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ESPN Gets Back Into The <em>League Of Denial</em> Game (Sorta)ESPN is aggressively promoting League of Denial, the new book by ESPN reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru on the NFL's concussion crisis, today. There's an excerpt of the book published on ESPN.com. There's a lot of space dedicated to it on the site's front page. There's a story about the ...

Did Disney's General Counsel Urge ESPN To Wimp Out On Concussion Doc? So why did ESPN end its relationship with Frontline less than two months before their co-reported, two-part documentary on the NFL and concussions was set to air? We know that ESPN president John Skipper found the trailer for Frontline's documentary to be "sensational" and "over the top." We know t...

Bottom Line: How Sports Leagues Crack The Whip On ESPN"We're not in the business of antagonizing our partner," the ESPN executive told the New York Times, defending the network's sudden withdrawal of support for a program that made the NFL look bad. This wasn't last week. This was nine years ago. ...

NFLPA: Players Will Have To Think Twice About Trusting ESPN

The players' union finds itself in an awkward situation in the wake of a report that the NFL pressured ESPN to back out of an upcoming documentary on player safety. Because, after all, the NFLPA is ESPN's broadcast partner too—the players get 55 percent of TV money. Now a union spokesperson says the...

Report: NFL Pressured ESPN Into Backing Out Of Concussion Film [Updates]

When word broke that ESPN was unexpectedly and belatedly ending its involvement with PBS's Frontline on a pair of documentaries investigating head injuries in football, ESPN swore up and down it had nothing to do with keeping the NFL happy. According to a report in today's New York Times, that was a...

ESPN Producer: We Made "Conscious Decision" To "Get In Bed" With PBS

So why the hell did ESPN pull out of its collaborative relationship with PBS and Frontline? PBS's statement says that ESPN news executives were supposed to have "editorial input" into the League of Denial documentary. ESPN's statement says the network backed out because it had no "editorial control"...

ESPN Pulls Out Of <em>Frontline</em> Concussion Investigation [UPDATE]

For a while now, ESPN's big alibi, the thing Bristol would trot out any time someone questioned the company's journalistic bona fides, was its joint investigation into NFL head injuries with PBS's Frontline. Now that's done with. PBS announced the news. It reports:...