A generation ago, Norm McDonald toeing the line with an O.J. Simpson joke was as edgy as the ESPYs — or ESPN — ever got. In a world where Shane Gillis can host, that is the punctuation mark at the end of a set that Bomani Jones believes signals the end of any real rules at the network.
Gillis remarked on Caitlin Clark’s supposed desire to fight Black women, strung together a Jan. 6 joke and a Jeffrey Epstein joke through a UFC headline, and capped it all off with a reference to the parties at the center of P. Diddy’s recent sex trafficking trial.
Taken together, Jones believes the jokes show a lawlessness at Disney and the Worldwide Leader that would have been unfathomable during his tenure at the network. And Jones blames one person in particular, a Gillis acquaintance, for ushering in this new set of rules: Pat McAfee.
“I worked with, for, in various capacities at ESPN for about 20 years. I’ve known what you can and can’t get away with, I’ve been there for the ebbs and flows of what you can do, whether it be [on] digital or whatever it is,” Jones said Monday on his podcast, The Right Time. “This is wild. There are officially no rules, as long as you’re talking about stuff that doesn’t really matter.”
As for “stuff that matters,” that is the news that is still reserved for delivery from a SportsCenter anchor or the host of a talk show. Perhaps Jones would sort the sensitive subjects — such as class, culture and race — that he typically touches on into that category as well.
Either way, Jones believes that part of the route that ESPN traveled to get to a place where Gillis can say just about whatever he wants onstage at the network’s marquee awards show is that it determined its audience was not interested in that “stuff.”
“Talking about stuff that matters is different. They’ve concluded that people don’t want that,” Jones said. “And then they can’t control anything that anybody does because you can’t control what McAfee does.”
Did McAfee break that dam? While in some ways that business arrangement by which his show appears on ESPN airwaves makes him unique among ESPN talent, other hosts likely do not care about that distinction when it comes to what he is allowed to say on air versus what they are allowed to say on air.
It is not hard, at all, to trace a line from McAfee’s arrival to Gillis’ run as ESPYs host. And Bomani Jones believes that is true not just in tone or appearance, but the subject matter and crassness that McAfee made OK at the Worldwide Leader.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.