ESPN Is Pathetic

Van Everyman

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Rumor going around that Rachel hooked up with Jimmy Butler in the bubble last year.
That’s a shitty rumor.

This really sucks and feels like a setback for both women. I also feel that this is what happens when you pit minorities against minorities and make both work 5X as hard as white dudes who coast in these jobs.

Nichols may well be a shitty person. She may well undermine other people, including women, for her own gain. And like Jenny Dell, maybe she hooked up with someone she covers. But the secondhand-edness of it all and the pig pile just feels like lazy “bitches suck” tropes that serve no one well.
 

thehitcat

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That’s a shitty rumor.

This really sucks and feels like a setback for both women. I also feel that this is what happens when you pit minorities against minorities and make both work 5X as hard as white dudes who coast in these jobs.

Nichols may well be a shitty person. She may well undermine other people, including women, for her own gain. And like Jenny Dell, maybe she hooked up with someone she covers. But the secondhand-edness of it all and the pig pile just feels like lazy “bitches suck” tropes that serve no one well.
We really need a goddamn "Like" button here. This is extremely well said. The bullshit dual standard needs to keep being called out and ripped down wherever it is seen.
 

kenneycb

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The rumor started from Jordan Thrilla who reported there was a rumor that someone heard from a security guard that went up to Butler's room. There's also the same rumor going around about her and Ersan Ilyasova. Gonna guess there isn't much to it.
 

mikeot

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That’s a shitty rumor.

This really sucks and feels like a setback for both women. I also feel that this is what happens when you pit minorities against minorities and make both work 5X as hard as white dudes who coast in these jobs.

Nichols may well be a shitty person. She may well undermine other people, including women, for her own gain. And like Jenny Dell, maybe she hooked up with someone she covers. But the secondhand-edness of it all and the pig pile just feels like lazy “bitches suck” tropes that serve no one well.
We really need a goddamn "Like" button here. This is extremely well said. The bullshit dual standard needs to keep being called out and ripped down wherever it is seen.
Yep/yep.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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The rumor started from Jordan Thrilla who reported there was a rumor that someone heard from a security guard that went up to Butler's room. There's also the same rumor going around about her and Ersan Ilyasova. Gonna guess there isn't much to it.
And if a male reporter went up to a player's room the story would be that he was trying to get a good interview and/or scoop
 

kenneycb

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The rumor was that it happened while they were still in the quarantine phase and a security guard was responding to a thumping noise coming from Butler's room. So tenuous at best.
 

joe dokes

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One of the (many) reasons I stopped watching ESPN is because I rarely have any idea what Stephen A. Smith is talking about.
 

opes

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Ohtani does his interviews in Japanese so people in Japan can easily understand him. That's a huge part of his audience. He has a interpreter for that specific reason. To interpret Japanese in to English for English speakers. I don't give a shit if the the guy is Japanese or not. He's a easily the best baseball player currently, and by a wide margin.
 

Marciano490

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Is listening to interviews a big part of the sports experience for most fans? Maybe I’ll watch a post fight or post championship interview, but I have no idea what most of my favorite athletes sound like.
 

shaggydog2000

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Is listening to interviews a big part of the sports experience for most fans? Maybe I’ll watch a post fight or post championship interview, but I have no idea what most of my favorite athletes sound like.
Boxing is like Pro Wrestling where the interviews are a big chunk of the art form. For every other sport they're pretty much inconsequential. I want to see Ohtani strike guys out and hit huge bombs. If he can be a David Ortiz level personality that's gravy. I can't remember a single Mookie Betts interview, and that diminishes my enjoyment of his time in Boston not one bit.

But I am not a reporter/tv personality dependent on interviews for easy content creation purposes.
 

Kliq

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Boxing is like Pro Wrestling where the interviews are a big chunk of the art form. For every other sport they're pretty much inconsequential. I want to see Ohtani strike guys out and hit huge bombs. If he can be a David Ortiz level personality that's gravy. I can't remember a single Mookie Betts interview, and that diminishes my enjoyment of his time in Boston not one bit.

But I am not a reporter/tv personality dependent on interviews for easy content creation purposes.
I can remember one:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RG0RGKBAkw
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Is listening to interviews a big part of the sports experience for most fans? Maybe I’ll watch a post fight or post championship interview, but I have no idea what most of my favorite athletes sound like.
I've found that the more I hear out of a player's mouth, the less interesting I find them. Some of them I come to actively despise. coughCurtSchillingcough

Fake edit to add: the in-game mic'd up stuff like that Mookie video are always entertaining though. I think it's the spontaneity involved. There's no chance for canned answers, whether they're boring cliches or hot takes.
 

Spelunker

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I've found that the more I hear out of a player's mouth, the less interesting I find them. Some of them I come to actively despise. coughCurtSchillingcough

Fake edit to add: the in-game mic'd up stuff like that Mookie video are always entertaining though. I think it's the spontaneity involved. There's no chance for canned answers, whether they're boring cliches or hot takes.
Yeah, but it was Schillings interactions that endeared him to us in the first place. It was just way down the line where it went sour.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Yeah, but it was Schillings interactions that endeared him to us in the first place. It was just way down the line where it went sour.
Nah, always found him to be a blowhard horse's ass. He was just *our* blowhard horse's ass for a few years. I never liked him in Philly or Arizona, and it was only that he was a bonafide ace to pair with Pedro that had me excited when they traded for him. The rings balanced out the personality, but he never fully won me over. Though yes, his post-career stuff has succeeded in souring those title teams a bit.
 

NoXInNixon

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Is listening to interviews a big part of the sports experience for most fans? Maybe I’ll watch a post fight or post championship interview, but I have no idea what most of my favorite athletes sound like.
For most fans, no. But for sports radio and TV, things said by players and coaches is a readily available source of easy material. It's easy to talk about and analyze what someone says. If a player can't or won't talk to ESPN talking heads, that's a problem. For ESPN.
 

jose melendez

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I don't think this is that big a deal, though people blowing up at Smith is fun since that's how he makes his living. Sure, it would be amazing if Ohtani had the English language skills of Pedro, but having all that English doesn't matter if you've got the personality of Mike Trout. Ohtani's charisma comes through.
 

Mystic Merlin

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Maybe? SAS essentially apologized that what he said and how he said it offended people, but he didn’t explicitly acknowledge that the key point, that marketability depends on athletes’ ability to publicly speak English, is just flat out false and why it was false. That was Passan’s main point with the anecdote about his son.

‘Hey I preemptively apologized how I saw fit before any of you could engage with the point I made so let’s all move on’ should not be a thing. Honestly, for a network of largely debate shows it is rare for these talking heads who lob grenades day after day to actually be held to account for their opinions by others on the network, so while it definitely felt uncomfortable I didn’t think it was overkill. Examining the problems with what he said is exactly what should happen once SAS broached the topic. Passan wasn’t taking pot shots at SAS or anything, and I don’t think an adult who is paid to launch take grenades needs a bouquet for saying the obvious and right thing along with a moratorium on further discussion of it. If they had pivoted to LeBron James or something right after that it would’ve been a disservice to the viewers. That was a very adult discussion on the parts of all involved, and you don’t see that much on ESPN outside of OTL.

Frankly I thought the shit he ate on the unrelated story where he mispronounced a basketball player’s name was tough, but it clearly bothered him enough to address it.
 
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The Social Chair

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Ohtani's HR Derby performance had more viewers than game 1 of the NBA Finals. The guy is unquestionably the biggest star in baseball.
 

Van Everyman

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SeoulSoxFan

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For me, this touched on the very complex issue of anti vs ally relationship between the Black & Asian communities in the States.

There is still a deep-rooted mistrust, not-so-subtle superiority complex, and flat-out fear of Blacks by many (especially older) Asians I know. I've no doubt there are just as many issues & feelings that the Black community harbor against its Asian counterpart as well.

Sometimes it takes the form of the rooftop Koreans defending their stores against Black looters. At other times, it takes the form of Black comedians darkly imitating the racist Asian store owners who humiliatingly follow them around like shoplifting is a given.

You have the random street attacks by Blacks against Asian elderly during the pandemic. You also have Black community leaders organizing rallies against anti-Asian hate crimes.

So when a prominent Black media personality like SAS makes a blunder like this, it touches on a nerve that's different than if a White person did the same. There a tinge of betrayal and a sense of disappointment that is somehow bigger but not surprising at the same time.

Edit: FWIW, I thought SAS's apology was sincere.
 

opes

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I agree. I think SAS realized he went to far and really pissed some people off. I think he got the fact that he needed to apologize and eat crow for once. I too believe he sincerely apologized, and probably felt bad about what he said.
 

SeoulSoxFan

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I agree. I think SAS realized he went to far and really pissed some people off. I think he got the fact that he needed to apologize and eat crow for once. I too believe he sincerely apologized, and probably felt bad about what he said.
At this point, I'm more interested in having someone like SAS as a present & future public ally rather than a footnote in the cancel movement.

So, it's really selfish (rather than virtuous) sentiment on my part.
 

barbed wire Bob

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For me, this touched on the very complex issue of anti vs ally relationship between the Black & Asian communities in the States.

There is still a deep-rooted mistrust, not-so-subtle superiority complex, and flat-out fear of Blacks by many (especially older) Asians I know. I've no doubt there are just as many issues & feelings that the Black community harbor against its Asian counterpart as well.

Sometimes it takes the form of the rooftop Koreans defending their stores against Black looters. At other times, it takes the form of Black comedians darkly imitating the racist Asian store owners who humiliatingly follow them around like shoplifting is a given.

You have the random street attacks by Blacks against Asian elderly during the pandemic. You also have Black community leaders organizing rallies against anti-Asian hate crimes.

So when a prominent Black media personality like SAS makes a blunder like this, it touches on a nerve that's different than if a White person did the same. There a tinge of betrayal and a sense of disappointment that is somehow bigger but not surprising at the same time.

Edit: FWIW, I thought SAS's apology was sincere.
This jibes with what I am getting from friends an family in the Asian community. I first heard of SAS’s comments when a Vietnamese friend, who is not a baseball fan at all, texted me a Twitter thread where he was getting roasted. What SAS said really offended a lot of people
 

cutman1000

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What SAS said was so stupid because so many baseball stars speak Spanish as their first language and require a translator for English interviews.

The take home message is SAS is an idiot blowhard who has always been an idiot blowhard and will always be an idiot blowhard. F him.
 

Kliq

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SAS is paid to be on air for hours every day and his shtick is that he is always going all-in on some take that will get people talking. If that is your job you are going to have times when you say something really offensive. To me, I don't think the blame is as much on SAS as on ESPN for continuing to promote this kind of discussion and behavior as a centerpiece for the network's news coverage. ESPN was happy to have Passan on to let SAS have it with both barrels, but the real blame is on ESPN for creating an environment that makes it hard for people to see the line between what is offensive and what is something that will "get people talking".
 

SeoulSoxFan

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This jibes with what I am getting from friends an family in the Asian community. I first heard of SAS’s comments when a Vietnamese friend, who is not a baseball fan at all, texted me a Twitter thread where he was getting roasted. What SAS said really offended a lot of people
Thanks for sharing that @barbed wire Bob.

I haven't hit the various Asian Reddit threads to feel the temperature on this. However, I've no doubt you're right about just how much of a stink bomb SAS set off.

It's not just the Japanese who are offended (ironically, you may hear from them the least, for a variety of reasons). It's a wide multi-lane fuckery that has crossed many different shades of yellow & brown.
 

barbed wire Bob

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Thanks for sharing that @barbed wire Bob.

I haven't hit the various Asian Reddit threads to feel the temperature on this. However, I've no doubt you're right about just how much of a stink bomb SAS set off.

It's not just the Japanese who are offended (ironically, you may hear from them the least, for a variety of reasons). It's a wide multi-lane fuckery that has crossed many different shades of yellow & brown.
Yep. It really comes across as an Ugly American rant telling the foreigners to be civilized and speak English. I saw the apology from SAS but I still don’t think he gets it.
 

ifmanis5

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SeoulSoxFan

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braudimusprime

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Not "calling you out" for being anything in particular but that's a very strange thing to say about a woman whose second job in sports journalism as a 20something was doing an NHL beat in the 90s.