espn Page 23 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Future Of Adrian Wojnarowski's Tencent Show Is Up In The Air After He "Liked" Daryl Morey's Hong Kong Tweet [Update]

Now that last week’s roiling spat between the Chinese government and the NBA has mostly cooled, the global-sports-industrial complex is back to business as usual. Pre-season NBA games were held in China on Thursday and Saturday and everything went off relatively smoothly (with only a few minor hitch...

Panicked <i>First Take</i> Host Initiates Commercial Break As Stephen A. Smith Brings Up Israel-Palestine Conflict

At the tail end of First Take’s extended discussion today about the ongoing debacle between the NBA and China, Stephen A. Smith had one final take he wanted to get off. He began auspiciously, if not with his trademark eloquence: “I would remind you that, throughout this world, one of the things that...

Internal Memo: ESPN Forbids Discussion Of Chinese Politics When Discussing Daryl Morey's Tweet About Chinese Politics

If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. You heard talki...

Hello, do you work for an NBA team, ESPN, or any other organization connected to the league? We’d love to see any memos or communiques sent from the league office about the Daryl Morey-China situation. You can send us anything you want at [email protected] or contact us securely using SecureDrop....

Chris Mortensen Puts On A Clinic In Wife Appreciation Using The Combined Powers Of His Phone And Laptop

This just in: ESPN reporter Chris Mortensen is smitten ... with his wife!...

Heartwarming: Paul Finebaum Gets His Ass Handed To Him Over Lazy Cam Newton Take

ESPN made some good TV this morning. ...

Join Us In Pretending Not To Know What Chris Mortensen's Rat Tweets Are About

Yesterday, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen tweeted out a series of rat emojis. ...

Just Tim Tebow Hootin' And Hollerin' About "Selfish Culture" On <i>First Take</i>

Future Mets All-Star Tim Tebow was on First Take Friday morning to talk with Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman about California’s legislative push to allow college athletes to profit from endorsements. That’s really as much information as you need to know that this was a brutally unpleasant few mi...

Dear ESPN, Please Stop Using Yellow In Your <i>Monday Night Football</i> Down-And-Distance Graphic [UPDATE: It's Gone]

For reasons passing understanding, ESPN’s Monday Night Football presentation uses a sickly greenish-yellow color for the graphic showing the down and distance. It’s a big highlighter-yellow block on the bottom right of the screen, and it’s ugly, and I hate it. On top of being ugly, it looks like a p...

Pee-Wee Football Violence Prompts ESPN-On-ESPN Violence [Update]

Update (3:15 p.m. ET): SportsCenter deleted the tweet. Here’s a screenshot:...

Adam Schefter Doing Ads For An NFL Sponsor Is So Embarrassing

ESPN’s Adam Schefter is a reporter who reports on the NFL. That implies certain things, or at least it used to, namely that a reporter should not have a personal financial stake in the NFL, a business they ostensibly cover objectively, making more money. This seems uncontroversial to me, and for dec...

ESPN's Ariel Helwani Pops A Boner Over Having A Role In Conor McGregor's PR Campaign

Conor McGregor is many objectionable things. He’s a massive shithead, an outspoken bigot, a rich showy asshole, a violent rage-monster, a destroyer of other people’s personal property, and a puncher of helpless old men. He was accused of sexual assault in December. He’s also a man whose livelihood d...

ESPN's ACC Network Will Rely On Cheap Student Labor

The long-anticipated ACC Network launches tonight. The network, which includes a linear TV channel and a digital streaming platform, will be owned by ESPN with revenues and cost split by ESPN and the ACC, but the specifics of that arrangement—who bears what costs and who gets what percentage of the ...

Rex Ryan Is Still Thinking About Those Feeties

Rex Ryan loves feet—specifically his wife’s feet, and we have all known this for years and years. What’s inspiring about Ryan is not that he has an admiration for feet, but that he is extremely comfortable with the entire world having knowledge of that admiration....

Sports Media's Bias Against Men Doesn't Prevent Ed Werder From Getting His Old Job Back

Remember last year when Ed Werder, who was laid off from ESPN in 2017, went on a Twitter rant about how people who encouraged women to apply for jobs in sports were “disqualifying” men from getting those jobs? Remember when he pretended that there wasn’t a massive gender imbalance in sports media in...

ESPN Baseball Broadcast Derailed By Unbearable Argument Over Lineup Optimization

In the third inning of Wednesday night’s Cubs-Cardinals broadcast on ESPN, play-by-play guy Jon Sciambi brought up an interesting stat about the lousy season-long performance of the second-base and center-field positions for the Cubs. This line of thought led fellow commentator Eduardo Pérez to brin...

Jimmy Pitaro Says The Research Shows Viewers Like ESPN Best When It's A Bland Paste

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro’s purpose has been clear from the start—he is the massager of the balls, there to soothe the company’s corporate interests, the reactionary to predecessor John Skipper. But with employee Dan Le Batard’s honest and true radio rant two weeks ago about how a “stick to sports...

Jennifer Lopez Surprised Alex Rodriguez With A Birthday Cake, But He Didn't Eat It

Alex Rodriguez was in his usual spot in the Sunday Night Baseball booth for Yankees-Red Sox when he was surprised by fiancée Jennifer Lopez and his two daughters. Saturday was his 44th birthday, and they had brought him a cake. The baked good itself was ... understated....

Mark Sanchez Drops Football Career, Walks Headfirst Into New Opportunity

You won’t have Mark Sanchez to kick around anymore on NFL Sundays. Instead, please reschedule your buttfumble jokes for Saturdays....

Report: Dan Le Batard Chose To Stay Off Radio Today After Talks With ESPN President

ESPN personality Dan Le Batard is not hosting his daily radio show this morning, a decision that he reportedly made after having spent the weekend talking to ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro about the network’s policy against talking politics. The reasoning behind Le Batard’s absence was reported by John...