ESPN Now Partially Owned By Biggest League It Reports On

ESPN’s position on the NFL is not unlike that of every other network with a significant sports presence, which is to say it scrubs where Roger Goodell says there’s a stain. The football thing is the only provably and relentlessly bankable thing in the entire play-for-play diaspora, so ESPN is handing a 10 percent equity stake over to the league in exchange for the NFL Network, the RedZone channel, and other NFL media assets.

The long-awaited deal that subsumed ESPN’s journalistic integrity, re: the NFL, is done. Alarm bells about diminished independence and the damage to journalistic integrity are ringing quite loudly, but in a diminishing number of circles. And besides, the days when anyone in ESPN’s executive class are expected to care about any of that are long gone. ESPN is the cymbal-playing windup toy in the NFL’s media orchestra, and that’s just how ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro likes it. This, to appropriate a quote from prototypical owner-without-a-team Hyman Roth, is the business they’ve chosen, and being bed-partners is simply the logical extension of the way it works now.

ESPN still employs first-rate and incorruptible NFL reporters like Kalyn Kahler, Don Van Natta, and Seth Wickersham, and through no fault of their own save proximity, it’s their work that will now fetch scrutiny thanks to the business deal made above them. Remember how the owners’ collusion against guaranteed contracts turned into a well-reported groin-kick aimed at the ethically bankrupt NFLPA? Nothing gobs on a good story quite like a conflict of interest, whether active or perceived.

ESPN is at its essence a business, and the best business in sports is tarting up to the National Football League. The people who run the business at ESPN know this and did the only thing business people know: cozy up to the money. They don’t think they owe their own reporters anything, because those reporters work for them, not the other way around. Plus, they all get the deal—E is the first letter in the acronym and it stands for Entertainment. The NFL is molto bankable, and that is how our culture has always defined entertainment. They have a new partner, the new partner brought stuff to put on TV and money in bags, and the new partner shall be served. The only difference between this and the network’s new WWE deal is that they don’t have anyone covering the WWE from the journalism side.

ESPN bought the rights to Chuck Bednarik laying on Frank Gifford, and Franco Harris catching a deflected pass, and everything Tom Brady ever did that didn’t have to do with him masquerading as a soccer expert. In exchange, the NFL has an office in the building and unlimited access to the decision-makers. And no, the NFL’s paid voiceboxes will not be given the benefit of the doubt when they bleat unconvincingly about leaving the content decisions to the content makers. The league made this deal to have one louder bullhorn in a one-instrument orchestra because, well, synergy. They did what they are expected to do: buy everything they can’t crush and crush everything they can’t buy.

All this means in the longer term is that all the NFL information ESPN creates from its far-flung correspondents and closely held punditroids comes with a warning that is now explicit where it was once merely implied. If this bothers you, you will either have to ignore their messaging or make some of your own. But you cannot deny the inevitability of this development. The NFL bought NFL content by offering NFL content, and their decision to buy into ESPN rather than Fox, Paramount, or HGTV doesn’t mean they can’t do business with them, too. This is an open marriage, at least one-way.

But weep not. If you think ESPN gave up its freedom to do top-level critical reporting on the NFL, you are wrong. What happened here was that the NFL bought the right to make ESPN too afraid to assign, air, or publish it, and that’s not on the reporters but on the management. The suits knew the job was degrading when they took it, and concluded that degradation is in the eye of the beholder. You can’t bid for the rights to something else without giving up some of your own, and if you’re good with that, well, you get to keep your job another 18 months. That’s the deal, too.