Just when you thought ESPN couldn't get any bigger ... Jason Whitlock returns

Will ESPN let him get away with his acerbic (albeit often inaccurate and lazy) stances on race and the news media? When Whitlock writes about sports, he's very boring.

 

ESPN does not have a must-read columnist. They have tons of great beat writers and of all of the great columnists they have on the payroll, very few ever write for them. Assuming Whitlock does write, he will change that.

 

Whitlock is a must-read columnist? Since when?

 

Congratulations Jason. Good luck with the new gig.

 

Heh.

 

I'd love to hear some examples of ESPN's great columnists who don't write or a defense of Whitlock as a great columnist.

 

I am hearing that they are going to give Whitlock the back page column of
ESPN The Mag.

 

I get that people don't like the guy, and I completely understand that. But how many columnists, guys who actually still write regularly, are as nationally recognized as Whitlock?

I thought Whitlock's Riley Cooper column was one of the best I read on the subject. I don't like a lot of what Whitlock writes, but I rarely find him boring, and that's more than I can say about any other ESPN columnist right now...

 

Bob Ryan, Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, Dan LeBatard or anyone else who is on any of those ESPN shows but doesn't write for the website or The Magazine. Even if you don't like any of the guys listed, they are all very prominent columnists from very prominent papers... Most of the columnists who were considered top columnists a decade ago, don't write anymore or they're doing something entirely different for whatever reason...

 

Before the Cooper column, I can't remember the last time I clicked on one of his columns. Not because I don't like his writing -- which, meh -- but because I rarely, if ever, go to FoxSports.com, and I never see it linked on Twitter. Never. I see lots of other columnists' work linked on Twitter. Never his. That said, links on Twitter isn't the best way to determine who is and isn't a "must-read" columnist, but I think it serves as a decent gauge.

 

Seemed like the editors at Fox gave Whitlock a lot of leeway in pushing
the envelope in his columns. Have to wonder if he will get the same at
ESPN.

 

For one, your definition of top columnists is stuck in 2001. The people you mentioned are not under contract to write for ESPN, either, so why would they write for ESPN? Moreover, Le Batard is the only member of that group who has churned out a column worth calling must-read in the past five years. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what those guys did, but their other interests pull them away from writing strong columns.

You're completely stuck on this dated idea of Prominent Newspaper Columnists. ESPN is bigger and better than that. Jeff MacGregor, Charles P. Pierce, J.A. Adande, Chris Jones, Ramona Shelburne, Steve Wulf, Henry Abbott, David Schoenfield, Howard Bryant, Bonnie Ford, Andrew Sharp, Jackie MacMullan and others all write columns articulately and regularly (in some cases, only during their sport's season) for ESPN. They are writers first. That's important.

What makes you think ESPN won't pull Whitlock thin (OK, difficult task, admittedly)? Fox already has. Whitlock has moments where he makes compelling arguments, but he doesn't support them with strong writing. Instead, he turns everything into self-referential, self-aggrandizing, hastily written poop. That's not being a good columnist. That's fulfilling the role he likely will handle at ESPN, as another talking head in a sea of them, albeit likely one of the more prominent.