Earlier in the year, the widow of former Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause was booed during a Ring of Honor Induction Ceremony at United Center. Krause helped construct the championship teams of the Chicago Bulls with stars such as Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman and is among the pantheon of the most accomplished executives in the history of the league. Yet he was belittled by the players and is disliked in Chicago for breaking up the team, part of what is covered in the ESPN Films and Netflix miniseries, The Last Dance. Dan Le Batard remembered this occurrence well and asked the members of his show to identify why Krause’s widow was booed that night.
After recalling the incident themselves during Thursday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, Le Batard explained that it occurred because of his philosophy of organizations winning championships. Since Krause broke up the team, the mindset of individuals winning championships and being the impetus for success has been adopted within the professional sports landscape. Le Batard premised that this has been exhibited by LeBron James and Pat Riley with the Miami Heat, along with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots.
The reason he decided to bring this up was because of the fact that Ryan Glasspiegel of the New York Post reported that Around the Horn is “facing an uncertain future,” with several sources believing it could end before the 2025 football season. The 30-minute program hosted by Tony Reali features four sports journalists from around the country who debate different topics in sports and receive points throughout the episode. With the potential end of this era at ESPN, Le Batard surmised that all parts of the network are effectively disposable. Moreover, he believes ESPN ended the sports section of the newspaper because it took the credibility from local outlets and combined them onto its platforms through programming including Around the Horn, Highly Questionable and Pardon the Interruption.
“The New York Times was the only organization that sat out [and said], ‘Hey, the columnist can’t go give their opinions over there. We’re not sharing our credibility with a newsgathering outfit that doesn’t have to be a newsgathering outfit,’” Le Batard explained. “What is getting rewarded in the modern age is Gilbert Arenas, is Paul Pierce, is Pat McAfee, is Shannon Sharpe – is a new era of how some of this stuff is going to end up happening in the future.”
Many of the members of his show grew up watching these kinds of programs, serving as a means of indoctrination as to refining sports fandom and determining what television should look like. The 30-minute block of time preceding the 6 p.m. EST edition of SportsCenter contained these three programs, which could soon be completely altered from its previous configuration. Le Batard, however, believes that Pardon the Interruption will end on the terms of co-hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon because of their relationships at the network.
Le Batard heard Shannon Sharpe explain that he does not speak to any producers when he appears on First Take and converses with four people at ESPN as a whole outside of being on set. Those four people are high-ranking executives at the company, including Bob Iger, chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company; Jimmy Pitaro, chairman of ESPN; Burke Magnus, president of content at ESPN; and Dave Roberts, head of event and studio production at ESPN. He mentioned this while addressing reports of tension on the show, which he classified as unequivocally false, and spoke about the way he carries out his job.
“Around the Horn was a bunch of journalists getting on calls all day so that they could be maximum informed on whatever the subject matter of the day is,” Le Batard said, “but if you’ve got a personality like Shannon Sharpe, you don’t have to do it that way. He’s prepared, he knows what he’s doing.”
Greg Cote, sports columnist for the Miami Herald, articulated that he believes Stephen A. Smith is the last star at the network and someone who, if he left, would signify the end of an era. Show contributors Tony Calatayud and Jeremy Taché both used to intern on the show and discussed the behind-the-scenes work and significance the program carries in the media landscape.
“You had journalists with real credibility who knew how to [storytell] who were then there on TV, and when you’re eliminating this sort of collaborative environment and you’re just propping up individuals who know, ‘It’s only about entertainment,’ that’s it,” Taché said. “It’s no longer about actually fleshing out stories – it’s just about entertaining the masses. It changes all of what this has all been about for the last couple of decades.”
In discussing the future of commentators who break down the game in a nuanced manner, such as Tim Legler, Le Batard acknowledged that there has been a shift on what is taking precedence on the network. Classifying it as a “death of expertise,” he evinced a dichotomy between Legler and Kendrick Perkins, the latter of whom inked a contract extension with ESPN in 2021 two years after retiring from the NBA.
“It’s a dilution of degrees that I care about, but the viewer and the audience, doesn’t care so much,” Le Batard said. “It’s obvious that it’s very clear that ESPN can lose anybody and all it will be is noisy for a little while, but the noise won’t matter because organizations win championships.”
