Sports media story of 2006.

2006 was a big year for sports media. From the success of new media ventures, such as the partnerships of Google Video and YouTube with sports leagues, or the mainstream popularity of sports blogs, to the new television deals for the NFL and Major League Baseball that shifted Monday Night Football and the majority of baseball playoff games to cable. 2006 was also a down year, as ratings for the World Series, NHL and NASCAR fell, while the NBA and PGA Tour only saw modest increases.

But the biggest story in sports media had nothing to do with new media or television ratings. It wasn’t the overreaction by the media to the Knicks/Nuggets fight. The biggest story was the firing of many sports media personalities throughout the year.

It started with Harold Reynolds. The longtime ESPN baseball analyst was fired seemingly out of the blue in late July, “for reasons that remain[ed] undisclosed” during the immediate aftermath. After insiders at ESPN leaked rumors to Deadspin, it became clear that Reynolds was fired for sexual harrassment. Reynolds confirmed the rumors the next day, with The Big Lead reporting that he had taken “a PA for a meal at Outback Steakhouse. Afterward, he hugged her in a way that may have been deemed inappropriate. Apparently, the PA felt weirded out, and decided to file a complaint.”

Reynolds later denied the Outback Steakhouse story and also denied claims that he had sexually harassed women at ESPN before. He then sued ESPN, explaining that he had given an intern a “brief and innocuous” hug before taking her to Boston Market for dinner and claiming that ESPN breached his contract by firing him and caused him to lose further employment opportunities.

The next firing also came from the sport of baseball. During Game 3 of the 2006 ALCS, Thom Brennaman, Steve Lyons and Lou Piniella were sharing in the kind of strained, uncomfortable banter that make people love (excuse me, I meant loathe) FOX’s broadcasts of Major League Baseball. One botched joke by Steve Lyons stood out, and before Game 4 of that series, he was fired for making comments deemed racist by FOX higher-ups.

In the second inning of Friday’s game between Detroit and Oakland, Piniella talked about the success light-hitting A’s infielder Marco Scutaro had in the first round of the playoffs. Piniella said that slugger Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to contribute, comparing Scutaro’s production to finding a “wallet on Friday” and hoping it happened again the next week.

Later, Piniella said the A’s needed Thomas to get “en fuego” — hot in Spanish — because he was currently “frio” — or cold. After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons spoke up.

Lyons said that Piniella was “hablaing Espanol” — butchering the conjugation for the word “to speak” — and added, “I still can’t find my wallet.”

“I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to sit too close to him now,” Lyons continued.

The comments were certainly not blatantly racist, but it would be easy for someone to be offended by them. Lyons claimed that his joke about not being able to find his wallet was not connected to his joke about Piniella “hablaing Espanol”.

The fact that I had mentioned that he was speaking Spanish before I said that my wallet was missing was an afterthought in my comments. I was reacting to what Lou had earlier said?.he made a comment about finding wallets: If you go out on Friday night, and you find a wallet, it doesn?t make a whole lot of sense to go out Sunday and Monday and look for more, it?s not going to happen. I kind of put that in the back of my head. I knew that I was going to come back with it later in the show. But if I made a mistake, the mistake that I did make was coupling the fact that Lou spoke Spanish, and the fact that I said my wallet was missing, in the same sentence. But to me that?s still a far-reaching connection to think that I was trying to say anything racially insensitive.

Within weeks of Lyons’ firing came the Miami-Florida International brawl. Lamar Thomas was part of the broadcast team for Comcast Sports Southeast, and let his opinions of the fight be known.

Miami-FIU fight.

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Thomas was fired that Monday, after video of his comments spread on YouTube and other video sharing sites. “Unfortunately, this thing blew up into a national event and I was caught with my pants down. If I had to do it all over again, I would be a little more tactful.” Thomas’ firing was the only one of the three where the fireable offense was out in the open and obvious to those watching. Because of that, unlike Reynolds and Lyons, Thomas did not protest his firing.

A year in which three analysts are fired for controversial actions and comments is fairly rare; those coupled with the firing of Jason Whitlock from ESPN and several other announcing shakeups (the move of James Brown from FOX to CBS and the move of Al Michaels and John Madden from ABC to NBC) made 2006 a strange, unique year in sports announcing.

Reynolds and Lyons could end up with TBS in 2007. The network is airing the vast majority of baseball playoff games next season, and is in need of announcers. Thomas, who was new to broadcasting, will likely never call another game.