WILL BOB IGER SAVE KIMMEL OR THE NFL? WILL MATT SHAW FADE AWAY? SUCH IS LIFE
This is a day when a sports columnist is not a sports columnist — am I ever? — when Iger must protect ESPN’s relationship with the NFL, and Shaw takes a day off while attending Charlie Kirk’s service
Would you rather be Bob Iger or Matt Shaw? One is screwed by Donald Trump and the other is screwed by Chicago, both ready to devour political prey. If Iger doesn’t completely fire Jimmy Kimmel, he faces a President who might kill the deal allowing ESPN to sell a 10 percent equity stake to the NFL. And if Shaw reeks in the baseball postseason, he’ll be known among the city’s Democrats as the raw rookie who took a day off to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona.
At Disney, Iger can’t win. He dumps Kimmel and angers half of America, and if he keeps him, he angers Trump and the other half of America. He needs the NFL juggernaut and will dismiss Kimmel soon while ignoring bruisings from his predecessor as CEO, Michael Eisner, who wrote on X: “Where has all the leadership gone. If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then steps up for the First Amendment? Suspending (Kimmel) indefinitely — immediately after the chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company — is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.”
And to think Iger once pondered running for President.
Now he’s a weasel. He gave in, briefly, and dares Trump by inviting Kimmel on Tuesday. Bye, Bob.
At Wrigley Field, Shaw is hitting merely .223 after he was dispatched to Triple-A Iowa, making less sense than Justin Turner on a team that might not have Kyle Tucker. Why not let him sit for a week and decide if he wants to perform in October? Trump’s mission is so much simpler: Keep trashing Kimmel or he’ll attempt to ruin Disney and ESPN, which oddly announced it wants to re-hire TV host Pat McAfee even after he spread a false story about Mary Kate Cornett sleeping with her boyfriend’s father.
Said one of Iger’s downchiefs, Burke Magnus, in The Athletic: “No doubt about that. One hundred percent. I think his show is hitting on all cylinders. He’s an incredible interviewer and conversationalist. There is a validation for athletes and executives to be on his show. Every commissioner wants to be on his show. Every athlete wants to be on the show. There is a cool factor, a relevance factor. It’s fun and funny and entertaining. As we sit here today, I could not imagine our daytime schedule without his show.”
Anyone feeling bad for Mary Kate?
Shaw will return to the Cubs this week and should understand that his clubhouse — and most of the 41,000 fans outside — do not need him praising Kirk or Turning Point USA. Last month, Kirk showed up on the North Side and posted an on-field photo he took with Shaw and Michael Busch, who has delivered with his bat and demands a bit more patience. On the night of Kirk’s shooting death, Shaw was removed from the starting lineup.
Twice, he hasn’t worked for a Major League Baseball team because of Kirk. Twice, manager Craig Counsell has kept his cool, saying Sunday, “Matt Shaw was unavailable today. He attended the funeral of a friend.” If the Cubs lose for the 116th time in 117 years, Shaw will be ravaged and won’t continue as a possible answer at third base. Actually, he will be ravaged either way. In a town prepared to bombard Trump if National Guard troops arrive, what is Shaw going to do? Maybe help the President, who made more comments about Chicago at Kirk’s funeral.
“One of the last things he said to me is, ‘Please, sir, save Chicago.’ We are going to do that," Trump said. "We are going to save Chicago from horrible crime. We will have Charlie very much in mind when we go to Chicago, and we have an incompetent governor who thinks it's OK when 11 people get murdered over the weekend.”
Given the choice, I guess, I’d rather be Iger than Shaw. He is 74 and loaded after years as the king of Hollywood, which no longer exists as Disney wobbles. He is still married to Willow Bay, who can’t explain her husband to regular classes as dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Shaw cannot destroy the Cubs in Charlie Kirk mode. He doesn’t have a net worth listed online. He needs MLB or fades away.
In unpredictable moments, who knows what’s happening in sports, the most profitable and prolific form of entertainment in America? Bruce Pearl resigned as Auburn’s basketball coach Monday as he likely heads into politics. Tommy Tuberville, once the football coach at the school, is running for governor of Alabama. Pearl wants his gig as U.S. senator. Does he still have a Massachusetts accent? His son, Steven, replaces him.
“It’s certainly something that I had considered. It’s something I thought a great deal about, but obviously I’m here today and I’m in practice and I’ve got practice tomorrow,” Pearl said days ago.
At least he is giving himself a chance. Matt Shaw’s opportunity is dead. Bob Iger’s might be, too, if he somehow sides with Kimmel and dumps Trump. Someone asked how frequently I write about sports these days.
Not often enough.
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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.