Last week, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz broke news as it hosted the first interview with Dan Hurley since the UConn head coach turned down the Los Angeles Lakers.
But while Le Batard got the first interview with Hurley, he says he didn’t realize that it would be the first of many that the two-time national champion head coach would do that day in what was a curious media tour for a coach who had only opted to remain at his current job.
Discussing the matter on Monday’s episode of his show, Le Batard said that he was told at the time that Hurley would only be doing interviews with himself and Colin Cowherd. Yet despite feeling “used” by the interview, the Meadowlark Media co-founder said that he’d do it again — so long as he still got the first crack.
“What people were asking me is, ‘Do you realize you were used?’ Because I had not realized we were among those used,” Le Batard said, noting the already curious nature of Hurley’s reported interest in the Lakers job involving ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. “For all of the media touring that Dan Hurley did, where did he not appear? Not on ESPN.
“My answer to the question to everybody, even though I didn’t realize that it could be a situation where the coach is manipulating the media in order to both curry public favor and control the narrative is, no, if we were first, I still would have taken him. Because we were first. We were gonna get him first. But I had not considered before that the possibility that we were being used.”
Jon “Stugotz” Weiner and producer/co-host Mike Ryan Ruiz pushed back that the show is “used” by every guest and that they are also using their guests for content. Ultimately, Hurley wouldn’t have gone on the Le Batard Show if he didn’t have something to gain from it, while the show wouldn’t have had him on as a guest if it didn’t think it would make for interesting content that would garner attention.
Reading between the lines, Le Batard seems to be hinting that Hurley’s media tour was a thinly veiled attempt to throw people off the scent that his alleged interest in the Lakers was a leverage ploy to improve his negotiations with UConn. For what it’s worth, Hurley strongly denied that allegation, calling it “one of the dumbest takes.”
And when ESPN ran that headline, it did so crediting The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.