Who would want to work at ESPN?
“Besides everyone?” would be a sensible retort. After all, ESPN has been the dream for generations of sports media hopefuls. If you’re old enough, you might recall the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (that disclaimer is not merely me being cheeky; a college freshman today was five years old during the 2008 election). She so dreamed of working for ESPN that she named one of her daughters Bristol. That is to say nothing of those who named their children “Espen” or some other form of the network’s now-meaningless acronym.
ESPN is still the highest point one can reach in this industry. It is still the default in a way that no other sports network will ever be. It is presumably still the dream for today’s hopefuls, perhaps exceeded only by owning a successful TikTok channel.
Yet at a certain point, one needs to ask the question seriously. Who would want to work for ESPN?
The Rachel Nichols disaster is just the latest ugly breakup between ESPN and its talent. Nichols was in her second stint with the company, having rejoined in 2016. She helped build, from the ground up, the only quality NBA studio show ESPN has ever aired in its two-decade run with the league. Her reward was to have her dream assignment of hosting the NBA Finals pulled out from under her and — while quarantining in an NBA “bubble” hotel room for seven days to accommodate her bosses — being surreptitiously recorded in a career-altering violation of her privacy. To be sure, her suggestion that Maria Taylor had gotten Nichols’ promised NBA Finals hosting role due to race was a nasty one. It no doubt confirmed to some that Nichols’ outward wokeness was, as it so often is, more signaling than reality.
Yet save some scorn for the people who gave her a job, took it away with no explanation, violated her privacy, left her twisting in the wind for a year, and then fired her unceremoniously.
Perhaps Nichols is an unsympathetic protagonist in this drama. There is a school of thought that if you say something wrong, it really does not matter how people find out — whether through recorded phone calls, or hacked e-mails, or standing outside the window peering through the blinds. The ends justify the means.
So if Nichols’ plight does not tug on the heartstrings, there are many other examples.
ESPN did not just leave Jemele Hill twisting in the wind, it left her to the wolves. The president of the United States called for her firing and ESPN wasted no time Sista Souljahing her, giving no pretense to standing behind its employee of a decade, who was facing the kind of adversity nobody in this industry has ever dealt with before. Hill’s prominence at that point was the product of ESPN’s own mismanagement, placing her on a version of SportsCenter that not only did not work, but could not work. SportsCenter without highlights? SportsCenter as a debate show? It was a self-evidently bad idea (and assuredly not of Hill’s own making).
Hill was soon out of a job and her partner Michael Smith had to go too. Guilt by association. ESPN could easily have reassigned him to NFL Live, where he had been a guest host in previous years, or given him a new show with a different partner — he had hosted Numbers Never Lie with various partners prior to his run with Hill — but they instead let him play out his contract doing what counts as menial work in sports TV: filling in occasionally on the debate show du jour.
Hill and Smith’s experience is perhaps more characteristic of the ESPN treatment than what Nichols went through. They are after all black. ESPN does not do a great job with prominent black talent, just ask any number of ex-employees who imply as much on their social media feeds (see Champion, Cari).
That is not to suggest ESPN only has a problem with race. Its problem with gender, historically, is perhaps exceeded only by Ailes-era Fox News. The sexual harassment was rampant in its early years, even by the standards of the debauched times. Presumably, that has been cleaned up (it has been a few years since the last lawsuit).
Its mistreatment of pregnant women is a more recent stain. ESPN gave Hill and Smith the 6 PM ET SportsCenter that originally belonged to Lindsay Czarniak — a rising star in this industry not so long ago. She was on maternity leave when they took over, and when she returned she had no regular role on the network. She was gone soon after. Sara Walsh found out she was included in ESPN’s 2017 layoffs when she landed in Bristol after coming back from maternity leave, a move that seemed especially cruel given her difficulties conceiving.
There is also the issue of age. It may seem strange to accuse a network that employs 86-year-olds Lee Corso and Hubie Brown of ageism, but consider the sheer number of veteran behind-the-scenes personnel — some of whom had been at ESPN since 1979 — let go in the company’s rounds of layoffs. Even longtime researcher Howie Schwab, whom ESPN paraded around its properties in the 2000s like a mascot, was not spared.
Beyond the big three of race, gender and age, it is simply the case that ESPN — at least from the outside looking in — generally seems to treat its employees with little regard. Its hundreds of layoffs over the past decade have included people of every race, age or gender. Its handling of Mike Golic Sr. left a bitter taste. The company seems to be in the same mindset as during the heyday of the Dan and Keith “Big Show” SportsCenter, disdainful of talent that gets too big (Stephen A. Smith is a noted exception).
So again, who would want to work at this company?
Probably everyone. It’s ESPN. The worldwide leader. The only name in sports TV that matters. So long as the checks clear until the end of her deal next year, even Nichols is golden. They can treat you like dirt and it’s still like winning the lottery in an industry laden with far more talent than jobs.
So we now reset the clock for the next ugly breakup in a long line unmatched by any other media company. Before Nichols, there was Taylor. Before Taylor, there was Dan Le Batard. We will surely not have to wait long for the next one.
