It has been nine years since Jay Mariotti was a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and more than half a decade since he appeared regularly on ESPN’s Around the Horn, but he’s still hanging around the fringe of public consciousness, clawing for attention where he can get it.
Late Monday night, Mariotti, who now hosts a podcast called Unmuted, took a shot at SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt, calling his show a “debacle.”
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/866866995878281217
Van Pelt, who’s not afraid of a little Twitter beef, fired back an hour later.
tweet/delete/repeat.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) May 23, 2017
Mariotti responded with a crack about Van Pelt’s baldness, and the feud was on. It was a pretty typical Twitter scuffle, complete with personal attacks, name-calling, sarcasm and an odd break into third-person pronouns.
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/866975495182733315
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/866981262145200129
can't stop tweeting at you? You troll me over and over and over & pretend I'm the one who initiates this? Grow up, Jay.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) May 23, 2017
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867047193064095745
Mariotti, apparently forgetting who initiated the back-and-forth, criticized Van Pelt for interacting with him instead of worrying about the terrorist attack in England.
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867050077189095424
of course it's more important, Jay. As it was last night/this am when you were trolling me for the 100th time. Pick a lane.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) May 23, 2017
And then back to some A-grade pettiness.
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867052909648723968
Your "show" is you talking to yourself because not a soul listens. Find a mirror, look into it… it's over & you know it.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) May 23, 2017
It looked at that point like the exchange might be over, until 10 minutes later when Mariotti came back threatening a lawsuit against Van Pelt and ESPN over a “defamatory tweet.”
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867056484282114048
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867056961828732928
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867060229212479488
https://twitter.com/MariottiSports/status/867066352925724672
We can’t be 100 percent sure what so-called defamation Mariotti is referring to, but it’s probably the tweet from last September, in which Van Pelt alludes to Mariotti’s alleged history of domestic violence. Mariotti pleaded no contest in 2011 to charges of stalking and assault after an alleged incident with his ex-girlfriend.
Yo, Bloggers. Apparently I'm embarrassing myself? So said a tiny little man who fancies himself relevant and hits women. We work, he rots.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) September 6, 2016
We at Awful Announcing are not lawyers (in case you didn’t realize), but we know enough to question whether Mariotti, a public figure, could prove actual malice on Van Pelt’s part and enough to know that even if he did force ESPN into a settlement, he certainly would not “own” the network.
In other words, Mariotti is probably just blowing smoke. Even after all these years, he’s still pretty good at that.
