ESPN will let Chris Russo insult Dana White or Jason Kelce on First Take, but he tested their limits by implying Jessica Mendoza popped a gummy before the show.
During his regular appearance on First Take last week, Russo said he needed a gummy to help him sit through Stephen A. Smith’s “phony” show open where he touted his New York Yankees fandom.
“I had a gummy this morning, I’m flying. Oh, I’m flying, I had a gummy. Right before he did the Yankee nonsense,” Russo said during the show. “I said let me go gobble one. And I went back with [Jessica] Mendoza and I took a gummy.”
Throughout the episode, Russo repeatedly stated Mendoza did not take a gummy, which implied he may have been told by someone at ESPN to make that clarification. This week, Russo appeared on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast and admitted to host Jimmy Traina that no one was popping gummies before First Take, adding that ESPN did in fact take issue with him bringing Mendoza into the joke.
“It’s not accurate and I got in trouble for that,” Russo told Traina and guest host Sal Licata. “Because I put Jessica Mendoza in the mix and I shouldn’t have done that…I indicated that she was in the mix. And that wasn’t the right thing to do. So I’ll take the hit for that.
“Did she get pissed off?” Traina asked.
“She flew to Oregon right after, I have not heard from her,” Russo said. “But ESPN did…what are you gonna do? You can’t please everybody.”
Traina questioned Russo’s willingness to talk about taking gummies before a show airing on a network owned by Disney. But Russo reiterated that his recurring gummy bit wasn’t what ESPN had an issue with.
“Nobody said anything about that,” Russo said of ESPN’s response. “They were upset about the whole thing with Mendoza.”
While Russo didn’t take a gummy before last week’s First Take, the Radio Hall-of-Famer did, however, add that he would be willing to do it if ESPN asked him to.
ESPN gives Russo a lot of leeway. They let him joke about taking gummies. They let him bash the UFC and its fans on their airwaves, despite ESPN having a partnership with Dana White’s MMA organization. ESPN also recently had no issue with Russo complaining about the network’s infatuation with Jason Kelce.
But apparently, ESPN finally drew a line at Russo bringing Mendoza into a joke about gummies. And rightly so. It’s one thing for Russo to make jokes about his newfound affinity for gummies on First Take, but it’s another to bring a colleague into it, especially when they weren’t on set to give it a thumbs up or down.
