ESPN's Maria Taylor asks an interesting question

[Alma]

I always felt the tiniest bit bad for a guy like Reilly, who goes to ESPN and is immediately overshadowed by a dude who watches games on TV and writes about going to Vegas.

 

[Small Town Guy]

Damn, has it been 20 years since Reilly was at SI? I'll never think of anything he did at ESPN other than "I got it first on Twitter!"

Don't feel too old, Playthrough. He left SI in 08.

 

[poindexter]

I always felt the tiniest bit bad for a guy like Reilly, who goes to ESPN and is immediately overshadowed by a dude who watches games on TV and writes about going to Vegas.

At that point in their respective careers, the dude who watched games on tv was better.

Reilly stole every dollar he made at ESPN. Completely worthless.

 

[Alma]

At that point in their respective careers, the dude who watched games on tv was better.

Reilly stole every dollar he made at ESPN. Completely worthless.

Point is, if Reilly has known he could steal dollars and do that, he probably would have and been fine at it.

 

[UPChip]

She hosts a show called Always Late on ESPN+. It's decent enough. Funny. Kind of sports version of Last Week Tonight, though not nearly as good. (LWT is a high, high bar.)

They slow-rolled it out and I think they're doing more pub for it now.

I really enjoy Katie Nolan's on-air personality. She is creative (the shot-for-shot "Lemonade" send-up of Deflategate was impressive) and seems unusually "real." The GQ feature went into some depth about how the long period on Fox's "bench" affected her psychologically, and the remorse she felt by initially attempting to be the "cool girl" stereotype to get her foot into the door.

I fear that, at ESPN or Fox, she has been something of a "unitasker," to borrow from the kitchen parlance, sort of the ESPN kitchen potato masher. She's funny and outspoken, but I've not seen her do much in the way of interviews and I don't think she has much in the way of journalistic "chops." I hope, during her time at ESPN, she can develop into a more sustainable role. I mean, Bill Simmons had a fraction of the raw materials Nolan has at the same point, and his creative and producing abilities made a significant impact with "30 for 30," etc.

 

[hondo]

Joel Klatt is an even bigger embarrassment than Herbstreit with his nonstop Harbaugh-B1G slurping. And give me a break with this "he played it" nonsense. We've forever taken offense at coaches snapping at reporters, "you never played the game" as being a bullshirt copout response. Yeah, Herbstreit played...in the 1980s. The players are different. The coaches are different. Society is different. Concussion protocol in Herbstreit's day was, "get up, you pussy."

Klatt is a blithering idiot. Earlier this season he posted a tirade against the AP poll in which he said (paraphrasing) that "college football" needs to do away with the AP poll. What is this "college football" of which he spoke? And even if there was come central authority that was "college football" how did he think it was going to stop the AP from conducting a poll?
He also ranted about AP voters, claiming there was no accountability and claimed they operated in anonymity. How long has it been since the names, emails and social media addresses of AP voters has been public? 5-6 years at least?

 

[Jake from State Farm]

When the GameDay job came open, I always thought ESPN should promote Holly Rowe if they were serious about hiring the best candidate
I figured they'd hire a babe
Enter Maria Taylor, who looks great in leather pants

 

[exmediahack]

When the GameDay job came open, I always thought ESPN should promote Holly Rowe if they were serious about hiring the best candidate
I figured they'd hire a babe
Enter Maria Taylor, who looks great in leather pants

Volleyball player.

If you ever wanted to turn heads in college, date a volleyball player.

 

[cjericho]

ESPN did this with Rick Reilly 20 years ago by lifting him from SI and then barely having him do any work. Wasn't he getting $2 million a year? Now he's irrelevant.

Oddly enough, Simmons is the only person I can think who left ESPN and was able to build or maintain a substantial brand away from the WWL. Dan Patrick is fairly meh but people who are 55-60 like him.

If Katie Nolan clears $1M, how can she generate $4M of product to justify the salary? Or... they're just lifting from FOX.

Think Rich Eisen has done pretty well. Harold Reynolds at MLB channel also.

 

[exmediahack]

Think Rich Eisen has done pretty well. Harold Reynolds at MLB channel also.

Eisen was never a "number 1" at ESPN. NFL made him the cornerstone of their coverage. That was a clear move up. If, say, Stuart Scott had left ESPN for NFL in 2003 and maintained the success that Eisen has had then, yes, I'd consider that.

MLB's numbers are pretty miniscule. When Reynolds was on ESPN, I knew he was on ESPN. I had no idea where he was working until your post.