In the grand canon of American storytelling, no road is more well-worn than the redemption tale. Our culture loves a good story of someone who has fallen reclaiming their previously held glory in some way.
We see it in literature with Charles Dickins’s A Christmas Carol and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. It’s on Broadway in Les Miserables, in film with Star Wars and Groundhog Day, and in the stories of countless characters across hundreds of television shows.
Redemption narratives are easy. They are for storytellers what naming a local restaurant on stage is to Mick Jagger – a short path to a cheap pop.
Over the weekend, ESPN found itself participating in the telling of two redemption stories. In neither case, did the subject seem to earn the soft focus restoration project.
Less than twelve hours after College GameDay devoted nearly seven minutes to letting newly hired Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze avoid answering any hard questions or facing any real criticism for his past behavior, Adam Schefter posted a story about the progress Deshaun Watson has made in an effort to stop masturbating in front of people.
Redemption stories that are real are worth celebrating. The network was one of many media outlets that milked Josh Hamilton’s story for every ounce of content. A former number one overall draft pick that fell into drug and alcohol abuse, Hamilton completed rehab and made his MLB debut at age 26 in Cincinnati. The next year, he was traded to the Texas Rangers and began an unbelievable run that included five All Star game appearances, three Silver Slugger awards, and being named AL and ALCS MVP in 2010.
Hamilton had done the work. He had admitted his past mistakes and sought help for them. On top of that, he was willing to talk about the most embarrassing parts of his life with anyone who would ask in the hopes that it could help someone.
Now, the guy’s story doesn’t have an “and they all lived happily ever after” ending. Search Hamilton’s name online and you will see that he fell back into some serious trouble as recently as two years ago. That is irrelevant to the point I am making though.
Josh Hamilton, unlike Hugh Freeze and Deshaun Watson, didn’t get the Bristol-produced redemption arc until he proved he was worthy of at it. Freeze and Watson each got theirs this weekend simply because it is easy content to produce.
College Gameday originated from outside AT&T Stadium on Saturday ahead of the Big 12 Championship Game. Freeze appeared on set in the show’s second hour. To host Rece Davis’s credit, the first question he asked Auburn’s new hire was about how his past mistakes will “inform and impact the way you plan to run the program at Auburn?”
“If you handle them the right way with owning it and making the necessary changes, and then playing the next play,” Freeze answered. “I think over the last seven years, that’s what it’s lead to for me is just being a guy that really wants to lead a passionate and disciplined life.”
No one even challenged Freeze. No one said, “Hang on. Did you own your biggest mistakes?” No one pointed out that Freeze’s most vocal critics, of which I will admit I am one, don’t care that he got caught using a cell phone owned by the University of Mississippi, where he coached before, to contact escorts. That is objectively hilarious. None of us care Ole Miss was paying players long before NIL was a thing. Most of us believe that was happening everywhere.
We object to the fact that this guy routinely does name searches of himself on Twitter and gets in the DMs of people that talk shit about him. He uses his phony, church-y bullshit to try and bully them into either praising him or backing off. We object to the fact that he did this to a sexual assault victim suing his former employer Liberty University. We object to the fact that when he was under NCAA investigation at Ole Miss, he and his bosses falsely accused predecessor Houston Nutt of setting up the payment system before he got to Oxford. I’ve never once seen a public apology for any of that.
But GameDay didn’t go there. Instead we got platitudes about what it will take to get Auburn back to the top of the SEC and Pat McAfee yucking it up at the idea that Twitter was going to miss his antics following a rumor that Auburn had made giving up a social media presence part of Freeze’s new deal.
It isn’t even really fair to call this a redemption arc. It was a softening. The network used time on one of its signature shows to make someone so objectionable more palatable.
Adam Schefter’s story was far less egregious, but it does bare mentioning because the end result is the same. The headline reads “Deshaun Watson showing ‘progress’ in treatment program, sources say”. That’s an interesting assertion, given that Watson “stands on his innocence” and denies that he has done anything wrong at all.
The story quotes a source connected to Watson’s treatment program as saying that “It’s just sort of ongoing as needed, and it’ll be ongoing until it’s not needed anymore.” While this person does admit that the therapy could be needed “for a while,” he or she does not comment on if Deshaun Watson has changed his opinion of how he ended up in this situation or if he can even acknowledge the pain he is accused of causing these women.
All we get is a seal of approval from what Schefter describes as “NFL and NFLPA experts”. It’s a story that the league certainly wanted told with the QB getting ready to make his debut the next day.
I am not advocating for anyone writing off ESPN as a network. The network regularly does wonderful work. In fact, College GameDay and Adam Schefter both regularly do wonderful work for ESPN.
Hell, if we are being honest, FOX did the same thing this weekend. The only difference was that the entity it was shilling for wasn’t an objectionable human being. Alexi Lalas went on on TV and with a straight face tried to tell us that the United States really was the better team in its 3-1 loss to the Netherlands at the World Cup.
Sports journalism exists on television in what can be a very confusing and treacherous ecosystem. Talent and writers are expected to tell stories, but sometimes they are put in a position where the unspoken goal is less about being transparent and more about giving league partners a helping hand.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
