The Shady Side Of ESPN

The following article contains mention of addiction.

ESPN first launched back in 1979 as television's first satellite cable network for purely sports content. Bringing fans a non-stop barrage of games, commentary, and more, the network broke new ground in sports programming with such innovations as its "SportsCenter" shows, providing viewers with updates on scores, sports news, and other highlights several times throughout the day. Along the way, ESPN provided a platform for numerous former athletes, as well as launching the broadcasting careers for the likes of Keith Olbermann and "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts.

Despite being owned by Disney — the world's foremost purveyor of wholesome family entertainment — ESPN has experienced more than its fair share of controversy and scandals over the years. These have run the gamut, ranging from a fraudulent scheme involving Emmy Awards, to some sexual harassment complaints, to an on-air personality's outrageously bigoted social media posts, to a high-level resignation brought about by a cocaine-related extortion scheme. And those are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Making its debut on ESPN2 in 2003, "Cold Pizza" broke new ground in sports programming by serving up a two-hour live morning show, airing weekdays and targeting male sports fans. "It's as important as any new show we've ever launched under EOE [ESPN Original Entertainment]," ESPN exec Mark Shapiro told Sports Business Journal of the show's potential to reel in viewers to the network.

In 2007, "Cold Pizza" made headlines when Rita Ragone, who was a makeup artist on the show, filed a lawsuit alleging she was sexually harassed by series co-host Jay Crawford and panelist Woody Paige. Not only did she allege that the two had created a hostile work environment around her, she also claimed that Paige had once grabbed her buttocks with such force that she was "propelled forward and into the air," reported The Denver Post. Paige denied everything, as did the network. "This suit is without merit, and we deny the allegations," stated ESPN representative Mike Soltys.

The following year, a judge tossed Ragone's lawsuit; not because of the network's denials, but because she signed a document when she was first hired by ESPN back in 2005, which denoted that any claims of sexual harassment would be taken to an arbitrator. By then, "Cold Pizza" was already long gone. Weeks after Ragone launched her case, ESPN reconfigured the show's format and gave it a new title, "ESPN First Take."

Former NFL quarterback Sean Salisbury went on to become a football analyst for ESPN, until it all went horribly wrong. In 2007, Deadspin reported that Salisbury was the actual subject of a gossip column from CBS Sportline's Mike Freeman, who wrote, "The NFL analyst who shall not be named that took a picture of his p***s with a cell phone camera and has shown it to numerous, uncomfortable women, then was suspended by his network for it."

Salisbury sued Deadspin, but in 2010 confessed that the story was actually true. "I was ashamed, and I didn't want to say anything," Salisbury told USA Today (via CBS News). "I thought it would go away and let my ego get in the way ... A stupid mistake can cost you, and this has really cost me."

Sadly, things went from bad to worse for Salisbury. In a 2012 interview with the New York Daily News, he revealed he had chronic pain from the injuries sustained playing football, and had sunk into a deep depression after losing his ESPN job. "I'm a walking train wreck," Salisbury said, admitting that he deserved to be held accountable for his actions, but that what he had gone through had far exceeded that. "The past few years have been a rough, rough time. I hit rock bottom physically, mentally, emotionally and financially all at the same time."

Steve Phillips was the general manager of the New York Mets from 1997 until 2003, before joining ESPN as a baseball analyst. In 2009, the New York Post reported that Phillips — then a 46-year-old father of four — had an affair with 22-year-old ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley, but broke off the fling.

According to the publication, Hundley didn't take getting dumped well and allegedly engaged in "erratic" behavior that included telephoning his wife, hand-delivering a letter to the Phillips' home — then smashing into a column while speeding away — and even trying to contact his son by impersonating a classmate online. "I have extreme concerns about the health and safety of my kids and myself," the sportscaster told police in a statement.

Phillips was ultimately fired from his on-air gig. "His ability to be an effective representative for ESPN has been significantly and irreparably damaged, and it became evident it was time to part ways," read a statement (via The New York Times) from the network. After undergoing treatment for sex addiction, Phillips appeared on "Today" (via ESPN), stating, "I made some mistakes ... I'm fully responsible for what I did." Hundley was also fired and sued ESPN for defamation over claims she hadn't cooperated with the network's internal investigation. Phillips's wife filed for divorce, changed her mind, and then reinitiated divorce proceedings in 2011.

During his years at ESPN, Neil Goldberg was something of a superstar producer, having produced various motorsports programming for the network. His biggest innovation was strapping a camera onto members of NASCAR pit crews, which he revealed in an interview with ESPN was inspired by David Letterman's "Monkey Cam," in which a camera was mounted on the chimpanzee who ran rampant through the set of his late-night talk show. 

While Goldberg's star may have been on the rise, it all came crashing down in 2010 when he was arrested for public indecency. The arrest came after a woman who was walking her dog spotted him standing on a stool that he placed outside the window of a home that wasn't his, peering inside. After turning himself in to police, reported NBC Connecticut, Goldberg confessed to pleasuring himself while watching a woman getting dressed.

In the wake of the incident, ESPN confirmed to CBS News that Goldberg was no longer with the network. As motorsports website SceneDaily.com reported (via Sports Media Watch), charges against Goldberg were subsequently dismissed during a court hearing because he "never admitted guilt and there was no finding of any criminal wrongdoing."

The aforementioned "Cold Pizza" lawsuit wasn't the only time that ESPN has been at the center of sexual harassment allegations. As The Big Lead reported in November 2015, former ESPN makeup artist Sue Baumann launched a lawsuit led by power attorney Gloria Allred, regarding alleged comments sports commentator Chris Berman made to Baumann, as well as text messages he sent her. Rather than fight in court, ESPN instead settled for an undisclosed sum. "Our thorough investigation revealed the harassment claims had no merit," ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz told the publication. "We settled it solely to save a considerable amount of time and litigation costs."

A few years later, Berman was implicated in another sexual harassment case, this one coming from Adrienne Lawrence, who worked as an ESPN legal analyst. In that lawsuit, Lawrence alleged that Berman had left a racist voicemail message for journalist Jemele Hill, further claiming that Hill had notified HR but that nothing had been done. "Despite his continued and repeated misconduct toward women, Berman remains a celebrated and welcome ESPN employee," the suit stated (via USA Today). 

Hill, however, disputed that particular claim in Lawrence's lawsuit. Admitting that she and Berman had clashed, she said that what happened had been mischaracterized. "Chris never left any racially disparaging remarks on my voicemail and our conflict was handled swiftly and with the utmost professionalism," she wrote in a statement that she tweeted.

ESPN was back in the spotlight in 2015 when then-president John Skipper announced plans to lay off close to 300 employees. In the announcement, Skipper insisted the decision to sack so many staffers had not been made lightly, but was in reaction to the changing ways in which sports fans consume content due to advancing technology. "No matter how many times we've adjusted course to lead the industry over the years, the decisions affecting our employees are never made lightly," the executive wrote in a company memo (via The New York Times).

During its first round of widespread layoffs, ESPN had reportedly shed more than seven million subscribers within the past two years, a number that promised to continue trending downward. That proved to be the case in 2021 when ESPN announced it was cutting 300 more employees from its workforce, and eliminating 200 open positions. This time, reported The New York Times, the reason had to do with the lack of sports to cover during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2023, sports had returned, but ESPN announced further layoffs, eliminating more than 20 on-air positions. Among those to get the axe were NBA announcers Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy. "These difficult decisions, based more on overall efficiency than merit, will help us meet our financial targets and ensure future growth," the company said in a statement to Deadline.

In 2015, a hacker broke into the database of Ashley Madison, an online dating site specializing in marital infidelity; the site matched up married people looking to cheat on their spouses, known for its infamous tagline, "Life is short. Have an affair." The hack exposed the names, credit card numbers, and chat history of the site's 30 million users, stirring up chaos for the cheaters who had been exposed.

As it happened, some of those exposed Ashley Madison users were ESPN employees — and not just a few. Data analysis performed by Deadspin initially uncovered 39 accounts that had been registered using ESPN email addresses. When that analysis was expanded to search for ESPN IP addresses as well, Deadspin counted 101, including producers, vice-presidents and top executives. Interestingly, 20% of the ESPN staffers with Ashley Madison accounts were women, which was a statistically significant number given that only 5% of Ashley Madison's total users were female. Deadspin's report didn't identify any ESPN employees by name, but did single out a producer who spent in excess of $2,000 in his online search for a "cougar." 

The reveal of ESPN employees' involvement in the scandal was also steeped in irony. Back in 2008, ESPN had instructed its affiliates to stop running commercial spots for Ashley Madison, presumably so that the Disney-owned network wouldn't be associated with such an unsavory enterprise. 

Former pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, Curt Schilling segued into becoming a baseball analyst when he was hired by ESPN in 2010. Schilling found himself on the outs with his employer in 2016 when he shared a meme on Facebook displaying his view of the transgender community. "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the p***s, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic," read the caption (via NBC Sports), which was accompanied by an insulting caricature of a transgender woman.

That was hardly Schilling's first controversial social media post. The previous year, he was hit with backlash for comparing Muslims to Nazis, and then for sharing a photo of a t-shirt (worn by an attendee at one of Donald Trump's campaign rallies) recommending that journalists be hanged. The anti-trans sentiment, however, was the final straw for ESPN, and Schilling was fired. "ESPN is an inclusive company," read a statement from the network, reported by The New York Times. "Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated."

Erin Andrews spent eight years as a correspondent for ESPN. In 2008, during her tenure with the network, Michael David Barrett booked a Nashville hotel room next to the one in which she was staying. Using a peephole he created, Barrett filmed Andrews unclothed in her room. After unsuccessfully attempting to sell the footage to TMZ, he posted it online. Andrews sued and was awarded $55 million in damages in 2016. 

Testifying at the trial, Andrews revealed her ESPN bosses gave her an ultimatum, forcing her to do a television interview in which she would have to relive the whole painful experience. "Because there wasn't an arrest, because we didn't know where this happened, my bosses at ESPN told me, 'Before you go back on air for college football we need you to give a sit-down interview.' And that was the only way I was going to be allowed back," Andrews testified, as reported by Deadspin.

According to Andrews, her superiors recommended "Good Morning America" on ABC (which, like ESPN, was owned by Disney). She eventually agreed to appear on Oprah Winfrey's talk show. "I talked to her producers, I told her I didn't want to do it. But this was the only way I was going to be put back on air, so we went to the 'Oprah' show," she said. After exiting ESPN in 2012, she joined Fox Sports. In addition, from 2014 until 2020 Andrews co-hosted "Dancing With the Stars."

Of ESPN's many scandals, the resignation of network president John Skipper is arguably the most dramatic, given it involved both drugs and blackmail. "I have struggled for many years with a substance addiction. I have decided that the most important thing I can do right now is to take care of my problem," Skipper said in the 2017 statement announcing he was resigning (reported by Fox News). 

In a subsequent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Skipper confirmed that the substance in question was cocaine, and that he felt he was able to keep his drug use separate from his responsibilities at the network. Then, it all came crashing down in a heartbeat. "In December, someone from whom I bought cocaine attempted to extort me," Skipper explained. Under threat of being exposed, rather than buckle, he instead met with Bob Iger — CEO of Disney, ESPN's parent company — and came clean. It became clear to both men that Skipper had placed Iger in an "untenable position," and his only option was to resign.

While his drug use cost him his dream job, Skipper acknowledged that the extortion attempt was the ultimate wake up call that made him realize that his cocaine use — which he insisted had never hampered his job performance — needed to end, immediately. "I acted very foolishly," Skipper admitted. "It made me want to seek help and get this out of my life."

Jemele Hill began working for ESPN in 2006 as a columnist for their website. The journalist eventually became an on-air personality, leading to a short-lived gig as co-anchor of "SportsCenter." Over the course of her years with ESPN, Hill didn't always see eye-to-eye with her bosses. That was very apparent when a tweet about America's 45th president led to backlash. "Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists," she tweeted in 2017. 

She went further when she addressed Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' statement that he would bench any player who kneeled in protest during the National Anthem. "Cowboys have a huge national following. Lot of black & brown folks are Cowboys fans. What if they turned their backs on them?" she wrote, landing her a two-week suspension. "In the aftermath, all employees were reminded of how individual tweets may reflect negatively on ESPN and that such actions would have consequences," an ESPN rep said in a statement (via Sports Illustrated).

In 2018, Hill exited ESPN. She explained her decision to leave during a 2022 appearance on Kenny Mayne's "Hey Mayne" podcast. "I wasn't a good fit for the 'SportsCenter' culture. Definitely not a good fit for the management that was overseeing 'SportsCenter' at the time," she said (via USA Today). "And I got tired. I got really tired of fighting everyday to be myself."

In 2017, some public backlash was generated when statues honoring Confederate figures from the Civil War were removed. The whole thing came to a head in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a group of white supremacists staged a rally, protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, which turned violent during a clash with counter-protesters.

Amid this fraught scenario was a University of Virginia football game set to be broadcast on ESPN. Ahead of the game, ESPN quietly sidelined announcer Robert Lee because of concerns that his name was too similar to that of the Civil War general, who died in 1870. "We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name," ESPN said in a statement to The New York Times. "It's a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue."

ESPN was hit with backlash from conservative news outlets, but the network insisted there was no liberal agenda at play, simply an attempt to protect Lee, an Asian-American, from being caught up in a firestorm. "No politically correct efforts. No race issues," an ESPN spokesperson told Sports Illustrated. "Just trying to be supportive of a young guy who felt it best to avoid the potential zoo."

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been no stranger to controversy, particularly when it comes to misleading statements, like when he twisted the truth about being vaccinated for COVID-19. In January 2024, Rodgers appeared on ESPN's "The Pat McAfee Show" and discussed the yet-to-be-revealed list of people associated with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. "A lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping it doesn't come out," he said, adding, "If that list comes out, I will definitely be popping some sort of bottle." 

The "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host responded immediately, tweeting, "Dear A**hole: for the record, I've not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any 'list' other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can't seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court." Kimmel followed up with a scathing monologue, telling viewers that Rodgers was living proof of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which posits that people who lack knowledge in a particular area tend to wildly overestimate their competence in said area. "In other words, Aaron Rodgers is too arrogant to know how ignorant he is," Kimmel joked.

Pat McAfee later announced Rodgers wouldn't be appearing on his show in the immediate future. "There will be a lot of people who are happy with that,"  McAfee told viewers. "Myself included to be honest with you."

In January 2024, a shady scheme involving ESPN's slew of Emmy Awards, which went back decades, was unveiled. The Athletic reported that producers for ESPN's "College GameDay" submitted fake names of non-existent people for Emmy inclusion, with the ruse reportedly going back as far as 1997. 

The reason: so that if the show won — which it had, many times — ESPN would receive multiple extra Emmy trophies for those fake people. The fake names bore the same initials as the show's on-air talent, and since the on-air personalities weren't eligible for Emmy consideration, those extra statues would be modified with the on-air people's names engraved and the statues presented to them. The people given those fake awards were none the wiser and didn't realize the Emmys they believed they had won weren't legit. After the scam was revealed, ESPN was forced to return 37 Emmy Awards to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

"I think it was really crummy what they did to me and others," said Shelley Smith, who was among those who had to return their fake Emmys. "This was a misguided attempt to recognize on-air individuals who were important members of our production team," read a statement from ESPN, promising to revise their network's Emmy submission process, as well as undertaking an internal investigation and then disciplining those responsible.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).