There have been many cases where national sports networks have been quite slow to cover important breaking news. That wasn’t the case with Sunday’s shocking news of Miami Dolphins’ star receiver Tyreek Hill being detained and handcuffed by police for an alleged driving violation outside their stadium, though.
That news started to spread with photos and videos from fans who saw it. It then gained credence for some local reporters, and then quite quickly made it way to national reporters like ESPN’s Adam Schefter and NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, amongst others. Here’s how they initially covered it on Twitter/X, relaying info from Hill’s agent Drew Rosenhaus:
Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill was detained by police today entering the stadium for a driving violation, per his agent Drew Rosenhaus. But Rosenhaus said Hill will play today.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 8, 2024
#Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill was detailed by police today for what agent Drew Rosenhaus says is a traffic violation. He plans to play today.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) September 8, 2024
And here’s how they covered it on their respective networks’ pregame shows:
Ian Rapoport — and a caught-off-guard Rich Eisen — on NFL Network with a breaking news report about Tyreek Hill being detained by police for a traffic violation.
“From my understanding… Tyreek Hill was slammed to the ground, handcuffed for five minutes…” pic.twitter.com/HZhNilaJD9
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 8, 2024
Here was breaking news on ESPN of the Tyreek Hill situation, featuring Mike Greenberg handing off to Adam Schefter, as well as video of the scene. pic.twitter.com/zUOAJhgVAP
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 8, 2024
Also on ESPN, reporter Jeff Darlington was on the scene in Miami (the second time in four months he’s been on the scene of an athlete being detained by police over an alleged traffic violation), and got an on-camera interview with Rosenhaus:
Live on Sunday NFL Countdown: @JeffDarlington interviewed @DrewJRosenhaus, Tyreek Hill’s agent, regarding the incident involving the @MiamiDolphins WR prior to today’s game pic.twitter.com/Ng3lTPtByx
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 8, 2024
This all played out very quickly. Social media posts on the Hill situation from fans seem to have started appearing shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern, followed by local reporter Will Manso relaying his own observations of the scene at 10:46. Schefter and Rapoport then tweeted on it at 10:50 and 10:52 respectively, and their first on-air hits on it came barely after that, at 10:53 and 10:58 respectively. So that looks to be than an hour from the first discussion of this to on-air talk on it, and that’s impressive considering both that this is a serious issue that needs to be covered carefully and that these and other networks have often taken much longer to get to breaking news on-air in the past.
Of course, part of the issue with covering breaking news on-air is about who’s there to do it and what the scheduled programming is. In this case, both NFL Network and ESPN already had their NFL-specific pregame shows under way, and those shows are expected to feature news updates (albeit not usually of this type). And Rapoport, Schefter, Darlington and other NFL reporters were already set for either studio or remote hits during this time (just not necessarily on this).
All that makes for a much easier pivot than some things we’ve seen in the past. Still, handling breaking news (and sensitive news) like this this fast isn’t easy. And both ESPN and NFLN deserve praise for how they did it.
