ESPN & the Death of Journalism

For almost 50 years now, ESPN has been a cultural staple. What started as a shoestring operation in Bristol, Connecticut, quickly became a money-printing machine throughout the 90s and 2000s. Of course, part of that was because before the internet, it was kind of the only place to see scores and highlights. You didn't really have a choice.

But even still, it was a network that was filled with so many great personalities. People like Stuart Scott, who were just effortlessly cool and funny. They had this dry sense of humor that permeated in everything they made. And they really delivered on every part of the sports spectrum. Whether it was with legitimate, hard-hitting journalism on shows like Outside the Lines and E! 60, or a show like Cheap Seats, where the Sklar brothers would just riff over a bunch of weird-ass sporting events.

Oh, Mary, it's a shame you'll have to die now.

For a long time, ESPN had a captive audience. They could have gotten complacent, but instead they chose to be creative. They took risks. They elevated the experience of watching sports. But over the past decade, some cracks have started to form. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that ESPN sold its soul and I don't just mean because they're owned by Disney if they do have any influence It's hard to tell because they're very subtle about here in Disneyland at Disneyland

I'm tapping it off here at Disneyland

Disney World or Disneyland The magic of the power of Disney and the magic of Disney no when I say they sold their soul, I mean this in two ways. One, they completely lost their on-screen identity, the thing that made them special to begin with. As the media landscape changes and the attention economy only gets more and more competitive, ESPN traded in its signature style of light-hearted, casual commentary for what is essentially a 24-7 rage bait.

An endless stream of hot takes and controversial opinions that are so frustrating to listen to you can't help but react to it. It's crazy, they spent decades building up a reputation only to burn it to the ground just so more people would comment on their YouTube shorts. The more nefarious way I think they've sold their soul is by being so financially tied to the leagues that they cover that they've lost the ability to be objective about them. This company that largely established itself on high-quality journalism can't really

do journalism anymore when the leagues they partner with don't allow them to be critical. There are no concussions in Ba Sing Se. I'll get into this more specifically in the second half of the video, but I want to talk about both these problems because I think they go hand in hand. The big change at ESPN started with what was technically pretty successful at the time. First Take with Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless. Where the network had dipped their toes throughout the years in argument-centric television,

First Take was a cannonball into the deep end. These two guys are gonna disagree with every word that comes out of their mouths. It doesn't matter what the topic is, they're gonna sit there and yell at each other for two hours straight, and it is gonna be a loud, messy car wreck you can't look away from.

So he might last year.

Are you on drugs?

He donated to charity.

Are you on drugs?

Skip Bayless was not the first of his kind, but he's certainly one of the biggest. This archetype of a now staple character in the cable news landscape, the disagreeable oaf. The unhinged bombastic moron who's only there to say dumb shit so everyone else can be like, did you hear what he just said? What is he, some kind of oaf? It's almost the sports equivalent of hiring a clown. You know, like, if you hit yourself in

the face with a pie Sure, people will probably stop what they're doing to point and laugh and maybe even tell their friends about what they just saw But that doesn't mean they respect you. They're not gonna go home and sign up for clown plus It's not that they value your opinion. It's that they like when you do something dumb So while this show was successful in what it set out to do, which was to get more people paying attention to the channel during a time where cord cutting was taking a lot of eyeballs

away from cable TV, ultimately I think this came at a detriment to the ESPN brand. The more that they've leaned into this, the more this is what people picture when they think of ESPN. It has created an acidic, corrosive cruelty

in how it is that we talk about athletes.

Here's the format of first take. You get the host, two rotating analysts, and of course, Mr. ESPN himself, Stephen A. Smith. The host will ask a question, one that's kind of abstract and completely subjective. Something like, is this team a dynasty?

Who's the most dominant player? What's LeBron's favorite movie? And the two analysts go back and forth. Things get a little heated, but more of a simmer than an outright boil. All the while, Stephen A. looks on from his comically large LED screen, watching, judging, waiting. Waiting to come in and disagree with these people literally no matter what.

He's an all-time great! Eventually!

He's an all-time great! Eventually!

Now! And you know what? It can be pretty entertaining. For about ten minutes, and then you just get tired of it. Because, again, they're not really talking about anything.

Because, because, because, because.

There's only so many heated disagreements about sports you can have every single day. But since that's the format of the show, usually what they're arguing about doesn't even make sense. I turned on a random episode a couple weeks ago and this happened immediately. They're talking about a head coach that got hired and Steven's arguing about how they can't trust him because he's had a lot of different jobs.

Six different jobs in six years!

Six different jobs in six years! And it's like, yeah, he was getting different jobs because they were all promotions. He was working his way up the career ladder, and now he's at the top. If you watch sports, what he's saying here doesn't make any sense, but the other people have to just sit there and listen to him yell about it because that's what the show is.

Six different jobs in six years?

Here's another one where they're getting all worked up over something LeBron James said in an interview.

Right.

He's wrong.

He's right. He's wrong.

He's wrong.

You the hell don't know at all.

Come on, man. And not even because he was wrong, but just because it was obvious? WHO DON'T KNOW THAT?! Who cares? There were 10 basketball games on that night, and the second segment of the show was about something a guy said on a podcast. This format has spread like a plague throughout ESPN, and by extension, all of sports media.

Hey, LeBron. Ben Simmons is here.

We're all good. In pursuit of viral clips and controversial headlines, more and more shows bring on a guest whose sole job is to stoke the flames.

You must be crazy. As always.

Please, you just learned his sport.

To be the verbal punching bag for the rest of the cast to make funny faces at in hopes of becoming a GIF.

He's there to hear the crazy conclusion that his partner has come to and actually be the everyman with a loud voice. Like, you are crazy. So there's a lot of pressure on his partner to come up with a counterintuitive conclusion

about everything.

And sports media as a whole has become increasingly cannibalistic. Less often is anyone actually talking about the sport, they're talking about something actually talking about the sport, they're talking about something someone said about the sport. Like I said, that rant about LeBron's random quote was the second segment of that episode.

The fourth segment of that episode was something that Kendrick Perkins said on a different show. They brought on Kendrick Perkins to react to something that he said.

Do you agree or disagree with Perkins?

No, no, no, no.

ESPN seems to be aware of the disease for which they willingly became patient zero, but at the same time, they kind of act like they had nothing to do with it. Stephen A. Smith is concerned with the direction of sports media. Gee, I wonder who's responsible for that.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this and give him a spankin'.

It's obviously this guy, right?

Yes.

Sorry, if it seems like I'm focusing too much on just one guy here, I agree. The reason it's impossible to have this conversation without focusing so heavily on Stephen A is because at this point, he is ESPN. He gets paid over $ million dollars a year. They've laid off so many talented people just so they could use that money to put one guy in as many of their shows as possible. And with that comes more pressure on Steven to carry the network on his shoulders. And that's a lot of responsibility. Steven A is a very entertaining guy.

Sandy, nah, with the cup is your body, no. Squidward, too skinny. Gary, you look limited.

But one person is not enough to carry an entire sports network. To be an expert at anything, you have to be kind of a sicko about it. It has to be your number one passion. Kenny Beacham is one of my favorite NBA analysts

because he clearly just loves basketball. His enthusiasm is contagious. I could listen to him talk about any team and feel more knowledgeable afterwards. Same reason I think Mina Kimes is great on NFL Live because she's clearly obsessed with football.

And that's what you need to be when your job is to talk about it. Stephen A. Smith is on ESPN multiple times a day. He has a two hour daily radio show. He has a political podcast, a YouTube channel, and he's now going on this press tour to float out the idea of a 2028 presidential run. Trump is coming. He obviously works very hard and I'm

never gonna tell someone that they should do less. But objectively speaking, I don't think he's sitting down to watch the Hornets play the Sun. He's not getting home after a long day of work and tuning in to Raptors Jazz. There are a million games on every night and there aren't enough hours in the day. The network should have a lot of people that each specialize in one thing, but they'd rather have a couple of people try to specialize in everything. And it's just not possible.

This is why he gets stuff wrong all the time. He's referenced how important certain players are who aren't even on the team anymore. He accidentally gave condolences to somebody who isn't dead.

Mr. 40 minutes of hell himself, the late great Nolan Richardson, God rest his soul. But in the same breath, I am fully aware that Nolan Richardson is alive. Okay? Trust me, I apologize for that. I don't know why I said God rest his soul. I know he's alive, I've always known.

I know he's alive, I've always known he's alive. You know what, it's live TV, people make mistakes. The thing that frustrated me the most was last summer during one of the most entertaining and improbable playoff runs I've ever seen a team go on. That 2025 Pacers team is the reason I love sports. They had so many unbelievable comebacks and insane game-winning shots, unsung heroes coming

up big in clutch moments. I was glued to my television for every one of their games and I'm not even a Pacers fan. If you love basketball, you loved watching that team. And Stephen A. Smith was in the stands, game four, the NBA Finals, playing solitaire on his phone.

I feel like if you're getting paid $20 million a year to talk about basketball, the least you could do is watch basketball. And if you're gonna play something on your phone, there's gotta be a better game than Solitaire. That shit's boring as hell. You know they got Minecraft on here, right? Now it was already a bad look

for ESPN's highest paid analyst to not be paying attention to the thing he's paid to analyze. But then he lied about it. He said it was during a timeout when it clearly wasn't. Then he doubled down and got defensive. And I decide to play a little solitaire, which by the way, I always do. And I mean always.

Those out there who don't like it, kiss my ass.

And then he parlayed the whole thing into this unbelievably bad AI slop commercial.

You letting solitaire cash distract you during the game?

No man, you got it all wrong. The game is trying to distract me from solitaire.

For some bullshit, pay to win solitaire gambling app that has been on the receiving end of lawsuits for rigging their games. Jesus Christ, man. I mean, compared to this, the whole being on your phone at a game thing

wasn't even that big of a deal. This would be like trying to get out of paying for a parking ticket by setting your car on fire. Problem solved, I guess. Funny joke, man. Sorry, I have to do an ad now. If you've ever traveled internationally, you know there's a lot of unexpected costs that go into it, and one that you might not

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That way you can immediately call an Uber or look at Google Maps or text your friend, I've ever been in my life. I slept for four minutes on the plane and at 7 a.m I think I'm going to die and that's it It's super easy to use set it up before you go and you don't have to think about it again So if you have traveling plans anytime soon download the saly app using my link in the description and use my code gooden at checkout For an exclusive 15% discount on a data plan drastically changed the past couple decades, some amount of decline for ESPN was inevitable. It's much harder now for the wide-reaching, generalized sports show to succeed when we all tend to live

in our own hyper-specific content bubbles. And they're too expensive of an operation to not just talk about whatever attracts the largest possible audience. So they talk about the Lakers and the Knicks and the Cowboys and LeBron James on a 24-7 loop.

For niche sports content, which is what most people tend to want, there's so many better sources. If I wanna hear someone do in-depth analysis of the entire NBA, I'll listen to Zach Lowe. If I wanna see like real old school

investigative sports journalism, I can watch Pablo Torre. If I wanna hear someone in absolute shambles after the Patriots lose a big game, I'll listen to Bill Simmons. Nipplegate and poopgate. And funny enough, you know what those three people have in common? They all used to work for ESPN.

Bill Simmons was probably the most consequential firing by ESPN. Not only has he gone on to create a podcast network that is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is a direct rival to ESPN media, but the reason Bill was fired in the first place changed

the way a lot of people viewed ESPN. The main reason Bill was suspended was that he would too often criticize Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL. If you've followed football, you'll know he's not exactly a beloved figure. He gets a standing ovation of boos every year at the draft. The last big thing that Bill criticized him for was the way he handled the Ray Rice situation

in 2014. To summarize, Ray Rice gets arrested in February for a domestic violence incident, which the team and the league spend the next couple months trying to downplay. He's really sorry, they're going to couples counseling, it's not a big deal, please stop talking about this. Well, people didn't stop talking about this

and the terrible precedent that it was setting. For comparison, this was about a decade after Ricky Williams, one of my favorite athletes of all time, got suspended for an entire season for smoking weed. Gotta crack down on the guy trying to manage his pain

from getting tackled 500 times a year. But when a guy beats up his fiancé, zero discipline whatsoever. They make excuses, they minimize the severity of it because they're worried if it becomes too big of a story, then it reflects poorly on the NFL. So then they ignored it, which ironically caused it to become a bigger story and look even worse for the NFL. Masterful gambit, sir.

Eventually, after about five months of public backlash, Roger Goodell finally succumbs to the pressure and he comes out and he's like, all right, we thought about it and you guys are right. We will be suspending Ray Rice for two games. Somehow, this was not enough to end the backlash. In fact, it only brought it on harder.

Again, 16 games for smoking a joint, two games for knocking your girlfriend unconscious. The league has now made it clear that they believe domestic violence is one-eighth as bad as getting high. For the following month, Goodell and the NFL continued to be under fire until they came out and revised the suspension.

They moved it up to six games, they introduced a harsher domestic violence policy, and they apologized for being so lenient. But that still wasn't the end of the story because then a week later, TMZ released the footage of the incident, and it was awful.

The idea that his employer would have watched this and taken Ray Rice's side, and then go on to downplay it just because he's good at football is bad. This kind of leniency towards athletes where the better they are at the sport they play, the more they're allowed to get away with off the field

is one of the biggest stains on a lot of these leagues. And Roger Goodell handled this about as poorly as he could have. He tried to say that the NFL had never seen the footage and of course they would have reacted more appropriately if they had, but nobody believed him. The police involved in the case came out and confirmed they had sent them the footage,

and they were told that it was received and watched. The NFL lied about this. Roger Goodell lied about this.

He's a liar. I'm just saying it. He is lying.

Bill Simmons can, he himself, be kind of an oaf, but he was perfectly justified in criticizing how the situation was handled. But ESPN didn't see it that way. I mean, they're a $20 billion operation that only has the revenue and power that they have because they're in bed with all of these major sports leagues. They have to suck up to the NFL because they can't risk losing the rights to Monday Night Football

and all of the money that comes with it. So they suspended Bill for three weeks and a couple months later chose not to renew his contract. Essentially he had crossed the line too many times. Here at ESPN, you can disparage individual athletes all you want. You can sit across from them,

look them dead in the eyes and call them soft. But as soon as you criticize the CEO of football, go ahead and pack your bags, asshole.

Do you regret calling Gaddal a liar?

No, cause he lied.

This felt like the final stage of their now complete transformation from the once fun, casual, independent news channel to, I know it sounds hyperbolic, but like state-sponsored media, more beholden to their corporate overlords

than to journalistic integrity. I mean, if you can't share your real opinion about sports on the Sports Opinion Network, then what the hell are we doing here? So whether it's the NFL, which they earn billions of dollars from,

the NBA, which they earn billions of dollars from, or DraftKings, which they now have an exclusive partnership with, ESPN is kind of forced to spread positive propaganda about all of these companies. Last year, there was this crazy scandal where a couple different NBA players and a coach

were arrested for hinting to friends that they should bet the under on them, and then they'd go out there and either play like shit or fake an injury so they could end the game early. And while attempting to cover the story and be like, man, how could something like this happen when all we've done is promote the shit out of it? The producers must have noticed how fucking insane it looks to have the betting lines on screen, so they very subtly took the entire ticker off mid-segment.

You hear a lot about legal sports gambling on this show. The Bussin Boys, obviously sports gambling is a huge part of what you do.

Obviously it's huge for the Bussin Boys. We all know this. No matter how you feel about the normalization of sports gambling, it's become pretty impossible for ESPN to cover any of the corporations they're now intrinsically tied to in an objective way. You cannot be a separate, unbiased entity when you're a vital part of the machine. Right now, the commissioner of the NBA is under fire for reportedly prioritizing the interest of betting apps over the integrity of the sport he oversees.

In 10 years, they never gave a shit about tanking, but now that FanDuel's losing money when a player sits out a game, we're suddenly holding emergency meetings to fix this ASAP. Seems like kind of a big problem, but you're not gonna hear ESPN criticize that. In fact, they're openly sympathetic.

What's one of the major things when it comes to sports now?

Betting.

It's gambling. It's gambling. And so you got to be careful when you're trying to

throw games. They're doing the exact same thing. They're prioritizing the interests of draft kings over the integrity of the industry they once pioneered. This is why they've gotten rid of most of their journalists. Because the job of a good journalist is to go uncover a story, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it causes someone to lose profits. ESPN has no interest in that. If the only thing that matters to them is money, then they have no incentive to go ruffling feathers.

They're not gonna try to unearth all the corrupt business practices being done by the leagues that butter their bread because then they'd have to eat dry bread. Probably the biggest NBA scandal from the past few years was that Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and also the 10th richest human being on earth, was accused of using an environmentally conscious digital bank, whatever those words mean, to discreetly funnel $28 million to one of his players.

Huge story, massive ramifications for the league. And after everything we've talked about, who do you think broke this story? Do you think it was the network whose paychecks are indirectly written by the man at the center of it? Of course not. It was an independent journalist who used to work at ESPN.

Pablo Torre spent seven months uncovering thousands of documents that followed the flow of money and ultimately finding out that Kawhi Leonard was paid a $28 million endorsement deal to do nothing. An endorsement deal with an organization

that has received giant sums of money from Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer in the past. There's a lot to this story It's still an ongoing investigation and more evidence keeps getting revealed. But to be clear, these aren't just rumors It's not oh I heard from a guy who said this. No, there's a paper trail of legitimate signed documents So it's kind of crazy to see the way ESPN talks about this almost begrudgingly. They seem to want to minimize Pablo whenever they can by calling him a podcaster.

And the first thing they did when these accusations went out was host Steve Ballmer on one of their shows.

Literally, I had no control over the company. I had no control over this company. I had no control. No control. And that's okay.

Blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

Tossed out a couple softball questions and really just gave him unlimited runway to defend himself.

So why do you think they gave him that much money? I don't know anything about the court documents on

this. I don't, I haven't seen them and I don't know. I don't know what the deal is. I don't know what the deal is. I'm not trying to be, I don't know. I really don't know. And just so we're clear, you never directed

anyone from Aspiration to do an endorsement deal with Kawhi Leonard? No. Thanks, Steve.

Thanks. He even manages to imply that somehow he's the victim here. How would I be able, Then of course that week the ultimate company man Stephen A. Smith jumps at the chance to defend Ballmer while trying to move all of the blame onto Kawhi.

Well first of all props to Steve Ballmer for showing up and doing the interview. I'm gonna always give Steve Ballmer the benefit of the doubt. I think that he's a treasure for the NBA, a treasure to the league. I'm certainly gonna give this man the benefit of the doubt because he's done a lot for the league and he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But he deserves the benefit of the doubt. And I think that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. The biggest focal point for all of this should be Kawhi Leonard.

That's what made me pause. Not because of Steve Ballmer, not because of the Clippers, because of him.

Look at the difference between how he talks about each of them.

Kawhi Leonard blackmailed the Los Angeles Clippers. I spoke to Steve Ballmer last night for a second. I mean, he's pretty hurt That's the Kawhi Leonard I know doing nothing and getting paid for it He's one of the owners that is beloved by a lot of people. He is the worst Superstar I have ever seen. I know a lot of people within the Clippers organization. I think their first class I got a lot of love for them. I got a lot of personal relationships. He should give lessons on the perks that he has received. Steve Ballmer is one of my favorite owners in the league. I just think that he's a good man.

And from what I saw, this was how a lot of people at ESPN handled this story. They either seemed completely dismissive of it or they just like stammered through a video like they're being held at gunpoint.

You know, as far as with this, which is being reported. A journalist like me, if I found that out, I might say, hey, you owe me a favor, but I'm not reporting that you got upwards of $28 million for no show. I'm not trying to get on Kawhi's bad side. I'm not trying to get on Steve Ballmer's bad side.

I mean, Steve Ballmer, he's the richest owner in the NBA. A treasure to the league. So he gets the benefit of the doubt. If Adam Silver says he didn't know about this either, then we just have to take his word for it. I mean, the slogan of this company was literally, do well, do good. And you're saying that they did bad? That's impossible.

I know that people don't like when politics get mixed into sports. It's ironically one of the biggest criticisms people have about ESPN. But a story like this is so much bigger than basketball. It's about someone with power and money and influence abusing those things to circumvent the rules because they think they should be allowed to act without consequences. It's not like that's something that's only happening in sports. It is vital that in every area of life, news outlets do not merely become extensions of

the system they're supposed to report on, and that they can continue to criticize and investigate independently. Without that, no one will ever be held accountable for anything. You'll just be waiting on the system to punish itself. That's not gonna happen.

He's a treasure for the NBA.

Now at this point you might be asking yourself, if people don't like ESPN anymore, and a lot of them don't even watch it, how are they still making so much goddamn money? And that's an excellent question. ESPN has always been extraordinarily profitable. Back when like half the country had cable,

they were by far the single most expensive channel. A lot of the revenue was subsidized by people who didn't even watch them if you were paying for cable that money was Going to them either way every once in a while a cable provider would come in and say guys You can't keep raising your prices We're putting our foot down and ESPN would be like, okay

Then we're taking our shit off the air and then people would be pissed off that they couldn't watch SportsCenter bright house to complain, and eventually they'd back down and just give ESPN whatever they wanted. And in turn, cable just kept getting more expensive for everybody. Eventually though, the world started to change. It was becoming almost impossible to justify spending $150 a month to watch television when you can watch Netflix for like 10 or YouTube for free. As a result, over the past 15 years, ESPN has lost 30 million subscribers.

So how do they combat that? Simple. Layoffs and price increases. Worse product, but also more expensive. Today, if you want to circumvent cable altogether and just get these channels straight from the source, you can subscribe directly to ESPN for $30 a month. This business model doesn't seem sustainable,

and yet they sustain it. They still have just enough of a chokehold on just enough customers that for now at least, they can continue to chug along. Maybe they'll never actually die. Maybe their insatiable greed

will never end up eating itself. But if you want a direct example of how differently people view ESPN now than they did 10 and 20 years ago, just look at their extremely tone-deaf plea to YouTube TV subscribers from last October. This was the exact same play they've been running their entire existence.

They wanted more money from a TV provider, the provider stood its ground, and so they tried to pressure them into giving into their demands. But this time, people saw right through it. You guys figure it out. In the past, people would almost always take the side of the channel they enjoyed over the side of like, Spectrum, the cable provider they want to shoot with a gun.

So how telling is it that this is almost completely flipped? Sports fans think more highly of YouTube TV, an $83 a month subscription service owned by Google, then they do the once beloved worldwide leader in sports. And maybe this wouldn't be the case if they hadn't spent the past decade dumbing down their content, firing all their journalists, pushing out hot takes instead of real meaningful analysis, all while squeezing the remaining customers for every

dollar they can. Sure, it may still be working for now, but the clock's ticking, Mr. Mouse. And in about 35 months, President A. Smith will be taking his rightful place in the Oval Office. At which point you'll have no choice but to finally upload every single episode of Cheap Seats to ESPN Plus. something you should have done years ago. Of course, there's no way to know exactly what'll happen with the future of sports media,

but I do wanna leave you guys with this. In the wise words of a YouTube comment I read on a video last week, you can't spell penis without ESPN.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.

Steve Ballmer is coming.