A Sports Legend Died and the 'Worldwide Leader in Sports' Showed Knife Throwing, Dog Relays

Screenshots

by Julian Spivey
There was no sports story bigger on Sunday (July 31) than the death of basketball legend Bill Russell at age 88. Yet ESPN, known universally as “the worldwide leader in sports,” was nowhere to be found with coverage in the minutes, or even hours following the announcement of Russell’s death.

Sure, you could find the news of Russell’s death on the scrolling chyron at the bottom of the page, but that’s simply not good enough for the “worldwide leader of sports” and it’s not good enough for an athlete of the stature of Russell – a man who wasn’t just one of the 10 greatest basketball players of all-time, but a leader in civil rights in the sports world and beyond.

In some ways it’s a sign of the downfall of ESPN as a leader in sports journalism. The network has broken into coverage in the past for similar sports greats – I remember the network doing so in 2016 for the death of boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

When the news of Russell’s death came out between noon and 1 p.m. (CST) I immediately turned on my TV and flipped to ESPN. I found the end of the UEFA Women’s EURO final soccer match between England and Germany. This was arguably the biggest sporting event in the world on Sunday and I would never expect the network to preempt this event for coverage of an icon’s death. So, I flipped over to ESPN2 and was immediately dismayed to see a knife throwing championship that I’m fairly certain was tape delayed. There is no way this non-live event should’ve taken precedence over live coverage of the death of one of the most important figures in the history of any sport, especially knowing that ESPN must’ve had a pre-packaged video tribute to Russell, as most journalist entities will prepare such things in the event of death for famous folks, especially those up in age.

I thought, ‘OK, ESPN2 doesn’t have coverage, surely ESPNews will.’ Nope. ESPNnews was showing coverage of the AKC Flyball dog relay event, which I also believe to have been tape delayed.

So, the biggest news story of the day in sports couldn’t be bothered to be covered immediately by the “worldwide leader in sports” because – let me check my notes once more – there was knife throwing and dog relay races on its networks.

And I gave ESPN opportunities. I kept turning back to ESPN2 and ESPNews time and time again in the next hour to see if they had preempted coverage for news of Russell’s death. They never did.
The UEFA women’s soccer final was nearing it’s end so I felt like the mother channel would do it’s job following the game and give us something on Russell’s death. Following the game ESPN went immediately into its regularly-scheduled programming of a re-run marathon of its multi-part Derek Jeter documentary “The Captain.”

ESPN did properly pay tribute to Russell during its evening editions of “SportsCenter,” with multiple segments dedicated to the 11-time NBA champion and five-time NBA MVP, but those were hours later.

Yes, there was plenty of coverage online and on social media, but there’s just something about the way the network has paid tribute to past legends upon the announcement of their deaths that this just seemed a dereliction of duty on the network’s part.

When I remarked about the knife throwing and canine relays on my social media instead of the actual news of the day a friend jokingly remarked, “what’s on the Ocho?,” a reference to the joke in the 2004 Vince Vaughan-Ben Stiller comedy “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” If knife throwing and dog relays are on ESPN2 and effectively ESPN3 could you imagine what utter shite would be on an actual Ocho?  

---