I wonder if ESPN president John Skipper ever anticipated that giving Keith Olbermann a show would put him in such uncomfortable spots.
I have to figure Bud Selig will be in his ear after Olbermann’s opening commentary last night. He absolutely torched baseball for not allowing the Washington Nationals to wear Navy hats during its doubleheader Tuesday to honor the victims of Monday’s tragedy; they only wore them pregame. He portrayed MLB as a greedy outfit that emphasizes only one thing: Making money.
It was a brutal takedown. Selig and MLB had to feel it was grossly unfair. You judge for yourself.
Once again, Olbermann’s commentary underscored the uneven ground that ESPN walks on these days. ESPN is in the midst of an eight-year, $5.6 billion contract with MLB. They are business partners with Selig’s gang.
While MLB isn’t about to walk away from that deal, it can make life a bit more difficult for ESPN in the wake of Olbermann’s commentary. Cooperation is a two-way street, and those little things have a tendency to add up.
As ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte wrote in a piece last week, “I have retired the routine use of the phrase “conflict of interest” when it comes to ESPN – it’s simply inadequate to the nuances of the, um, conflicts of interest.”
Indeed, the lines are blurred at ESPN between doing journalism and doing business.
I anticipate/hope Skipper will tell Selig that Olbermann is free to go wherever he wants to go on his show. Otherwise, what’s the sense in having an Olbermann?
I also think Skipper will tune in again tonight to see what major sports commissioner will be calling him tomorrow.
******
For various reasons, Tuesday was the first night in a while that I actually was home. At 10 p.m. (Central), I had a momentary brain cramp while searching for something to watch. And then I thought, oh yes, Olbermann on ESPN2.
Simply put: It is unlike anything you’ll watch on sports today. If you aren’t watching, you are missing out.
He’s making too much out of this.
1. MLB gives teams lots of opportunities to express grief and community spirit on jerseys during games, and on hats during unofficial time on the field or in locker rooms.
2. It’s beside the point if MLB also makes these items available for sale; it’s a business, and for every jersey sold there’s a satisfied customer who is glad to be able to further express his feelings.
3. Like any business on earth, MLB has to cautiously protect its brands and approve any modification of them. This is Business School 101. The alternative is chaos.
4. There’s philosophical validity in the “hats are sacrosanct” argument. It says that one part of the team’s identity is never up for modification.
5. It’s not accurate to say MLB doesn’t want TV cameras on the “N” hats. There are a billion pictures of those hats on the internet today. Nothing is embargoed anymore — it’s not 1920 anymore.
6. It’s also not accurate to say money is the issue. If MLB wanted to, it could encourage the Nationals to wear “N” hats this week and sell a billion of them, splitting the profits with the Navy. But this could easily get out of hand (see 3 and 4 above).
Olbermann is trying to force-fit this situation into a pre-existing belief that MLB is a soul-less profit-machine. Of course, MLB can be hypocritical and cynical. But not this time.
With all dues respect to the victims of the tragedy in Washington, I think this piece went on way too long.
I do not understand, nor do I really care about, the business structure of MLB and the individual teams, but when it comes to doing the right thing, I think they should just do the right thing and not wring hands over whether it sets a precedent or not.
Hero Caps for 9/11? This was perhaps the biggest catastrophe on U.S. soil. If the ballplayers, who are often called out for not being socially conscious, want to do something as simple as wearing a hat or a patch, where’s the harm? If they want to honor the memories of college students killed, or firefighters who lost their lives, or the latest victims, can we put the dollars and cents aside for a few days? Then it would make bloviating commentary by Olbermann and his cohorts unnecessary.
Does anyone know if the money garnered from the sale of those commemorative jerseys went into the teams’ coffers or were they donated to charity?
You media folks just love this “a-hole”. A lot of us folks in America abhor just the sight of him & won’t watch anything he appears on.