ESPN’S DEATH AND INTEGRITY ROT: A WORKPLACE IN BED WITH NFL AND NBA
With the two biggest pro leagues ready to accept equity stakes in the struggling network, forget the ideal of ethics, which means ESPN’s force should be listed in the directories of Goodell and Silver
So, the college professor never told me, the future of the media business means you’re working for the NFL and NBA. If a berth at ESPN is envisioned, you must be approved by billionaire owners and a commissioner. That means you’re not paid by a media company. It means you’re only an advertorial entertaining jackass who pumps a league’s games, props its gambling and keeps any critical thoughts to one’s self, though they are paramount to the populace’s faith in sports.
You are a public-relations fool. You don’t care about the integrity of reporting the core intestines of massive industries to gazillions of Americans, who spend countless amounts of time on following teams and wagering on games. You are a boob, a Scott Van Pelt oaf, a Mike Greenberg lackey, there to gain congratulations with a note from Roger Goodell or Adam Silver.
And if leagues don’t like you? Find an ethical site, such as Substack, which allows me to write THIS and whatever I prefer with no outside influences. This is why I entered the business, and I see few others on my plateau anymore, either caving in or getting out or hiding lazily. When I went to college, professors said I’d work for journalistic outlets that wanted to cover — and break down, if not crucify — the sports world. I did precisely that for more than three decades, on ESPN’s blowtorch almost every weekday for eight years, and at news sites around the country. But the leagues have taken over editorial operations pretty much across the gutted landscape. Those who refuse to admit as much don’t read their content.
It’s mushy. Rarely does anyone question the honor of a league or a franchise, even when dollars long ago turned to billions and push trillions. The more money is involved, the more important the media should become for watchdogs and their readers and viewers. Not in 2024, when big media prefer to be in bed with the leagues, especially the gambling sides. The Supreme Court’s decision, opening the betting vault, altered the media stance. And that’s why ESPN has collapsed, with leaks acknowledging the end of whatever the network has stood for since 1979.
Trying to save itself from a cable-to-steaming inferno, ESPN will grant an equity stake to the NFL and, soon enough, the NBA. Coverage of the leagues will be even grander, but if you want to know the major stories that reporters actively seek, the bias turns intolerably soft. They want you to watch games with joy in your heart and only a modicum of hard information. They want you to gamble without telling you more than Van Pelt and his who-are-they touts. You will be watching the NFL and NBA with ESPN in unadulterated cahoots. Somewhere, Bob Ley is dying.
Which means, forget about Pat McAfee’s show. Unless he abruptly alters his takes and sends Aaron Rodgers home, there will be no more discussions of Jimmy Kimmel appearing on Jeffrey Epstein’s lists, and he can return to YouTube with his filth. There will be no more revolting rip jobs of Jason Whitlock by Stephen A. Smith, who will have to turn more pleasant in his deliveries and stop leading with race. It’s fine to critique teams and analyze trades, but no one should question ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski or The Athletic’s Shams Charania, who are positioned to make personal jackpots when they make changes suspiciously to draft predictions. The insiders will report what they are given, with agents and general managers in compliance with the league.
Feel used and abused? That’s the doom ahead.
ESPN will receive control of NFL Media, including the NFL Network. The other networks who feed the league with $120 billion in broadcast deals — Fox, CBS, NBC, Amazon and, now, Peacock — will require an understanding not to employ batteries of attorneys. It’s all about Bob Iger’s direct-to-consumer wish for next year, when people won’t require cable subscriptions to mobilize programming. Does Iger not realize that people might watch a game on streaming … and that’s about it? Most of the shoulder shows … goodbye.
Consider it more banknotes for the leagues, especially the NFL, which knows it has a bonkers audience of 23 million that will stream a playoff game and has a region of snow-sweepers helping the Buffalo Bills play at home. Give ESPN your various channels and take its honesty and integrity.
I will not be going anywhere. Someone has to watch this nausea and present it. Too bad few others are with me, in a spineless media racket.
###
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.