Former ESPN star Sean Salisbury says political arguments wore out fans who just wanted sports
Sean Salisbury thinks ESPN lost sight of the person coming home after a long day at work who just wanted to watch some sports.
Key points
- Salisbury was part of that, along with the people who made you want to watch a studio show even when you already knew what happened in the games.
- In July, Acho credited Ryan Clark with building the show into a "juggernaut." He acknowledged that Clark hadn't created it, but dismissed its earlier audience by claiming "nobody was watching NFL Live then." As I pointed out on social media, that's false.
- Wingo wrote, "'Let your apology be as loud as your disrespect.' I think somebody said that once." Salisbury posted, "Should one of us tell him" and tagged NFL Live alums Wingo, Mark Schlereth, Mike Golic, Merril Hoge, and Mark Malone.
Salisbury believes ESPN made that harder by letting political and social arguments take up too much of its programming.
In his view, talking about the sports news increasingly gave way to trying to become the sports news, with arguments designed to get people sharing clips.
Additional details
- Eventually, the viewer who wanted to hear about his team has to sit through a debate about something an analyst said on another show.
- Salisbury acknowledged that politics and sports overlap, and he said those subjects deserve coverage when they're relevant.
- Someone who had spent all day working construction probably wanted to sit down and enjoy a game or some highlights.
- I spoke with the former NFL quarterback and ESPN analyst in October about the network where we both worked.
- "We really weren't concerned with what the color of the skin of the quarterback was because we were just talking football," he said of his years at the network.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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