More Cuts at ESPN

On Beadle, Get Up and her latest issue of outrage.

What is the salary threshold, in $$$, that makes dealing with assholes on social media worth it? 100k? $1 million?

Michelle Beadle was able to go from interviewing Tampa Bay Lightning players (sideline reporting -- not exactly journalism) straight to ESPN's SportsNation with Cowherd. A huge jump. Only females make that jump. The downside of being a female sports anchor/host is that you have to deal with assholes and their comments.

I never dealt with those but I never had the capacity to go from "tell me about how you're going to come out after the second intermission" to hosting ESPN.

If I had Beadle's salary and visibility at ESPN, anyone can say or send anything to me on social media.

That's the price of fame in 2018.

 

So if she says that she won't watch the NFL or college football, why is she even on Get Up?

Watching the sports (or at least sounding knowledgeable) that the audience cares care IS THE JOB. If she wants to be all-NBA, all the time, that's fine. Go host an NBA show.

That being said, ESPN's (and FOX's) endless NBA off-season talk is something I find odd. All of this build-up for something where we all know the end result: Golden State wins unless they come out really, really cold.

 

Except for every ex-jock who comes off the bench and lands in a network broadcast booth.

 

That's a different job. Those are analyst positions, rarely as a studio/highlight host jobs.

 

Beadle's leap wasn't a big as Cowherd's from hosting a daily sports talk show (not even drivetime) and being a local sports anchor in Portland to getting a national day slot on ESPN.
And didn't Rich Eisen go from Redding, CA sports guy to 11 p.m. PST SportsCenter anchor with Stuart Scott?

 

This goes way back and is not sports but Harry Smith is the guy who came out of the Denver market and burst on to the national scene and anchored the CBS morning show on and off for a long time. Smith got demoted from the afternoon drive to mid-days on an AM station in Denver. He then got a job as a co-host of a local PBS show which he turned into a job as the noon anchor on the number three rated station (and I remember that he did not improve them}. But CBS picked him up as a correspondent despite not having much field reporting experience. And three years later CBS puts him on the morning show for most of the next 25 years and he is still prominent presence at NBC.

So who the hell knows.

 

Beadle deadspin.

https://deadspin.com/it-doesnt-matter-if-michelle-beadle-doesnt-watch-footba-1828563196?

 

She's been consistent on the issue of domestic violence and cover-up in sports.

Last go round it was Floyd Mayweather.

There's plenty of sexism in the blowback to her comments, too.

 

I love Deadspin. Sooner or later the whole "you stupid people, none of this means fuckin shit anyway" depresso-vibe shines through in nearly every piece.

Such as it is, this is a pretty silly controversy. In large part because those doing the handwringing seem to be operating under the assumption that sports pundits and hosts have ever needed to pay extremely close attention to the sports they yap about in order to be good at their jobs.

 

She can and she will. She's royalty at ESPN. She might get off the show, or she might just tell football panelists to go to hell.