Banned hockey analyst made sexual comments about his co-workers
Jeremy Roenick was suspended indefinitely Monday by NBC Sports for making inappropriate comments on a Barstool Sports podcast. The former NHL star joked about several on-air colleagues and suggested he’d like to have sexual encounters with at least one of them.
“Jeremy Roenick has been suspended indefinitely without pay for making inappropriate comments about his coworkers,” NBC
Sports said in a statement to Sports Business Journal and others. “We will have no further comment at this time.”
Roenick, 49, was a guest last week on the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast, and early in his appearance he mentioned Kathryn Tappen of NBC Sports and Patrick Sharp, a former NHL player who also is an NBC Sports colleague. The comments about Tappen came as Roenick described his vacation last summer in Portugal with his wife, Tracy, and Tappen.
“Bro, when you walk into every place and you have two blond bombshells on each side — I’m telling you, your chest pops out a lot more,” he said. “They’ve got their bikinis on, they look (expletive) smokin’.”
Roenick then used slang terms for parts of the female anatomy, saying it was “great” that those parts were “everywhere” during the trip.
He added, “If you’re gonna go with two blondes, go someplace in the summer where the pool is out.”
While at a hotel in the Algarve, Roenick claimed, an older woman who was “staring at us the whole time” came over to him at the pool and asked, “Are they both with you?”
“I play it off like we’re going to bed together every night, the three of us,” Roenick told the podcast hosts. “If it really came to fruition, that would really be good, but it’s never going to happen.”
Tappen, in a statement, called those comments unacceptable.
“While Jeremy and I continue to be good friends, what he said was unacceptable, especially among workplace colleagues,” she said Tuesday. “I do not condone his comments.”
In the podcast, Roenick described Tappen as one of “the most professional sports personalities” he knew and “as prepared as anyone,” but he also said that “she wants people to respect her for her knowledge of sports, not just because she’s a pretty face.”
“I’m lucky that I’m next to her and she’s a good friend of mine,” he added of Tappen, “because there’s nobody that wants it more, and that will kick someone’s (expletive) if they disrespect her.”
In the same podcast, talk turned to Sharp, whom Roenick described as “so beautiful,” and whether Roenick would sleep with him. “I’d have to think about it if he asked me . ... I wouldn’t say no right away,” he said.
A nine-time all-star, Roenick spent 20 years in the NHL, including eight seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks and six with the Phoenix Coyotes, as well as shorter stints with the Flyers, San Jose Sharks and Los Angeles Kings.