WHY FIRE JERRY SULLIVAN WHEN ESPN, IGER HAVE IGNORED SEXIST INCIDENTS?

The longtime Buffalo columnist lost his jobs after one regrettable comment about female sports fans, but the words of Woody Paige and Bob Ryan were far more egregious — and they kept their gigs

     So now the vultures are canceling Jerry Sullivan. At the holidays, no less. Or should they be called corporate cowards?

     Far as I can discern, Sullivan has made one mistake in more than three decades as a Buffalo sports columnist and commentator. This week, while taping a rogue podcast to which he never should have stooped as a guest — something called “Trainwreck Tonight,” a Bills Mafia cross between Barstool Sports and “Wayne’s World” — he made a regrettable livestream comment.

     Responding to a female listener named Amy who wasn’t appreciating the show banter, Sullivan said, “Women, be better than this! Because the worst fans really are the women. They don’t get critical journalism, they all want to be cheerleaders.” After pausing, he continued, “You know what I mean? It’s always — I don’t want to. It’s a dangerous avenue to go down to criticize women in general because they’re better than men generally, but … they don’t get it as fans.”

     For his caveman assessment, Sullivan should have been suspended by his employers. He did apologize at once, tweeting, “I would like to apologize for comments I made on a podcast last night that were uncalled for and insulting to women. I should be better than that.”

     Instead, he was FIRED immediately by WIVB-TV, the city’s CBS affiliate, and by his print bosses at the Niagara Gazette and Lockport Union-Sun & Journal. His media career in that godforsaken region likely is over, which may be more a life blessing than a detriment. In a statement, the Gazette wrote, “We do not condone misogynistic, insensitive or derogatory comments in any form.”

     Even the bro-dudes at “Trainwreck Tonight” weighed in, thrilled to enjoy a modicum of relevance. “Last night,” they wrote, “comments were made by a guest. Our team does not condone them, the comments, or the sentiment in any way, shape or form. Empowering women doesn’t come down to making statements like this. It comes down to standing up for them when they are done wrong, and last night they were. Our community is great because of everyone that encompasses it.”

     Here is where I invoke a common discrepancy that exposes the hypocrisy and erodes the credibility of a messy, Trainwreck media industry: The Dreaded, Reckless, Gutless Double-Standard.

     On the day Sullivan was fired, ESPN celebrated the 20th anniversary of “Around The Horn,” the afternoon show that peaked during my eight years and 1,700 appearances and since has slumped into near-oblivion. One of the honored panelists was Woody Paige, now 76. During his tenure as executive sports editor of the Denver Post, Paige was accused of sexual harassment by an editorial assistant named Carrie Ludicke, then 24. While yelling at her, she said, he used the crudest of insults.

     “Cunt,” Paige called her, according to her testimony.

     The Post paid her $25,000 in a confidential settlement, reported American Journalism Review. In a release, the Denver Newspaper Guild said Ludicke told two staff members of previous incidents in which Paige had made lewd comments to her. Paige was forced to resign as executive sports editor.

     But unlike Jerry Sullivan, he kept his sports column and salary. “There was a great deal here that we felt was nobody’s business,” said Gil Spencer, the Post’s chief editor at the time. Paige was protected by his newspaper, and, since then, he has been protected by ESPN. Those decisions were made with the knowledge of Bob Iger, whose successful run atop the Walt Disney Company recently was affixed with a save-us addendum. Why Paige is protected, I’m not sure. He hasn’t written a good column in years, wherever he’s writing now. He looks hideous on TV despite numerous makeover attempts. Yet he’ll continue to appear on “Around The Horn,” from zero to two times a week, until he retires or keels over.

     The Dreaded, Reckless, Gutless Double-Standard.

     Sullivan should not have been fired, either.

     In the same anniversary show, ESPN feted another ancient panelist, Bob Ryan, also 76. Several years ago, as a Boston Globe columnist, he appeared on a local TV show and said Joumana Kidd, then the wife of basketball great Jason Kidd, needed someone to “smack her.” This after she accused her husband of domestic abuse, which prompted Boston fans to pummel Kidd with “wife beater” chants during the Eastern Conference finals. “I mean, she needs (someone) to smack her,” Ryan said.

    He was suspended by the Globe for a month. “Bob Ryan's comments were a clear and egregious violation of the standards of The Boston Globe," editor Marty Baron said. “Bob has been told in no uncertain terms that his remarks were offensive and unacceptable.” ESPN also banned him from TV and radio appearances for one month.

     But unlike Jerry Sullivan, he was right back to work soon at both shops. Years later, Ryan screwed up again, referring to ESPN basketball analyst Mark Jackson as a “Bible-pounding phony” and expressing shock that the network rehired him for its lead NBA broadcast team. “Well, I’m sorry, but it’s the truth,” he said on a radio show. “And I can’t believe they took him back on that broadcast. Oh my God. He’s a con man, and he’s done very well at it. I’ll give him credit for being a great one.” ESPN suspended Ryan — again. He was not fired — again.

     The Dreaded, Reckless, Gutless Double-Standard.

     Sullivan should not have been fired, either.

     “Recently, I've written countless women's sports features, from UB (University of Buffalo) basketball and soccer to Medaille bowling, Olympic rowing and Lancaster High golf,” Sullivan tweeted Wednesday. “It's sad that due to one stupid comment, many of these types of stories, which go largely ignored in local media, will go untold.”

     I could go on. In the media industry, punishments are all about politics. Last year, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander — nearing 74, he’s also a member of the septuagenarian club — was arrested at 1 a.m. in north-suburban Wilmette, about 13 miles from his home in Highwood, and cited for driving under the influence of alcohol, disregarding a traffic control device, improper lane usage, speeding and having no auto insurance. Criminal charges eventually were dropped by the Cook County state’s attorney, but Wilmette police chief Kyle Murphy continued to defend his men.

     “The officer had probable cause to conduct a traffic stop after observing several violations of the Illinois Vehicle Code,” Murphy wrote in a statement to the Record, a local news site, which published a photo of Telander being questioned in the wee hours that night. “Based on the driving, observations during the stop and field sobriety testing, the officer had sufficient facts to reasonably believe the driver was impaired and therefore subject to an arrest.”

     But unlike Jerry Sullivan, Telander kept his part-time column at the Sun-Times, where he writes once a week. Also on the same day Sullivan was fired, NFL analyst Robert Griffin III was not fired by ESPN. While defending MVP front-runner Jalen Hurts for proving naysayers wrong with the NFC-leading Eagles, Griffin dropped a racist slur: “People said that Jalen Hurts couldn’t get it done, he could not break from the pocket, he’s not the quarterback of the future. I think he proved all those jigaboos wrong.” Griffin apologized for what he called “a mistake,” and he wasn’t even suspended. Point being, people make mistakes.

     Back in my San Francisco days, the Chronicle’s female editor-in-chief tweeted inaccuracies about me as I was taking a sports director/column gig at the rival Examiner. She butchered a quote of mine, too, from a story about me in her very own newspaper. I bit my lip for more than a year. When I left the Examiner, I tweeted that she was running the Chronicle into the ground — soon, she was succeeded by a much better and more mature choice, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz — and that she’d allowed her feminism to shade her previous assessment of me. A writer from the Deadspin site emailed me, wondering if I was fired for the tweet. Nope, as the Examiner’s top editor told him. Kevin Draper ran a story anyway. Next thing you knew, the New York Times was hiring him as a sports reporter, wokeness taking precedence over truth.

     Someone will have to explain why Sullivan’s words were more hurtful than Paige’s or Ryan’s. Truth is, the people who signed his paychecks in western New York cowered to social-media backlash, making them weaklings. They could have followed the same punitive path as ESPN, the Boston Globe and the Denver Post — issuing suspensions for a month or two, if not longer, or reducing his editorial workload.

    Rather, they’ve canceled him. For their cowardice, those corporate suck-ups will receive extra bonuses in their holiday stockings. Ho, ho, ho!

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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.