ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER PSYCHO MOMENT AT FOX: WILL SANCHEZ END THE SHANKS ERA?
The most volatile team is run by Eric Shanks, CEO of Fox Sports, who can't keep his job after too many incidents — analyst Mark Sanchez was arrested after he was stabbed by a 69-year-old truck driver
It makes no sense that Mark Sanchez, a man once victimized by a Butt Fumble, would be stabbed in an alley past midnight by a 69-year-old truck driver. He should not have been out so late in any NFL city — even Indianapolis — and likely ruined his sportscasting career if police are correct in charging him with three misdemeanor counts: battery with injury, public intoxication and unlawful entry of a motor vehicle.
I’ve met Sanchez. He is a friendly guy. What happened? He allegedly asked the driver to move his vehicle after it backed into a hotel loading dock. In a scene captured by security cameras, the former quarterback found himself in a violent battle with a man who tried to use pepper spray and was forced to wield a knife.
“This guy is trying to kill me,” the driver said in an affidavit.
He stabbed Sanchez “two or three times” in self-defense, he said. Sanchez was rushed to a hospital for surgery that left him in stable condition. Was it really worth it to enter the man’s car, if that is what happened? Why not go home? Fox Sports prefers that he watches game tape in his hotel room before booth appearances. How much alcohol was involved? It was 12:30 a.m., with the Colts-Raiders game about 36 hours away.
The driver said Sanchez threw him against a dumpster. “A life-or-death situation,” he said. His knife left several wounds in the right torso area. The driver, with a laceration on his left cheek, was taken to a different hospital.
In the affidavit, a police officer quoted Sanchez: “all he could remember was grabbing for a window,” unaware of who stabbed him in the Wholesale District downtown. He was arrested Saturday.
“This incident should never have happened,” Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears said in a statement. “What began as a disagreement between a 38-year-old former professional athlete and a 69-year-old man should not have escalated into violence or left anyone seriously injured. As with any case, we will follow facts and the law wherever they lead.”
The story adds more drama to the biggest horror house in sports television. As it is, Fox had to fire executive vice president Charlie Dixon, who was accused of sexual battery in two lawsuits and supposedly was dumped because his wife was hired by a third-party production company. Fox also had to dump talk-show lunatic Skip Bayless, who settled a lawsuit from a hair stylist who accused him of offering $1.5 million for sex. Host Joy Taylor was fired, when a lawsuit said she was dating Dixon. Shannon Sharpe, who performed on a show with Bayless, left the network for ESPN before he was sued for sexual assault by a woman and settled the case. He was fired by ESPN.
Eric Shanks is the CEO and executive producer of Fox Sports.
If he ran a sports team, he’d have been canned long ago.
“A toxic culture at Fox, marked by bad faith promises and repeated failures to address a poisonous and entrenched patriarchy,” said one lawsuit.
Now we have Sanchez, who is making considerably less than Tom Brady’s $375 million deal. When he leaves the hospital, he might be forced to enter the Marion County Adult Detention Center. He is 38, with a wife and a son. He was replaced in the booth by Brady Quinn at Lucas Oil Stadium.
At some point, Sanchez will speak publicly. A hearing is scheduled Tuesday morning. He will have to explain why he was out at 12:30 in the morning, when a public figure suddenly becomes vulnerable when he should be asleep. We smiled at the Butt Fumble, with the Jets in 2012, when he gave up the ball after colliding with the rump of offensive lineman Brandon Moore and allowed a touchdown for New England.
This, by comparison, is shocking and sad. Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert, ultimately is in charge of Fox Sports. Change the culture, now.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.