One full day later, I still can’t believe that ESPN put Shannon Sharpe on its airwaves on Tuesday morning.
Please make no mistake, I’m not calling for Sharpe to be fired— at least not yet. I’m not even calling for him to be “canceled,” so much as that is still a thing in 2025.
I also fully understand Sharpe’s right to due process in the civil court and his right to defend himself as he maintains his innocence. But there’s nothing about due process that says that the Worldwide Leader in Sports has to keep you on its most prominent studio program as you’re facing a lawsuit accusing you of assault, sexual assault, battery, and sexual battery.
Especially not when both the plaintiff and the defendant have already made efforts to try the case in the court of public opinion. I actually understood (although I didn’t necessarily agree with) having Sharpe on Monday’s episode of First Take, even if it opened the door for Paul Heyman to take a shot at the Hall of Fame tight end and the network on its own airwaves on The Pat McAfee Show. Tuesday, however, was a different story. And it came back to bite ESPN worse than it could have possibly imagined.
At 11:13 a.m. ET, TMZ published audio recordings from Shannon Sharpe’s accuser, in which the 56-year-old can allegedly be heard telling the woman (who was nineteen when she met him) he was “going to f***ing choke the s**t out” of her. All the while, Sharpe remained on ESPN’s airwaves, arguing with Stephen A. Smith and Marcus Morris about the Pacers-Bucks playoff series.
Of course, ESPN presumably didn’t know this audio was coming, but it also shouldn’t have been such a surprise. On Monday — after First Take had aired — Sharpe’s legal team released a slew of salacious text messages from the woman in an apparent attempt to indicate their relationship was consensual. Again, Sharpe and his legal team are free to defend him however they see fit. However, once they began to do so publicly, while also releasing the plaintiff’s name, ESPN would have been wise to protect its image by taking Sharpe off the air.
Only making matters worse, Sharpe’s attorney held a press conference on Tuesday (again, after First Take) in which he revealed that his client had previously offered at least $10 million to the accuser in a potential settlement. As ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio noted, “it’s hard to reconcile the aggressive claim that the allegations are fabricated with the admission that Sharpe offered at least $10 million to settle the case.”
Meanwhile, Sharpe was just a couple of hours removed from being on ESPN’s airwaves.
Much of this could have been avoided for the Disney-owned network had it simply taken Shannon Sharpe off the air on Tuesday. Doing so would have eliminated the poor optics of him being on the air as the audio leaked, and just before his attorney admitted he had offered at least a $10 million settlement. And that makes it all the more curious that ESPN’s PR approach has effectively been nonexistent, with the network yet to issue a response on the matter when reached by Awful Announcing.
The closest ESPN has come to commenting was via a statement provided by chairman Jimmy Pitaro, which was curiously laundered through Stephen A. Smith’s independent podcast. According to Smith, Pitaro “made it very, very clear we are taking this matter very seriously, and we are looking into this very, very closely. And once we gather as many facts as we we possibly can, we will go from there,” while also giving the First Take star permission to share his statement.
Is this a sign of ESPN’s star-driven era? Perhaps, as there are relatively recent examples of lower profile stars being taken off the air for much more minor incidents. If Rachel Nichols can be removed from programming as a result of her situation with Maria Taylor and Sage Steele can be taken off air for her comments regarding former President Barack Obama and COVID-19, then one would imagine that Shannon Sharpe and his accuser publicly throwing haymakers over such serious allegations would meet ESPN’s threshold for benching talent to protect itself P.R.-wise.
ESPN’s handling of the Sharpe situation also prompted us to think about something Colin Cowherd told Ethan Sherwood Strauss in 2021 regarding the differences between the network’s and Fox’s approaches to PR.
“It’s a 24-hour news cycle. Let’s say, blankety blank host Stephen A. Smith says something and it’s deemed insensitive. Do you need a PR rebuttal, or do you just wait six hours and turn your phone off, and there is a new controversy and somebody else to yell at six hours later?” Cowherd said. “Most problems in life, as a parent, as a dad, they go away in a day. Addressing everything to your point is not always the remedy. Just letting things simmer, cooler heads prevail. Let’s just take a deep breath and talk about it in the morning, and somebody else is getting debased on the internet the next morning.”
There’s something to Cowherd’s stance, as many seemingly significant controversies disappear quicker than you’d expect them to. And that ultimately appears to be the approach ESPN is taking here, with the thought apparently being that removing Sharpe from the air would only make this a bigger story.
That, however, isn’t how this ultimately played out, as Sharpe remained on-air as audio leaked of him allegedly threatening to choke his accuser, and mere hours before his lawyer revealed the eight-figure settlement talks provided far worse backlash than giving him a PTO day on Tuesday would have. What’s more is that this story isn’t showing signs of slowing down anytime soon, with Sharpe threatening to countersue for defamation and the plaintiff continuing to release more damning audio.
At this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise if ESPN finally makes a move, whether it’s removing Shannon Sharpe from the air for his upcoming First Take appearances or even severing ties altogether. Then again, that’s merely speculation, as there hasn’t been any indication thus far that the network’s response — if there is one — will be anything but flat-footed.