ESPN Page 90 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

ESPN Suspends Rob Parker For A Month
After taking a week to think about it, ESPN has hit Rob Parker with a 30-day suspension for his "brother or cornball brother?" comments. Also, ESPN is promising "enhanced editorial oversight" over the show, which means ... well, I'm not sure what. In a statement, Marcia Keegan, vice president of pro...

The Military Asked ESPN For Help With Its Drone Program
For all the contentiousness of the presidential debates, both parties could agree on one thing: Flaming death from the sky, now and forever. The use of unmanned drones to surveil and occasionally blow up brown people is so accepted as a matter of course, the Worldwide Leader in Sports didn't hesitat...

How Fred Gaudelli Turned NBC's <em>Sunday Night Football</em> Into The No. 1 Show On TV
With 7:30 left in the second quarter of an otherwise forgettable October game between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, Cris Collinsworth said the name that had been on Fred Gaudelli's mind for at least five days. ...

Ugh. Colin Cowherd Is (Statistically) The Best Pundit Of 2012.
Republished with permission from PunditTracker.com....

Christian Ponder And Samantha Steele Got Married
Early September-ish: Vikings QB Christian Ponder meets ESPN blonde lady Samantha Steele at a filming of College GameDay. Despite both having jobs that regularly take them around the country, they found time to start a relationship....

Everyone At ESPN Is Still Under Tim Tebow's Spell
Both the graphics department and the on-air talent—in this case, Chris Berman—believe this to be Tim "it only took ten seconds" Tebow and Jake Locker chattin' and tossin' the old pigskin at the beginning of Monday Night Countdown....

Mike Lupica's Pro-Gun-Control Essay On Today's <em>Sports Reporters</em> Makes Bob Costas Sound Like A Right-Winger
Mike Lupica's Daily News columns often take an unabashed liberal perspective, but the Sports Reporters panelist has generally kept his political takes off of ESPN's airwaves—by apparent directive of the WWL itself....

ESPN Bent Over Backwards Not To Say "Pistol" During The New Mexico Bowl, Then Said "Shotgun" During The Idaho Potato Bowl
On Friday, ESPN senior vice president and executive producer Mark Gross sent a memo to his staff. It read in part:...

Former ESPN Outdoors Producer: "Most Of The People I've Met From The NRA Don't Believe The Bullshit They're Selling"
For several years I worked for the now defunct ESPNOutdoors.com and on a number of ESPN Outdoors TV shows. A couple of times a year the website would cover these massive annual trade shows that affected hunting, and we'd descend on giant convention center halls in Orlando and Las Vegas that were pac...

The <em>B.S. Report</em> Report: Time For Pizza
Julia Alvidrez, Gawker Media's operations manager, is an unabashed fan of Bill Simmons and everything Grantland. She is also an occasional reader of Deadspin. Every week, she will recap Simmons's podcast, The B.S. Report, for us....

In Wake Of School Massacre, ESPN Tells Staff To Stop Tweeting About Sports Until Sunday, Refrain From Using The Word "Shooter"
Here's the email from ESPN senior vice president and executive producer Mark Gross to staff, regarding the shootings in Newtown, Conn. Newtown is 30 miles from ESPN headquarters in Bristol. ...

Someone Please Remind Andy Katz That ESPN Had A Hand In The Big East's Demise
Now that the Big East's non-football schools have decided to ditch the Big East, ESPN senior college basketball writer Andy Katz is among those waxing nostalgic about the Big East's heyday as a hoops league. But at the end of his paean published early this morning, Katz gets a little defensive about...

ESPN Suspends Rob Parker After "Cornball Brother" Remarks, Promises "Full Review"
ESPN execs are not sitting on their hands on this one. A day after Rob Parker's "is he a brother or is he a cornball brother" comments about Robert Griffin III, ESPN said that Parker is suspended indefinitely....

Which NFL Pundits Made The Worst Picks In Week 14? Grading ESPN, Yahoo, And CBS
Republished with permission from PunditTracker.com....
![Rob Parker Lowers The Bar On <em>First Take</em>: Is Robert Griffin III "A Brother Or A Cornball Brother?" [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
Rob Parker Lowers The Bar On <em>First Take</em>: Is Robert Griffin III "A Brother Or A Cornball Brother?" [UPDATE]
Yes, amazingly, today's cringe-inducing, bang-your-ahead-against-the-wall moment from First Take does not come from Skip Bayless. It comes from Rob Parker, who is First Take's new Saturday host! He's taking to the role perfectly....
!["That's A Man, Baby": These ESPN Radio Bozos Unload In Horrible Anti-Transgender Rant [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
"That's A Man, Baby": These ESPN Radio Bozos Unload In Horrible Anti-Transgender Rant [UPDATE]
"I think ‘it' is the politically correct term." That's how Steve Czaban, a Washington, D.C.-based ESPN Radio host, described a transgender basketball player while speaking with co-host Andy Pollin and regular guest Chris Knoche. But let's back up....

ESPN Finally Disavows Its Tebow Coverage: "We Didn't Handle That Very Well"
The New York Jets have three games left to play and despite an unexpected itchy eruption of theoretically possible playoff chances—one game behind whahuh?—they're not a draw going down the stretch. The Chargers-Jets Sunday game on Dec. 23 gets the distinction of being the only game this year that NB...

You Can Blow Smoke About A Crime Problem, But NFL Players Are Relatively Law-Abiding By A Wide Margin
This morning, Jeffri Chadiha wrote a piece for ESPN about the attention that must be paid to the "dirtiest of the NFL's little secrets"—drunken driving, domestic violence and guns:...

ESPN Cancels Comedy Segment Again
It appears ESPN will not be subjecting its viewers to a misguided, probably-sponsored-by-a-light-beer segment with a cast of uncomfortable extras centered around a hilariously out of touch gasbag....

How ESPN's Dan Rafael Became The Most Important Journalist In Boxing: A Cautionary Tale
Dan Rafael is the most important boxing journalist in the world, merely by dint of being the only full-time boxing correspondent at ESPN. He has access—to fighters, to promoters, to fans—that other writers could only imagine. He has 70,000 followers on Twitter; few other full-time boxing writers can...