Drew Kerekes

Back in April, I wrote a column discussing a round of layoffs by ESPN, and wondered if political commentary by the on-air personalities was a bad idea considering the loss in viewership the Worldwide Leader in Sports has been experiencing for several years now.

As is the case when I wrote that piece, I still don’t follow the on-air personalities closely enough to know how much, if at all, their politics are injected into their discussions or editorial decisions. I remember the day Michael Sam was drafted, obviously, and the kiss over which everyone got way too bent out of shape, as well as the decision to give Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage in 2015. (I personally thought it should have gone to Lauren Hill, a Mount St. Joseph’s player with terminal cancer that year who fought through the disease to score in a college game.) When those happened, I wondered then if the network were trying way to hard to be “cool” — I.E. progressive.

I don’t sit in the room when the network makes editorial decisions, so I cannot comment as to the process and whether any political leanings are behind those decisions. When I got news that ESPN broadcaster Robert Lee was removed from the Virginia vs. William and Mary ESPN3 college football broadcast, though, I immediately thought this was a case of not wanting to offend political sensibilities that had gone too far.

The University of Virginia is located in Charlottesville, Va., home to the highly controversial protests of several weeks ago that left one person dead. The protests began as a rally against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the city’s Emancipation Park. 

Why did ESPN remove Robert Lee from the broadcast? A statement by the network says it was due to them not wanting Lee to receive unwanted attention because of the coincidence of his sharing the same name as the Confederate general. They said in the statement they didn’t want him to be “subjected to memes and jokes and who knows what else.” So instead of not wanting to offend political sensibilities, ESPN claims the company and Robert Lee himself came to a mutual agreement to reassign him in order to protect their employee.

Part of me wants to commend a company for doing right by its employee. That part of me is drowned out by the nonsense of it all. Moving Robert Lee to another broadcast is absurd. This is a case of ESPN making a decision surrounding a controversial issue and letting the spotlight of the issue overshadow common sense.

At most, maybe someone makes a comment on Twitter during the the Virginia-William and Mary game at the irony of Robert Lee sharing the name of the Confederate general. Maybe someone makes a meme. Here’s the thing: Robert Lee shares no resemblance to the Confederate general, and you’re assuming enough people will be paying attention to the broadcast of that game at all for it to “blow up” on social media.

Let’s be honest — and I say this with all due respect to Virginia and William and Mary — not many people are going to be paying attention to that game. By moving Lee off the broadcast, ESPN likely drew much more attention to this than it otherwise would have received. The company grossly overreacted, as it has been prone to do in these types of instances. As a friend of mine put it to me the other day on Twitter, “Some of their decisions make me think their boardroom is like four monkeys, two manatees and Chris Berman screaming, ‘Back, back, back!’”

They say any publicity is good publicity. Judging by the mocking directed at ESPN over this decision, I’m not so sure that’s true. I feel bad for Lee, who is likely much more famous than he would have liked. In the future, I can only hope ESPN shows far more self-awareness than it did over Lee’s college football assignment. 

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.