This time last year, ESPN was ripped to shreds for posting a Tee Higgins graphic that identified his mother as a former drug addict.
This was following his selection by the Cincinnati Bengals, and the network ended up apologizing and explaining that the image should “not have aired.”
We all knew what they were trying to do. They were trying to illustrate the adversity these guys have had to overcome in order to see their NFL dreams fulfilled. There’s something “humanizing” about doing a feature story on Johnny Doe out of Texas Southern, who lost his father at a young age but went on to become a first team all-conference player.
ESPN’s Vice President of Production Seth Markman even explained that they wanted their coverage to personalize players and “acknowledge the obstacles they’ve had to overcome on their journey to the NFL.”
That’s all good and well, but what happened was that it became way too much. It was too frequent. We had something like 3-4 picks in a row where ESPN highlighted some kind of family tragedy, like a freak hovercraft accident or a glue-sniffing addiction. They were looking for any terrible misfortune they could find.
It resulted in the wettest of blankets placed over the entirety of the draft. It was depressing and somber and made people who were stuck at home in the early days of the pandemic feel even more shitty than they already did. It took away from what should have been the best moment of these guys’ lives, with the focus instead directed to one of the worst moments. And it also distracted from the miracle that ESPN’s technical staffers pulled off, broadcasting a remote draft with tons of moving parts before we had all become familiar with Zoom and other digital communication platforms.
The thing about taking this editorial path is that you’re always walking a line between human interest and sensationalizing tragedy. It’s very hard to stay on the tight rope.
One of the things that bugs me is that I feel like if you’re going to tell a story about Tee Higgins’ mother and her drug addiction, and his ultimate athletic triumph, then isn’t it cheap to just stick it in as a draft night factoid? To me, that’s a story worthy of a deep dive, a long feature that would appear as a television package on College Gameday or in some kind of 30 for 30-ish production. You kind of devalue the tragedy and resulting success when you mention it casually as a sidebar topic or a bullet point in a graphic.
More than anything, viewers hated it. They didn’t like the negativity. They didn’t think it was fair to the players. It seemed like exploitation, and carried some racial undertones considering the fact that the majority of players being drafted were young black men.
Will ESPN learn that the customer is always right? Or is it going to be more of the same?