ESPN Arkansas’ afternoon host, Derek Ruscin, has returned to air after a leave of absence that was preceded by calling a player a local baseball player a “loser,” a “disgrace,” and “stupid ass.”
Ruscin began a segment apologizing by acknowledging the mistakes he made.
“Well, I really know how to screw up, don’t I? Like historic, all-time screwups, right? That was a bad one.”
The “bad one” Ruscin referred to was a rant aimed at Arkansas baseball player Michael Turner.
“I want to tell Michael Turner: I’m sorry for the words I used about him on this program ten days ago. I’m sorry. I had an opinion and it went way over the line. I was wrong. I am sorry about that.”
Ruscin wasn’t done accepting the blame. “I take full responsibility for all of this. This is all my fault. That’s been one of the difficult things about this is that there is no one else to pass the buck off here to. This is all my fault.”
The host then added his comments weren’t just too much, but they were factually incorrect.
“What I said was really bad, but it was also one of the worst sports takes that you will ever hear. Lost in all of that bluster, name calling – which was wrong – buried in there was a terrible sports take. None of the things I said about Michael Turner are true. You can’t get where he gets and be the things I said. Doesn’t happen. They’re not just giving out starting jobs at a SEC school in baseball, especially at this one, one of the top programs in the league. I was wrong twice on this situation.”
“I have been punished for this,” Ruscin would explain. “I was publicly reprimanded by this company. My reputation online is somewhere between the toilet and that place under the portable toilet. This has hurt. A lot. I have been doing this 14 years. Thousands of hours of shows. I’ve never done anything like that before and I’m never going to do anything like that again. All I can do is take responsibility, learn from this and move forward. That’s what I’m going to do.”
