ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (left) and Adam SchefterIllustration: ESPN/Getty Images
You get what you pay for. And the “world leader in esports” just spent nearly $100 million on two men who took Ricky Bobby’s father’s words a little too seriously.
A few weeks ago, it was announced that ESPN had re-signed Adam Schefter and Adrian Wojnarowski as their lead insiders for the NFL and NBA, respectively. Both men reportedly signed five-year deals as Schefter will make around $9 million a year while Woj makes around $7 million a year. Over the weekend, however, the two showed how the race to be the news leader in “sports journalism” (I used quotes because Woj and Schefter aren’t journalists) has turned into a problematic competition that misses the humanity of the subject.
“Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before struggling in the NFL to keep up with Washington and Pittsburgh, died this morning after being hit by a car in south Florida, according to his agent Cedric Saunders. Haskins would have been 25 on May 3,” Schefter wrote in a tweet that he would soon delete as he broke the news that a human had lost his life.
A network that works with the NFL is paying its insider $45 million to mention that a man who played quarterback in the league “fought on the field” before telling us he was no longer with us is. This is what happens when black bodies and athletes are viewed only as objects of entertainment and not as people with friends and families. But let’s not pretend that Schefter didn’t turn out that way, as he’s often the cause of controversy about how terrible he is at his job. This is the same man who tweeted as if he was part of Deshaun Watson’s defense team who saw through Dalvin Cook’s domestic violence incident and once called a team president who was his source: “Mr. Editor.” He’s also the same guy who once tried to minimize the importance of Election Day in 2020 in a tweet about the NFL trade deadline, only for the US Capitol to be attacked less than three months later over the fallout from that election .
Effects…
On the other hand, people like Schefter are immune because it feels like there are never any consequences for their actions. We might get an apology tweet here and there, and there might be a suspension going on behind the scenes that goes unreported, but none of that means anything when your employer is paying you a salary that screams, “Get on with it.” with the good work,” “even though your work may be “bad.”
That mentality made possible what happened in Denver Sunday night when former Lakers head coach Frank Vogel found out from reporters that he was in fact a former Lakers head coach when asked about it during the team’s final post-game press conference Woj tweeted his unemployment before he was notified.
“I wasn’t told anything,” Vogel said.
While it was believed Vogel was done after this season and rumors had been swirling for months, it was a new low when Twitter found out you were fired before your bosses told you. But we’re talking about the Lakers here. A franchise that left its best player as team president in an impromptu press conference outside the dressing room as the players walked in just three years ago.
As chaotic as the Lakers were, Woj doesn’t work for them. And while we know he got his information from someone within the organization, that doesn’t mean he had to share it before Vogel found out.
There is a difference between breaking news and creating it. And what we saw this weekend was the latter, with Adam Schefter and Adrian Wojnarowski becoming the news instead of just covering it. Any journalist would love to be first when it comes to breaking a big story, but the smart and good understand that it’s always better to be second and right than first and wrong. And in the case of Schefty and Woj, they seem to prefer being ethically wrong and rich.