My take on the ESPN controversy; Weekend football picks

The ESPN situation

I try to stay away from too controversial of topics in this column, but I simply cannot be silent on this one.

Many who follow the world of sports and sports media are aware of what happened this past week with ESPN and ESPN personality and host Jemele Hill. The co-host of the daily Sportscenter at 6 p.m. or “SC6” as it is called now made some pretty bold statements this week about President Donald Trump, including accusations of him being a white supremacist among many other things.

In the following days, ESPN issued an apology and Hill issued a half- hearted apology herself. No suspension was levied for Hill, however, by her employer. At the same time, long-time ESPN host Linda Cohn has recently been suspended by the network for being quoted in an interview as saying that the network has clearly gone out of its way in recent years to move more left on the political spectrum. She also said that ESPN has gotten too political altogether, rather than focusing on sports.

Others at ESPN have been either fired, suspended or reassigned for making politically-driven comments that lean toward the conservative side, including Curt Schilling, Sage Steele, Mike Ditka and more over the past few years. The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

Before I lose many of you reading this, here is all I’m saying. Jemele Hill shouldn’t have been fired or suspended for comments she made. I don’t agree with them because they are based on a lot of speculation and not facts, but at the same time, she said what she believes and that is allowed in this country. At the same time though, you can’t not discipline Hill (that’s a double negative on purpose by the way) and discipline Linda Cohn, Steele, Ditka, etc. Free speech is a two-way street, and you can’t treat one commentary different than another.

Here’s something else I believe. I believe everyone who disagreed with Hill’s statements has the right and ability to not tune in to watch her on ESPN. At the end of the day, it is a business, and the lower ratings and viewership the show receives means less ad revenue which means less money in the pockets of ESPN executives. And money makes the world go round, especially at a company owned by Disney.

Furthermore, in my opinion ESPN will continue to lose support from die-hard sports fans when they continue to bring political and social commentary into sports coverage. I’m speaking for myself obviously, but to me sports is an escape from the divided, heated political realm. I tune into sports to forget that half of the country disagrees with the other half, and I would venture a guess that the majority of sports fans would agree with that. I do not want to watch Sportscenter to hear why someone agrees or disagrees with a liberal or conservative viewpoint.

I know many will agree with this portion of my column, and many will disagree. Hopefully we can agree though that sports are a great thing, and let’s let sports stand on their own. I know that politics and government are important parts of this country, and we should care more about politics than we do. It shouldn’t be something we worry about once every four years. But at the same time, we shouldn’t let it dictate our everyday lives as people and businesses.

Weekend football picks

Well the difficult part is out of the way so let us discuss something we all can agree on…football. Another week of college and NFL is here, and there are many big games to choose from, including one big SEC matchup in the state of Florida despite others being canceled due to the after-effects of Hurricane Irma.

Here are my picks for the big college games and the long-awaited home-opener for the Falcons at the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium:

Tennessee at Florida

Many questioned if this game would be played on Saturday following Hurricane Irma’s destruction of many parts of the state of Florida, but the game will go on as scheduled. The new SEC motto is certainly true in this case… “It just means more.”

Florida’s offense looked pretty lousy in their opening-week loss to Michigan, but after two weeks to get things straightened out they have to be more well-prepared for the Vols. Ten- nessee was lucky to get out of Week 1 with a win against Georgia Tech and looked solid against a lesser opponent last week in a blowout of Indiana State.

Neither team is going to light up the scoreboard with huge offensive numbers, and both still have yet to completely settle on a quarterback. I will lean toward the team with the better defense, and that is Florida in this case. Plus, the Gators do have one thing going for them to score points, and that is their kicker Eddy Pineiro, who has one of the strongest legs in the country.