CAN WE FIRE JIMMY PITARO AT ESPN FOR HIS GAMBLING AND MEDIA DUPLICITY?

The chairman has annihilated the network by heaving betting advice, while luring gamblers to ESPN BET, and asking journalists to engage in the hypocrisy of covering Shohei Ohtani’s wagering "theft"

     The hypocrisy is nastier than busting a parlay. How can ESPN cover Shohei Ohtani, and all the other gambling messes smearing sports, while pumping “ESPN BET” on its website and apps? Push the button and wager against Stephen A. Smith, Elle Duncan and Erin Dolan on whether Connecticut will win the men’s basketball championship. Log onto “Betslip” and build the large amount you wish to pay the network.

     If you choose to ignore the daily sports digest, you press a tab and are taken each time to ESPN BET while agreeing and understanding that “The Walt Disney Company is not responsible for the site you are about to access.”

     Welcome to double-dealing about baseball’s double-dealer.

     Holier than Bob, as in Iger.

     On my previous job at the network, where I appeared most days as an “Around The Horn” panelist, someone would have demanded my take on Ohtani’s crime-accusing news conference. The show host would expect my honest thinking. I’d first focus on the obvious: Why did he supply no information on former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and how he stole at least $4.5 million in gambling losses via wire transfers? Then I’d have tried to explode the network.

     “How can ESPN use journalists to cover the ills of gambling when it promotes a device called ESPN BET for deep profits?” I’d point out.

     The producer would have stopped the taping and had my time on the topic reduced to a nanosecond. Someone would have made up a story about me and had me removed from the program. I’d be a bad guy because, oh, I wondered about the moral standards of journalism and why they don’t conform to Jimmy Pitaro’s wagerfest.

     One is either a journalist or a gambler in 2024. You cannot be both without having millions of suspicious viewers cutting more cords while wondering how chairmen and CEOs get away with lunacy. The Athletic, which also has gambling ties, tried to do a story on ESPN and other media operations that play both sides. Shouldn’t someone turn around and ask the New York Times, which owns the Athletic, why it has such insincere relationships? The writer quoted a spokesperson who said seriously, “ESPN is well-positioned to cover this story with a deep roster of investigative journalists and MLB reporters.”

     It’s also well-positioned with a tawdry group of gamblers, including host Scott Van Pelt, who runs through a week of “Bad Beats” as part of his nightly farce. From Joe Fortenbaugh to Tyler Fulghum and other analysts offering gambling tips on TV and radio, any concern a journalist might have with Ohtani is counteracted by spreads and props throughout the operation. You can routinely ask why ESPN is so alarmed about Mizuhara’s gambling and pieces of Ohtani’s portfolio sent to a bookmaker — when it wants you at home to blow loads of gambling money on their betslips.

     A distrustful media company, wouldn’t you say? Why would anyone want real sports coverage from a place that is fake? And why would a gambler use an app from a place that uses journalists to expose bettors? Has chairman Pitaro, with a possible place running Disney after Iger finally retires, had a conversation with his employees about the falseness of it all?

     Try starting with anchor Rece Davis, who covers college football and basketball like a religion but didn’t know how to end a betting segment on “College GameDay.” When Dolan urged fans to bet the under on Northwestern’s point total against UConn, Davis said, “You know what? Some would call this wagering, gambling. The way you’ve sold this, I think what it is, is a risk-free investment.” Later, he jumped on X and said his comment was “tongue-in-cheek.” Was it? Does he even know what is and isn’t?

     “Obviously, there are risks,” Davis wrote. “Though I’m not a gambler, I strongly encourage those who do partake, do so with prudence, care, caution, fiscal and personal responsibility and never over-extend.”

     Problem was, Ohtani was preparing for his conference at Dodger Stadium. This as the NBA removed center Jontay Porter from the Toronto Raptors, investigating him for betting irregularities. Did he oddly leave two games early, with a supposed illness or injury, because of prop bets? As the brother of Denver Nuggets star Michael Porter, this opens troubling consequences for commissioner Adam Silver.

     “It’s crazy. It’s just part of our sports now. It’s something that’s on a weird line right now,” Raptors swingman Ochai Agbaji said. “I feel like sports betting has always been around, but it hasn’t been as popular since … ever, so it’s becoming more popular and obviously you’re gonna have stuff like this. And it’s unfortunate, but stuff like this is gonna happen, especially when stuff is so close — like sports betting and gambling and the sport itself is being crossed. You see it everywhere.”

     “I think it’s just simple: Just stay away from basketball stuff,” said teammate Jordan Nwora, adding he hears about gambling “all the time. Non-stop. You get messages. You hear it on the sideline. You see guys talking about it all the time. It is what it is. It comes with being in the NBA. People bet on silly things on a daily basis. So, I mean, it’s part of being in the NBA, it’s what comes with it. I get it.”

     Said Chicago Bulls veteran DeMar DeRozan: “You’re getting more fans talking crazy to you because you’re messing up their parlays.”

     And yet, ESPN is pushing the gambling fix very hard. I would urge Pitaro to ditch newsmaking and stick to the soul-gouging. Why play a bad game of duplicity? One journey is important to daily life — and the other destroys problem gamblers. In a country of 335 million, about 15 million are helpless with a disorder. Larger numbers are functioning at risk levels. The more gambling is done on TV, the uglier the disease.

     Leagues are beyond help, counting revenues from some other planet. What kills me are the media companies, such as Fox Sports, which will pay Tom Brady about $37.5 million a season to analyze games though he and a partner will own 10 percent of the Las Vegas Raiders — and want gambling fools hanging in the Allegiant Stadium crowd. What kills me is the Athletic, which employs enough rubbish to report on others when it makes the same wagering mistakes.

     You know what? If I appeared on “Around The Horn” at the moment, with writers making minimum amounts these days, I wouldn’t answer the Ohtani query. I’d leave. And ask Pitaro to leave a business that he is annihilating.

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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.