Earlier in the week, ESPN, Religion of Sports and Mr. SAS Productions released a new docuseries titled Up for Debate, which chronicles the history of sports debate programming. The three-part venture outlines innovation and adoption of the format in multiple capacities spanning several decades and includes sit-down interviews with various sports media personalities, including Stephen A. Smith. Dan Le Batard, a former ESPN television and radio host who left the network in December 2020 and subsequently launched Meadowlark Media with former ESPN president John Skipper, shares a dissenting viewpoint on what the format has done for sports television and sat for an interview as well.
During a previous episode of South Beach Sessions, Le Batard expressed to Smith that he had ruined sports television because of the imitators that the content has precipitated. Although Le Batard did not watch the documentary at the time of recording Thursday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, he perceived that he may have been left out. Le Batard observed that Smith was discussing the project on First Take and was ultimately skeptical as to whether or not he had been included.
“I’m not totally sure,” Le Batard said. “I sat down with their team for about 90 minutes, and I don’t know if I was cut out of it. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet. I remember that the interview wasn’t great between me and them where I wasn’t giving them exactly what they wanted. I did not know exactly what they wanted, but I’m an opposing viewpoint on what debate television has done in general, corrosively, to how it is the athlete is covered and how cruel some of the coverage is.”
Le Batard and Smith have discussed their contrasting perspectives on debate television in previous times, and the beginning of the second episode of the docuseries outlines their thoughts on the matter. Not having seen the presentation at the time though, he was unsure if his interview was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. In the description of the documentary as read in studio, Le Batard’s name was not included on the list of people interviewed, rather being grouped into an ‘Others’ category.
“That part is interesting if I can get the insult of just being ‘Others,’” Le Batard said, “but I want to be able to kick and scream about the fact that my viewpoint was simply cut out of a documentary that I spent 90 minutes interviewing on, but I haven’t seen it and don’t know if I can make the accusation.”
Amin Elhassan was in studio co-hosting the program on Thursday and eventually reacted to Jeremy Taché reading the list of names, ostensibly to determine whether their level of celebrity and/or eminence was larger than that of Le Batard. Before that though, he reminisced on the relationship he deciphers between Le Batard and ESPN, and recognized the outcome of the interview may have been indicative of tension.
“I’ll be honest with you Dan,” Elhassan said. “If I were ESPN and I hated you as much as they hate you, I would make you sit down for 90 minutes and then cut you out.”
“It is perfect torture, right?,” Taché replied. “Sit down for 90 minutes, explain this to us.”
“As soon as you walk out, delete that sh**,” added JuJu Gotti.
