This is week old news, but Jay Mariotti was recently arrested on a felony domestic abuse charge. Jay is one of the talking heads who yells nonsensically about sports issues on ESPN’s Around the Horn. Thus far, the Worldwide Leader has been largely able to avoid the controversy because for the last week, ESPN, in place of actual sports programming, has broadcasted every baseball game played by 12-year-olds in America instead. Around the Horn is scheduled to return Monday, but without Mariotti. If you are like me, two questions immediately arose after his arrest: 1) who is Woody Paige going to yell at about Terrell Owens? and, 2) Jay Mariotti has a girlfriend?!
Mariotti’s spiel has always been to lambast athletes and sports figures for their off-the-field issues. He’s always tried to present himself as a moral authority. This is hard to comprehend when you look at Mariotti’s past and realize everyone hates this guy. Seriously, I tried to find one of his colleagues speaking well of him; it is next to impossible. I mean, Roger Ebert wrote an open letter to Jay titled, “Jay the Rat,” on Mariotti’s very ugly departure from the Chicago Sun-Times. In fact, Mariotti wrote an article just one week (!) before this incident, titled, “For Acts of Violence, MLB Much Too Soft.” The googles and the twitters have been blowing up with reaction to Mariotti’s staggering hypocrisy. My favorite insult has to be Jerry Reinsdorf saying that “Jay Mariotti was and is a pissant.” To me, it’s a wonder that a guy so despised by both his colleagues and ESPN viewers was still gainfully employed in the first place. Right now, this appears to have the distinction of being one of the most celebrated cases of felony domestic abuse ever.
No doubt Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson has had a good week as a result of all this. First, his face has been etched onto Awful Announcing Mountain and second, one of his enemies, Marrioti, has had a cataclysmic fall from grace. This is a fantastically hilarous read on the timeline of their fued. My favorite insult is Mariotti saying, “I can pinch his beak off anytime I want to” in reference to Harrelson’s schnoz. In fairness to Mariotti, the mountain doesn’t lie.
Comments are closed.