ESPN president: We won't cover national anthem during Monday Night Football

American Thinker ^ | 08/18/2018 | Rick Moran

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New ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro told reporters that the network would not televise the national anthem before their Monday Night Football broadcast.

There was some speculation that ESPN, who hasn't been shy about covering politics, might break with precedent and show the protests of players during the playing of the anthem.

But, according to the story in USA Today, Pitano "bristled" at the suggestion that ESPN was a political network.

Pitaro, who was hired March 5 following the abrupt departure of John Skipper, told reporters at a media event on ESPN's campus in Bristol, Conn., that the network has not previously shown the national anthem during its Monday Night Football broadcasts and does not have plans to change — at least, not in the immediate future.

According to Axios, Pitaro also said that ESPN has informed the league of its plans "as (a) courtesy" given their partnership. Earlier, he had told reporters that he has spent much of his young tenure at ESPN working to strengthen the company's relationship with the NFL.

ESPN pays about $2 billion per year for the right to broadcast Monday Night Football , according to the Associated Press. 

Not only is ESPN a political network, it is a blatantly partisan political network. With players in most major sports spouting off on politics ignorantly and many ESPN reporters and commentators egging them on, the network is pushing a partisan agenda - both in game, and on every other show broadcast by the network.

It's not surprising that sports reporters are frustrated political reporters. In fact, early political journalists were drawn from the ranks of sports reporters - the belief being that politics was akin to a horse race and who better to tell that story than a sports reporter?

[logician2u]

Likewise, football is not the "national pastime."

Playing our national anthem before a professional football game is incidental to the game just as much as having some dignitary toss the first pitch before a baseball game gets underway.

Such preliminaries have zero affect in the quality of play, the amount of beer consumed and spilled in the stands, and the paychecks earned by a team's players--whether they win or lose.

Why, then, is it played and/or sung before NFL games?

Short answer: money.

(There is also a long answer which some FReepers may be able to supply.)

[editor-surveyor]

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We won’t watch ESPN!
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