Football Announcing, The Worldwide Leader, and Political Correctness

Photo by Robert Lee (robertleepxp.wordpress.com)

I try to avoid political topics on here. Part of it is I don't like politics, I don't like politicians, and I hate the extremists on both sides of the aisle who just scream back and forth at each other, seemingly now louder than ever. But I heard about this story last night, and now that it's been confirmed, I feel like I had to say something.

By now you've heard ad nauseum about the evils perpetrated around the rallies and counter protests in Charlottsville, Virginia as part of the ongoing craziness that is the United States in 2017. It's prompted many places in southern states to take down statues of figures from the Confederacy or for opponents of these statues to take them down themselves. At the end of the day, this is probably for the best, but this isn't the point of this post... as I'm sure you guessed by the title.

A week from Saturday, the University of Virginia's football team will be playing FCS school William and Mary at home in Charlottesville. Ordinarily, all that would come of this is Virginia losing an NCSS point for the purposes of the Death to the BCS Playoffs, and that would be the end of it because they don't have any other lower level opponents on their schedule at the time of this writing, and thus they won't get a one year ban from the postseason. Virginia will probably win, and William and Mary will take home a decent payday, and everyone goes home none the worse for wear. Instead, in this heated political climate, all hell broke loose last night.


Somehow, sports blogger Clay Travis got wind of a decision from ESPN that play by play man Robert Lee, pictured above, was bring moved from the Virginia-William and Mary game to Pittsburgh-Youngstown State. If this were just a regular shifting of personnel, I wouldn't be writing about this because it doesn't really matter and you probably wouldn't care. But according to Travis' sources, Lee was being switched from this particular game... because of his name.

Photos from Getty Images|twitter.com/robertleepxp

On the left is Confederate general Robert E. Lee, leader of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War and guy who greenlighted Pickett's Charge, which turned out to not be the best idea. On the right, again, is broadcaster Robert Lee, clearly not the Confederate General who passed away almost 150 years ago. The name Robert Lee isn't exactly a one-in-a-million occurrence. But apparently the coincidence was too much for ESPN, who approached Lee about the possibility of switching games, which he took.

From what I've been able to gather about this story today, it sounds like Lee was willing to do this, and ESPN was not going to force it upon him. If he's happy with his decision and wants all of this to go away, on the one hand, I'd be inclined to agree with him, and I wouldn't be writing anything about this today. On the other hand, the conspiracy theory minded folks among you and others who put the pieces together in a certain way are a little skeptical about this. I don't know the truth, but I'd be inclined to let Lee live with his decision and move on.

But then, ESPN went into "damage control" mode.

Just received this email from an ESPN executive re the Robert Lee controversy. pic.twitter.com/OuBORlWO9f

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 23, 2017

To me, this statement reeks of major spin to cover their asses. They got caught trying to stay politically correct and are trying to make it seem like their intentions were good. But political correctness for political correctness' sake is a problem. That's why I think the NFHS are a bunch of morons, and why I think the WIAA is even worse (the fact that they made a toddler cry by barring him from hugging his sister on the court following a state title game is just the icing on the cake). I don't know that this is as bad, per se, but it's still bad.

ESPN was worried about jokes and memes. To a degree, they're right. Had Lee still been given the Virginia game, there probably would have been a handful of people who would have noted his name and the location, and made some memes about the coincidence of it all. Some may have been in poor taste, but it would have been a minor issue for a day or two, and then everyone would have forgotten about it.

Instead, ESPN is getting (rightfully) blasted about bowing down to idiots. I won't go so far as to joint he chorus of people screaming about how this proves that the Worldwide Leader is a liberal mouthpiece, because I'm not 100 percent convinced that's true, and also because it doesn't help anything; it's just grandstanding. But to a degree they have a point: the network created a bigger issue by making the move, then somehow claimed that the resulting backlash was proof that they were right all along. They weren't. Pulling an Asian broadcaster off a football game because he happens to share the same name as a Confederate general is dumb and spineless. They can blame Clay Travis all they want for the backlash, but Travis wasn't the one who moved a guy off a game because of his name. All ESPN has accomplished with this move is given their critics more ammunition.

At the end of the day, I'm not going to stop paying attention to all ESPN media. I have nothing against Robert Lee himself, and if he's truly at peace with not doing this game, then good on him. But ESPN made this bed, and now they have to lie in it, with all the criticism, mockery, and yes, memes, that come with it.