THE SHAME OF SHARPE: ESPN GIVES HIM A TEMPORARY LEAVE AND SCREWS OTHERS
He plans a return to the network for the NFL preseason, which is disturbing when he faces a $50 million lawsuit for rape allegations — and makes some of us wonder how we were run off by TV executives
Let’s compare legal cases, shall we? I was removed from my daily panelist role on ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” after eight years of helping the program to mighty ratings, thanks to my first and only judicial inquiry of an entire lifetime. No charges had been filed. I was searching for a lawyer in Los Angeles. The network bosses decided I was guilty or, more to the point, they wanted me to be guilty so they could dump me.
From the day the show started until 2010, I had the highest number of appearances, including the host position. I called two executives. Only Vince Doria talked to me and said my future was up to me. ESPN wanted me to lose the case and ran me off the show to indicate the network wasn’t backing me, which certainly was noticed by the judge. I pleaded “no contest” to what my attorney said was the equivalent of touching a woman on the shoulder, though we’d known each other for more than seven months.
This was at the outset of #MeToo. I was the one forced to depart and find new places to live, because my legs were battered at night. From there, I was followed by the same woman to my favorite restaurants in a new town, to the point my lawyer called the city attorney, who decided each of us would select five spots where the other couldn’t go. The NBA Draft, someone suggested, not understanding she would keep following me.
Didn’t matter. The industry had soured on me, thanks to ESPN, which made lives and ruined lives — though president John Skipper ultimately was busted for cocaine and continues today as a supporter of Dan Le Batard’s podcast. Nothing should be trusted about Bob Iger, who lets Skipper and Jimmy Pitaro turn a sports media operation into an American scam. The reporting world never has completed my story and doesn’t seem to care — thanks to ESPN — and when The Athletic tried to profile me in 2023, a reporter called my attorney and performed responsible duties before finding editors who chose not to run the piece.
Which brings me to Shannon Sharpe, who has been accused of rape by a woman who met him two years ago when she was 19. The NFL Hall of Famer, 56, has been treated like a god at ESPN, which stole him from Fox Sports — thanks to the heavy recruitment of Stephen A. Smith, who thinks he’ll be elected as President of the United States. Never mind Sharpe’s history of alleged crimes. In 2010, he was accused of sexual assault and left CBS’s “NFL Today” show before returning when a restraining order was dismissed. When he was a co-host of FS1’s “Undisputed” program, a female production assistant said Sharpe choked her in the workplace, according to a report this week by Front Office Sports.
When it seemed appropriate for ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro to remove Sharpe, who faces a $50 million lawsuit, guess what happened Thursday? Sharpe removed himself. The new accuser, represented by attorney Tony Buzbee, said Sharpe threatened to choke her and sexually assaulted her this year and last year. Buzbee, who represented female therapists and won settlements against NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson, has taken legal action against Diddy. Sharpe is a major story in this country. Pitaro should have taken the lead.
He did not.
“My statement is found here and this is the truth. The relationship in question was 100% consensual. At this juncture I am electing to step aside temporarily from my ESPN duties,” Sharpe wrote on social media. “I will be devoting this time to my family, and responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me. I plan to return to ESPN at the start of the NFL preseason.”
Wow. Sharpe has decided he’ll be back soon to address the Eagles, the Chiefs and the rest of the league. Not Pitaro. Not Iger. ESPN came out with a fuzzy-wuzzy statement: “This is a serious situation, and we agree with Shannon’s decision to step away.” Did Pitaro and Iger listen to Buzbee’s tape of Sharpe speaking to the woman?
“I might choke you in public,” he said.
Which came after another Sharpe threat released earlier: “If you say that word one more time, I’m going to f–king choke the s–t out of you when I see you.”
Earlier this week in a column, I wondered if ESPN or Fox Sports is the uglier shop. When Front Office Sports contacted Fox, as suggested by a Sharpe rep, a spokesperson didn’t comment. That network also is aware of sordid behavior. As I wrote, CEO Eric Shanks runs “one of the sleaziest operations in American business, sitting atop a sick workplace, where sex has run amok in a misogynous environment and led to courtroom accusations of discrimination and groping by a major programming executive.” Was he not watching Charlie Dixon and Skip Bayless all these years?
Didn’t Dixon run a show hosted by Sharpe and Bayless? Front Office Sports said the accuser received a settlement for “several hundred thousand dollars” from Sharpe and Fox. Shouldn’t Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox, be front and center soon?
Sharpe wants $100 million in his next contract. Will he head to prison instead? In my case, never mind that ESPN defended a writer named Howard Bryant, who was arrested in Massachusetts for assaulting his estranged wife, striking a police officer and resisting arrest. Rescued by the network, I hear Bryant to this day on National Public Radio and watch him on “Celtics City,” the HBO docuseries. I’m happy he has succeeded.
Has ESPN called me?
Not a word. “Around The Horn” has been canceled, and a writer asked me if I’d be on the final show next month. First, the producers might want to reach out and say hello after 15 years of corporate cowardice. Did it occur to anyone that one of my biggest Chicago targets, Jerry Reinsdorf, ripped me apart in my former newspaper, the Sun-Times, as I sat in legal limbo for seven weeks? You talk about scuzz: ESPN, Reinsdorf and an industry beginning to die. I didn’t have Stephen A. backing me.
“I recruited Shannon … but I’m not the boss. Those are other folks,” Smith said of Sharpe’s arrival in June 2023. “There are layers to this and there are certain layers that even I am not on. I can tell you I also spoke to … the boss, Jimmy Pitaro, who made it very, very clear that (ESPN is) taking this matter very seriously and we are looking into this very, very closely and once we gather as many facts as we possibly can, we will go from there. And that is all he said. And I can mention his name because I received his permission to say that. I don’t know what that means.”
It means Pitaro let Smith do his dirty work, which he is happy to perform.
We prevailed in civil proceedings. The woman wanted a large amount of money. She got zero. Since then, I’ve lived a lovely life near the ocean and worked for two media operations — both crappy — and recently was pursued by the Sun-Times. Had I returned, Chicago fans might have enjoyed it. Reinsdorf would have howled as his baseball team is 6-19 and his basketball team went nowhere, as usual. The paper’s sports editor will not report that the flying Ishbias, of Phoenix, have signed on as 35 percent owners of the White Sox. Why not?
Last year, I was eating lunch at South Beverly Grill in Beverly Hills. A few seats away, Sharpe sat down at the counter. I introduced myself. He looked at me, typed into his phone for a while, then looked at me again and said nothing.
I was there. I’m not going away. “ATH” is history, but my columns will continue as they have for decades. Thursday afternoon, I texted a lawyer and asked if we should consider a case against ESPN. Know how many people have been screwed there, for politics and b.s. and not siding with manipulation?
All I did was speak my mind on the air. A host who looked like a Jonas Brother muted me often. That was enough to use a rare legal case against me. Do yourself a favor.
Turn off Stephen A. for good. He is a fraud who works for frauds.
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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.