and suddenly, the ideas started coming fast and furious during that car ride,” Rasmussen recalled in that interview. “We came up with the idea for ‘Sports Center,’ we had designed the entire building we would be in, we had decided what types of sports we should go after. “That car ride was where we hung the heavy steel work for the network.”The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network set up shop on land Rasmussen bought in Bristol, Connecticut, and launched with its opening show, SportsCenter, at 7 p.m. on Sept. 7, 1979, available in about 1.4 million cable households.Rauscher said the concept of a channel d