ESPN NFL analyst Randy Moss is set to return to television for the first time in two months. Plus: longtime motorsports writer Ed Hinton has died; Dick Vitale has returned to the air.
ESPN NFL analyst Randy Moss set to return to air Sunday
ESPN NFL analyst Randy Moss is set to return to the network’s Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday, it was announced Saturday night. Moss has been off the air since late last year after being diagnosed with cancer, save for a special appearance via satellite at this past Thursday’s NFL Honors.
During his NFL Honors segment, Moss said that he is “mossing” cancer and expressed his eagerness to return to his TV role.
Longtime sportswriter Hinton, best known for motorsports coverage, dies
Longtime sportswriter Ed Hinton, who over the course of a 50-year career became one of the best-known motorsports reporters, has died at age 76. While associated primarily with racing, Hinton spent years covering stick-and-ball sports — including for the famed, but short-lived, sports newspaper The National — before becoming a full-time motorsports writer with Sports Illustrated in 1996. He would keep that role across later stops at Tribune Co. and finally ESPN, his employer upon retirement in 2014.
In February 2001, Hinton — then with Tribune Co. — wrote a multi-part investigation into NASCAR safety practices arguing that many deaths in the sport could have been prevented by devices such as the HANS (head and neck support) system and SAFER barrier. The final part of the series (titled “NASCAR Idles While Drivers Die”) ran just days before the death of Dale Earnhardt Sr. in the 2001 Daytona 500.
Earnhardt’s death was first blamed on a broken seat belt, but after the Orlando Sentinel — one of the Tribune-owned newspapers in which Hinton’s stories ran — sued for access to his autopsy photos, it was eventually found that his death was due to insufficient head and neck restraint.
Both Hinton and the Sentinel were the subject of intense criticism at the time, but the safety standards he described in his series eventually became the standard in a sport that has seen zero fatalities since.
Vitale returns after nearly two year absence
ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale successfully returned to the air Saturday as an analyst on the network’s Duke-Clemson men’s game, his first broadcast since April 2023. Vitale has battled four different types of cancer over the past three years, but was pronounced cancer free late last year. He was originally slated to return to the booth on a Duke-Wake Forest game last month until experiencing a household accident.
Vitale received a standing ovation from fans attending the game and was moved to tears in expressing his gratitude.
