The college football season hasn’t even started, and we already have our first sports media controversy related to Deion Sanders and the Colorado football program.
Dan Le Batard interviewed Athlon Sports reporter Steve Corder on Wednesday after Corder published a bombshell story alleging a culture of bullying and violence in the program perpetrated by Sanders and his sons. Immediately, Colorado fans trashed Corder and accused him of falsifying elements of his report.
To close The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Thursday, Le Batard responded generally to Colorado fans and decried the instinct nowadays to entirely discredit a reporter and accuse them of lying rather than simply correcting them and continuing the conversation.
“I don’t know what’s true here, and I do believe that we grilled the journalist skeptically abut his reporting, and it was only because Athlon Sports is not in the business of breaking news, and this story would have been a seismic one if it had been reported by an outlet people trusted or believed in,” Le Batard explained. “But the number of people who now think that things can be published because of what social media is that are just made up, that things don’t have to be lawyered, that things don’t have to be edited, that there is not a process and rules to the reporting of things … is disappointing to me.”
Le Batard on Wednesday asked Corder how he gathered his information, his response to Sanders’s denial of the allegations, and how he and Athlon would respond to legal action from Sanders or Colorado.
Corder defended the veracity of his reporting while insisting he had the info from multiple sources and would continue pursuing information around the program’s culture. It is unclear whether Corder had oversight from an editor or legal team, given that many sports websites like Athlon allow writers to self-publish their work.
While Le Batard was clear that he couldn’t be sure Corder got the story right, he took issue with Buffs fans who deny journalism just because it doesn’t suit them.
“I just find it really disappointing that college football fans or sports fans think that journalists are routinely out here making things up as if that’s not something that has consequences,” Le Batard said. “Colorado fans may have a persecution complex, but they’ve also felt persecuted, like legitimately persecuted, because of how outsized the attention around their program is.”
Colorado fans may be used to being defensive about their new-fashioned program and its flashy coach, but that doesn’t mean every report is fake. After all, Colorado fans are no more sure than Le Batard that Corder’s story is right or wrong. There is a way to disagree over details or accuracy while operating from the same set of facts and beliefs.
Le Batard believes that type of mutual understanding and dialogue is gone.
“We’ve lost. The game is over,” Le Batard said. “People don’t understand how it is that journalists come by their credibility. It’s because there’s a rule and systems in place to make sure that we don’t get sued. Even when I’m interviewing that guy yesterday, I have to make sure with ‘allegedly’ and ‘reportedly’ that I am not taking the burden of responsibility of me reporting that there are guns and chaos in Deion’s locker room because Deion can also sue me if I lend credence to a report that hasn’t been vetted.”
Curiously, the Le Batard Show‘s X account deleted a clip of its interview with Corder shortly after posting it on Wednesday.
No matter how careful Le Batard was in the interview or how steady Corder came across, the narrative has developed. Sanders denied it outright and appeared to threaten “retaliation,” while Buffaloes fans smear Corder and his reporting entirely.
