ESPN has announced that contributor Rob Parker “has been suspended until further notice. We are conducting a full review. The comments were inappropriate and we are evaluating our next steps.”
In case you missed it, Parker said on air Thursday morning, during a discussion of Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III, “Is [Griffin] a brother, or is he a cornball brother? He added, “We all know he has a white fiancé. There was all this talk about he’s a Republican, which, there’s no information [about that] at all. I’m just trying to dig deeper as to why he has an issue.”
This stems in part from ESPN’s desire to have
Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption,. A large chunk of ESPN’s programming is a combination of columnists, anchors, and former players in suits sitting around a table and arguing. That’s fine; the audience watches it, and it echoes the arguments ; I’ve been listening to sports radio since the early days of “Mike and the Mad Dog” on WFAN up in New York.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay wrote:
Tebow was a contentious, unsettled question. When an athlete is undeniably good, it doesn’t take long for the conversation to fade into a dull haze of superlatives. (Listening to announcers discuss Tom Brady is like listening to newlyweds talk about a Hawaiian honeymoon). Tebow, on the other hand, was far from a sure thing—even his own team questioned his viability as a pro QB. ESPN was happy to stir this debate. The network already had done the same with other prolonged over-shares like Brett Favre’s post-Packers un-retirement and LeBron James’s escape to Miami. Tebow fit the blueprint. He wasn’t a player. He was an argument.
So far, Robert Griffin III is playing exceptionally well for a rookie at the game’s most challenging position.