From conscience to platforming Trump: inside the slow death of ‘woke’ ESPN

“What happened to the Redskins, by the way?” Donald Trump asked in an interview on the Pat McAfee Show that notably did not stick to sports. His call-in appearance on Tuesday’s program to mark Veterans Day was meant to be a major coup for ESPN, the first time Trump had been interviewed on the network as a sitting president. But viewers could have just as easily been mistaken into believing they were watching Fox News.

Trump took his usual shots at Joe Biden, claimed credit for the Department for Veteran Affairs’ high approval ratings and declared victory over the Democrats in a government shut down that dragged on for a depressing 43 days. Rather than push back against the political self-promotion, McAfee cheered Trump on before opening the floor to his lackeys to ask him which NFL coach would make a great president. It was all delivered live from South Carolina’s Parris Island, the US’s oldest Marine depot, which gave McAfee further excuse to goad the commander-in-chief into barking “oorah” – a Marine battle cry that the recruits present were duty bound to respond to in kind. The only thing missing from the jingoistic scene was a monument to ESPN’s fallen integrity.

There was a time when right-wing critics who saw ESPN as liberal leaning had a point. Jemele Hill and Michael Smith, both unapologetically progressive, anchored SportsCenter on weekday evenings. Hill and Smith opening the show with a homage to the Black TV touchstone A Different World was perhaps “woke” ESPN’s apex. But as Trump’s first administration wore on – and the president and his allies fired potshots at the sports world – ESPN slowly adopted a blinkered focus on sports as partisan politics bled over the white lines. Under network president Jimmy Pitaro and Bob Iger, the two-term CEO of ESPN parent company Disney, the self-styled “worldwide leader” in sports broadcasting discouraged employees from tiptoeing into areas where sports and politics intersect – Hill was moved off SportsCenter after attacking Trump on social media and eventually left the company. But after the Fox and Friends-like indulgence of Trump this week, ESPN effectively killed its “woke” era once and for all.

The dramatic tone shift comes amid Trump’s deeper encroachments into the world of sports: this year he has turned up at the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, the US Open men’s final and the Ryder Cup to mixed reactions. Trump has also announced plans for a live UFC event at the White House on his birthday after months of fantasizing about hosting a card on the South Lawn to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And Trump reappeared at the Washington Commanders’ NFL game last Sunday in the wake of a report that he wants the team to name their new stadium after him.

In fact Trump brought this up, unprompted, during a Fox Sports interview at half-time of Sunday’s game. “That’s what I’m involved in,” he said of the stadium naming plan. “We’re getting all the approvals and everything else. You have a wonderful owner, Josh [Harris] and his group. You’re gonna see some very good things.”

You can’t really blame Fox Sports for submitting to Trump given how prominent he was on Fox’s family of networks even before he first became president. It wasn’t a surprise when announcers Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma did not ask Trump about the chorus of boos that greeted him when he appeared on the stadium’s video screens.

But ESPN? There are valid arguments around whether a sports network should have political leanings one way or another. But a serious network should interrogate stories, whether the protagonists are liberal or conservatives. ESPN reporters broke the story about Trump’s potential stadium dedication and couldn’t even get him to address the report on their own network when he appeared with McAfee, who defended his decision to have Trump on the show by saying he had extended an invitation to Barack Obama too (who he no doubt would have voted for three times). So it goes when they have McAfee, a loutish former NFL punter who doesn’t shy from slamming the network that made him one of its most prominent faces, doing a job that once was reserved for the likes of Bob Ley, Keith Olbermann and other pillars who once made ESPN a sports journalism paragon. They certainly would have challenged Trump’s opening reference to the Washington football team’s racist former nickname.

“I’m only joining you because I hear you say very nice things about me from your very large audience,” Trump told McAfee.

“I don’t know how much you know about me,” McAfee said, reaching for empathy. “I feel very similar about how I treat people and operate people, Mr President.”

The past 15 years has seen ESPN abandon fan-focused roots – venerating great achievements, contextualizing standout figures, interrogating sport’s larger role in society – to become just another talking shop. No personality brings on the tinnitus quite like Stephen A Smith, who equates himself with the biggest names in the sports he covers unironically. Smith also serves up reheated takes on respectability politics, most recently tut-tutting congresswoman Jasmine Crockett for demeaning her station by using “street verbiage”, the kind of dog whistling you’d expect from a rightwing shock jock.

Smith and McAfee represent a significant portion of ESPN’s salary cap; to make space for their multimillion-dollar contracts (Smith just signed a $105m deal in March), ESPN did not hesitate to part ways with a number of broadcasters who upheld the company’s once high standards of scrutiny. Not least are critical thinkers Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre, who has gone on to break several significant stories on his own podcast since leaving ESPN. The network isn’t alone in getting less political, athletes themselves – apart from Maga stalwarts like Harrison Butker and Nick Bosa – seem reluctant to speak up about social issues, a stark contrast to Trump’s first term when stars such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry seemed to advocate on a weekly basis.

All of this comes as ESPN finds itself struggling to retain its media primacy at a time when it no longer has a monopoly on sports eyeballs, and only has itself to blame for undermining 46 years of trust and goodwill among viewers predisposed to thinking of ESPN personalities as family. The past few weeks alone have seen the network fumble coverage of federal gambling investigations in the NBA and MLB while flogging its online sports book, and draw out a dispute with YouTubeTV that has kept the channel off the platform in the middle of the NFL and college football seasons.

That last blunder is reportedly costing ESPN $5m a day in addition to the substantial ratings losses that affect its advertising revenue and subscriber engagement. Digital savvy TV viewers who had adapted to juggling various streaming apps to watch their favorite sporting events aren’t much inclined to go along with ESPN this time, much less sign on to its ridiculous petition entreating fans to help “end the blackout” as the FCC’s mafia-coded commissioner Brandon Carr applies pressure on both parties. (“People should have the right to watch the programming they paid for – “including football,” he tweeted in response to YouTube TV offering a $20 credit to inconvenienced subscribers.) Instead of signing up for Disney+ or the ESPN app, many ESPN viewers have gone back to watching pirated broadcasts – the very crime against fair play that streaming was supposed to disincentivize.

Besides, it’s not like ESPN viewers don’t have other options. They can always get highlights on social media, or listen to podcasts from former ESPN standouts like Jones and Torre.

Before The Office was a universal reference point in US culture, ESPN was the one sending up workplace culture with its This Is SportsCenter ad campaign depicting star athletes and scampish team mascots as genuine contributors to a company that dearly loved the panoply of sports it covered. But as long as it serves as a platform for Trump’s vengeful politics, downplays the conflicts that inevitably come about when sports and politics intersect, and betrays the loyal viewers who made it an American institution, ESPN isn’t SportsCenter. It’s state TV.