ESPN Ombudsman

The Ombuddies have flooded the zone with opinions -- often thoughtful, occasionally rough -- about the Washington Redskins’ nickname controversy, Rick Reilly’s response to it, and the recent addition of Ray Lewis, the former Baltimore Ravens linebacker, as a prominent ESPN football analyst.

Lewis attracted mostly negative mailbag comments despite making an almost seamless segue from his second Super Bowl championship to the lineup on “Sunday NFL Countdown.”

“I know Ray Lewis is the most popular guy in the NFL and on all those commercials,” writes Kevin Morrissey of Aliquippa, Pa. “It seems in poor taste to have him talk about Aaron Hernandez like he was never involved in a similar incident.”

Morrissey and other correspondents referred to a 2000 incident in which Lewis and two companions were indicted for the murders of two men outside an Atlanta nightclub. Lewis testified against his companions and eventually was sentenced to probation for misdemeanor obstruction of justice. He settled financially with the families of the victims, avoiding a civil trial. The incident haunted him for a while (even though he was voted MVP of the subsequent Super Bowl, he wasn’t chosen to utter the well-known “I’m going to Disney World,” and take the trip, a usual perk.)

But Lewis, who was inducted Sunday into the Ravens Ring of Honor, finally made it to Disney (at least the ESPN division of the corporation). Since his Sept. 8 debut, has been a smooth, insightful TV team player.

Much of Lewis’ 2000 case is still shrouded in mystery. Lewis’ companions were acquitted. No one has been convicted. During his “Countdown” debut, Lewis addressed the case -- if obliquely -- when he discussed Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end who has been charged with murder. Lewis mentioned how Ravens management and teammates had supported him and helped set him on a straight path.

(For Lewis’ back story, check out this balanced story by ESPN writer Elizabeth Merrill, written just before Lewis led the Ravens to last season's Super Bowl victory.)

John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president of production, told me he had “conversations with senior members of the Ravens and the NFL who enthusiastically recommended we pursue Ray.” Two other ESPN executives, Seth Markman, senior coordinating producer for NFL studio production, and Mark Gross, senior vice president and executive producer, told me they understood the seriousness of Lewis’ past legal issues and had discussed them before the hire. According to Markman, “Ray worked extremely hard to rebuild his reputation. In fact, he became a real role model who has positively impacted the lives of many people. Ray is off to a great start.”

Perhaps more important than dredging up Lewis’ past is examining the use of his legacy and future. He was a notably hard-hitting player, arguably the best of his time. Read this from Owen Waggy of Louisa, Va.: “Recently I came across a video linked to the ESPN mobile website entitled ‘6th Grade LB Channels Ray Lewis on Big Hit.’ ... I was sick to my stomach. Since when did ESPN become hypocritical in its methods to cover sports news that it runs a string of stories on violence in sports, the dangers of concussions and the steps the NFL has been taking to protect athletes and educate others on promoting safe play and at the same time provides a link to a video of a 12-year old kid pummeling another player in his JV football game? ... What this tells our children is that if they punish someone else on the playing field, they might get on ‘SportsCenter.’ "

THE R-WORD REVISITED

The reaction to my last column concerning the controversy over continued use of the nickname Redskins included hard-core Washington fans who defended it and civil rights advocates who were outraged.

There were also more nuanced messages such as this one from Jon Dewaard of Birmingham, Ala.: “There doesn't appear to be much outrage from the public over the name Redskins; rather the outrage seems reserved for the journalists of the ‘how-can-I-be-offended-today’ industry. The whole thing feels like a manufactured controversy designed for the primary purpose of showcasing the journalists' elevated moral standing on the issue. I suspect American Indians have other grievances that are far more important (and newsworthy) to them than the name of a football team.”

The many American Indians who agree there are more important grievances include Ray Halbritter, the CEO of the Oneida Nation. But that doesn’t mean the Washington nickname is acceptable. Halbritter connected the dots. He said that trivializing the use of a racist slur has had a negative impact on Native Americans’ self-esteem and helped create a cultural climate in which they could be further dehumanized and discriminated against.

Halbritter’s fresh and pertinent remarks were made during a recent segment on the controversy on “Outside the Lines,” which aired at 8 a.m. on a Sunday on ESPN2, its new, diminished time and place.

The drumbeat goes on. In an ESPN column last week, Reilly claimed there was white paternalism in the campaign to change the name, which he mocked and denigrated to the anger of a surprising number of Ombuddies, including Ryan Hurton of North Reading, Mass.: “It's as if Reilly is COMPLETELY unaware of the years of negative history suffered by Native Americans. Equating one of the blackest marks in American history with a recent debate driven by a renewed awareness of that tragedy is not a hot sports take -- it is either willfully ignorant, intentionally racist, or both. The entire article trivializes what was essentially a genocide.”

The Reilly column did seem unusually tone deaf from such a big-hearted observer. Of course, he was quoting his father-in-law, a member of the Blackfeet Nation.

But I offer the last word on this from an old friend, Oren Lyons, the Onondaga faithkeeper and an international representative of the Iroquois Nation. He wrote to me: “There's the Yale bulldog, there's the Army mule, there's the Navy goat, and there's the Washington Redskins. That is apparently the classification of American Indians within the context of the social life of Americans. The political ramifications are obvious. ... As far as I'm concerned, I'm not anyone's mascot.”

Let’s talk about the R-word.

Monday night, on ESPN, the Washington franchise of the National Football League will open its season. The broadcasters will call the team by its 80-year-old nickname in an offhand way they would never use in public with the more recognized racial slur that has come to be referred to as the N-word.

We’ll get to that one later when we review the contrasting ways in which ESPN covered incidents involving a current NFL player, Riley Cooper, who used the N-word in public, and a former player, Hugh Douglas, who lost his job at ESPN in the wake of a more complex situation.

Because the Washington franchise of the NFL has a hot quarterback, Robert Griffin III, and Super Bowl dreams, it will get increased scrutiny this season. This will likely include continued attempts by commentators, civil rights groups and even members of Congress to persuade it to change its nickname. The current owner, Daniel Snyder, has said: “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER -- you can use caps.”

He was probably not amused when a local alternative weekly, the Washington City Paper, began calling his team “the Pigskins.” Or when Slate, The New Republic and Mother Jones also announced they would no longer refer to the team with what is considered by many to be a Native American slur. These are obviously not hard-core sports publications, and one suspects their readerships were predisposed to such action.

Of more concern to Snyder, perhaps, was the announcement by a writer for TheMMQB.com, the new website of Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, that this major source of pro football information was also considering banning the name. King has yet to officially confirm, but his column on Griffin posted Thursday referred to the team only as Washington.

Jeff Bercovici of Forbes.com, in reporting this week that The Associated Press and The New York Times have no plans to ban the nickname, notes that "it would take a broad-based boycott that included at least some of the biggest American media outlets [to prompt change]. Don’t expect the television networks, all of whom have to deal with the league as a corporate partner, to lead the charge, either."

A similar point of view has been offered on ESPN’s airwaves. After acknowledging that "the will of the people in Washington is strong for the Redskins" last week on "Pardon the Interruption," ESPN's Tony Kornheiser suggested media companies could be catalysts. "I don't think writers and bloggers and websites can make this happen," he said, "I do think television networks can make this happen. ... To pick two: If ESPN and Fox said 'We're not going to use Redskins anymore' and the NFL tacitly went along with that and didn't say anything, that would put pressure on CBS and NBC. I think it has to come from the larger institutions."

So what if ESPN refused to use the R-word?

That quixotic thought has been bubbling for a while in ESPN’s 150-person Stats & Information Group, where vice presidents Edmundo Macedo and Noel Nash collected information on the history of the team and opposition toward the name and then distributed it to network news managers. It was the start of a campaign to have ESPN stop using the name. Macedo told me that he thought the chances of actually succeeding were currently slim and none, but that it was worth the effort to get people thinking about it.

“Think about the name,” he wrote to me in an email. “Think about the stereotypical connotations around color. We would not accept anything similar as a team nickname if it were associated with any other ethnicity or any other race.

“Over the years, the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I became using it. I’m not sure other Americans have stopped to hear the voices of Native Americans. I can only imagine how painful it must be to hear or see that word over and over, referenced so casually every day.”

Imagination becomes reality on the website of Indian Country Today a leading location for Native American news. The “pejorative” name is extensively examined, including coverage of a federal trademark lawsuit against the NFL team and of a congressional call for renaming.

NAME CHANGER, GAME CHANGER

Within ESPN, there were three main responses to Macedo’s recommendation, providing interesting insights into the thinking and workings of the network.

1) ESPN should be covering the news, not making it. Fair enough. The action Macedo proposed would be newsworthy enough to make ESPN a player in a controversy. We’ve been through this before in ESPN’s coverage of NBA player Jason Collins’ coming out. In one case, on “Outside the Lines,” instead of an in-depth look at the implications of Collins’ action, we got a debate on the varieties of religious experience.

But the argument to keep using the R-word for journalistic reasons alone runs up against ESPN’s role as a purveyor of commercial entertainment, which is then covered by ESPN’s news side. I have retired the routine use of the phrase “conflict of interest” when it comes to ESPN – it’s simply inadequate to the nuances of the, um, conflicts of interest. See The New York Times’ recent series on how ESPN creates bowl games it can then air and promotes leagues, teams, athletes for its own commercial purposes.

2) ESPN should consider how the consequences of an "adversarial environment" could limit "access" in covering the team. This is a solid practical point. Snyder would clearly not be happy at such a slap in his face and might make it more difficult for ESPN reporters to cover the team and its star quarterback, whose profile is so high he is known merely by what looks like a model number -- RG3. It could put ESPN at a journalistic disadvantage in the current frenetic competition among newsslingers for shards of information, not to mention interviews and documentaries such as “The Will to Win,” a one-hour film about Griffin that aired on ESPN, co-produced by NFL Films and offered up by Gatorade Productions. ‘Nuff said. Refer to my non-use of “conflict of interest.”

3) A gesture as aggressive as attacking a famous, long-standing team is antithetical to the ESPN business model. Snyder is a business associate (his Washington radio station is an ESPN affiliate), and the NFL is an important partner. ESPN is a major media corporation with a parent company (Disney) and shareholders. I am still in the early process of exploring the depths and facets of ESPN, but one thing is clear -- it is an entertainment company trying to maintain a vigorous journalistic presence. This is no simple matter. This so-called “bifurcation” -- business side and journalism side -- requires respect and mindfulness.

“I’m from the D.C. area and a fan all my life,” says Rob King, senior vice president of content for ESPN print and digital media, “and I’ve thought about the Generals and the Statesmen as names, even George Washington replacing the Indian on the logo.

“At ESPN, the only thing that really matters is serving fans. NFL fans think of the Washington, D.C.-area franchise as the Redskins. So that informs how we'll serve them across news, commentary, scores and fantasy coverage. We will use the term Redskins so long as fans expect this to be the nomenclature that drives their rooting experience.

“So hail to 'em.”

The most sensible ongoing strategy I’ve heard is from Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, who said: “To simply ignore the nickname in our coverage seems like nothing more than grandstanding. We can use the name of the team, but our best service to fans is to report the hell out of the story, draw attention to the issue and cover all aspects of the controversy.”

Macedo said he wanted to “generate greater long-term discussion and awareness.” The discussion waxes on, within the content group, and on ESPN shows. “OTL” plans a piece on the issue in mid-September. There have been a number of pieces on ESPN’s platforms that were critical of the nickname. For example, Grantland recently ran a strong open letter to Snyder by Dave Zirin.

I liked a piece by ESPN.com reporter Dan Graziano that covered the story superbly and included this fine paragraph: “The reason the Redskins should change their name is the same reason they should have changed it decades ago -- the same reason they never should have picked the name in the first place.

“The word ‘Redskin’ has a well-established history as a racist epithet, and such words have no business being sung and chanted in support of a professional sports team. Simple as that, and it has nothing to do with tradition or fan pride or whether anyone's still offended by the name today.

“If the word has ever been used to ridicule or belittle human beings on the grounds of race, what's the good reason to keep it alive in a glorifying context? Changing it would harm literally no one. It would be an act with no motive but basic human courtesy.”

AND YET ANOTHER WORD

I started thinking seriously about the R-word some 30 years ago while covering lacrosse on Iroquois reservations. I have an even older personal relationship with the N-word.

In 1964, the black comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory published his autobiography with this dedication: “Dear Momma -- Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word ‘nigger’ again, remember they are advertising my book.”

What a pipe dream that was. Nearly 50 years later, the book (which I co-wrote) is still in print and has sold more than a million copies, yet its title is as virulent as ever. If the word didn’t pack such a vicious punch, Riley Cooper, a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, would not have reached for it in a moment of anger in late July … and Hugh Douglas, a former Eagles lineman who was working as an ESPN co-host, might not have been accused -- apparently incorrectly -- of using it in an incident with a colleague.

My correspondents, the ombuddies, have criticized the disparity in ESPN’s coverage of the two incidents. Here are two typical messages:

• Joe Smith of Baltimore wrote: “After a week of wall-to-wall coverage of Riley Cooper, I haven't heard or seen anything on ESPN about one if its own.”

• Arusha Stanislaus of Rockville, Md., wrote: “This is another example of a 'holier than thou' hypocrisy that I have been seeing for a long time. If an athlete gets stopped for speeding, its 'breaking news', but internal embarrassments are not? Not a good standard sir.”

The incidents were very different. Cooper, who is white, was frustrated by a black security guard who blocked his access at a concert – and was videotaped using the slur. With witnesses and pictures, it was an easy story to cover and chew on, which ESPN did incessantly, although sometimes interestingly. Skip Bayless, who is white, thought Cooper should be cut immediately for using the N-word. Stephen A. Smith, who is black, thought Cooper’s teammates, particularly the black ones, should decide whether his future contributions to winning were worth forgiving him. (Cooper is currently on the Eagles’ 53-man roster.)

The Douglas incident occurred during the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference, at a get-together to raise money for the group’s Sports Task Force Scholarship Fund.

A member of NABJ called me right after the incident, embarrassed and outraged. He asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the organization. A day later, in an email, he wrote: “One of the attractions the Sports Task Force uses to lure attendees is the presence of ESPN on-air talent. The sports people advertise the ESPN media stars expected to be there. In other words, come to the NABJ scholarship party and you can meet Stephen A. Smith. Jemele Hill, Hugh Douglas, Michael Smith, J.A. Adande, Jay Harris, Stan Verrett, Jalen Rose, Stuart Scott, etc, etc. The scholarship party is open to more than just sports journalists; NABJ people in news departments, features, entertainment, business, Internet, etc., are all welcome.” ‘

Douglas reportedly interrupted a presentation to rant at his “Numbers Never Lie” co-host Michael Smith. Both men are black. Although early reports claimed use of the N-word, there has been no audio or video, and witnesses, as well as Douglas and Smith, said the word was not used. Some reports indicated that Douglas used another pejorative toward Smith.

ESPN originally acknowledged it was looking into “a disagreement between Hugh Douglas and Michael Smith” and then more than a week later said in a statement referring to Douglas: “He no longer works for us effective today.”

The NABJ incident seemed at least as important as a wide receiver’s outburst. Douglas and Smith were representing a network that offers news and commentary; don’t fans have a right to know as much about them as about a 25-year-old backup player caught in what seems to have been a moment of alcohol-fueled frustration? An airing out of why corporate decisions were made in the NABJ case was in order – or at least some discussion by the likes of Skip and Stephen A.

So just why was there little or no coverage or commentary about Douglas on ESPN? When I asked Vince Doria, ESPN’s senior vice president and director of news, if it could be attributed to the network’s longtime avoidance of media coverage (including itself), he said, “Yes, we generally have avoided covering our personnel matters. With higher-profile talent, we have made exceptions when we felt the story has resonated at a certain level. While the Riley Cooper story brought some attention to the Douglas story because of some perceived similarities, we didn't feel it merited coverage in ‘SportsCenter.’”

I disagree. The media’s role is a critical and ongoing aspect of sports coverage. Whether it’s the media’s choices of coverage (Johnny Manziel, Tim Tebow, as well as teams and games the various outlets favor), its opinions (most proclaimed the NFL the winner in the recent concussions settlement) or its business decisions (getting into bed with a soccer league or creating a channel for a college football conference), the media shapes the audience’s perception. Sometimes we need to know as much about the media as we do about the sports it covers if we want to fully understand the sports.

I think ESPN’s formal editorial guidelines for “dealing with ESPN or other media in the news” might sometimes act as a deterrent to the kind of journalism allowed in its other sports coverage. Regard this: “Finally, we insist that communication take place prior to any public discussion in any ESPN medium. We ask that you let the top person in your department know what you plan to do. Engage in a dialogue over the topic and the format and come to a resolution to accomplish everyone’s goals.”

This gives us another reason to welcome the return of the talent once known at ESPN as He Who Must Not Be Named.

Keith Olbermann opened the debut broadcast of his ESPN2 show on Aug. 26 with a bravura tirade on useless, meaningless and pervasive journalistic churn. In this case, he blistered the New York Daily News writer who used his own tweet about the New York Jets’ coach and quarterback as the source for his next story, which led to more commentary by himself and others.

Raged Olbermann: “Reporting is dead; long live making something out of nothing.”

He followed that up at the end of the week with more than seven minutes of contained fury -- illustrating a CBSSports.com column that dismissed the NFL players' concussion suit as an unjustified "money grab" with a series of clips of the broken men who had played the game.

In execution, both Olbermann segments were vintage, but in content they were even better, especially if they herald a welcome push for ESPN toward pertinent, timely, sharp media criticism.

So what’s more damaging to a corporate image: to be considered sloppy, naïve or compromised? Or all three? You get to pick in the wake of ESPN’s announcement Thursday that it was removing its brand from an upcoming two-part documentary by PBS’s “Frontline” that “reveals the hidden story of the NFL and brain injuries” (or so it claims in a controversial trailer).

The ESPN action drew immediate media and mailbag accusations that the NFL had pressured the network into severing ties to the PBS films. I thought the best and briefest characterization came from Ombuddy Philip Berenbroick of Arlington, Va., who saw ESPN’s decision as an example of “the dueling journalism and profit motives [via protecting valued partners] at the network.”

It’s hard to argue with that depiction. That duel also turns out to be the major ongoing conflict that the ombudsman deals with. This column is a first response to the current issue; there may be more columns to come as we learn more on the topic.

The background: For the past 15 months, ESPN’s enterprise/investigative unit has been working “in collaboration” with “Frontline” on two shows scheduled to air in October. They are titled “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for the Truth,” and are in parallel with a forthcoming book of the same name by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada -- brothers and investigative reporters for ESPN.

By all accounts, it has been a close and happy collaboration between elite news teams, producers and writers. Results of that collaboration have already appeared on ESPN.com and “Outside the Lines,” the ESPN show that most closely resembles the PBS show in serious intent, as well as on the “Frontline” site. Indeed, ESPN has done extensive reporting on the NFL and concussions, from its “Football at a Crossroads” series to revealing reports by Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada on concussion controversies involving Mike Webster and Junior Seau.

There were mutual corporate benefits. PBS would draw new viewers from the crowds in the ESPN grandstand, and ESPN would derive a dash of PBS prestige from its association with one of the nation’s most respected documentary broadcasts. Both sides trumpeted the relationship. In July 2012 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, on a panel with PBS president Paula Kerger, ESPN president John Skipper said: “We're not the public trust that PBS is, but we do a certain amount of programming that is a bit of the public trust.”

That attitude was a point of pride among ESPN journalists, including Dwayne Bray, a senior news producer who was working closely with “Frontline.” On Aug. 6, on a joint media panel with “Frontline” in Los Angeles to promote the documentary, Bray took on the question of ESPN reporting on the toughest topic bedeviling its most important business partner. Pro football is the most popular sport on ESPN and generates the most income. But the NFL is also dealing with more than 4,200 named player-plaintiffs in lawsuits over concussion-linked injuries.

At a news conference on the tour, Bray boasted of ESPN’s “bifurcated” structure in which journalism and business remained separate. He pointed out that ESPN has been reporting on football concussions since 1994, and that “the NFL is just going to have to understand” the nature of the ESPN-“Frontline” partnership.

That event, Skipper told me, was for him “the catalyst or starting episode” of what ultimately resulted in ESPN’s decision to part ways with “Frontline.” Skipper didn’t attend the event, and said he was “startled” when he read about a promotional trailer for the documentary which was screened at the news conference. He hadn’t seen the trailer or approved its content, which included the ESPN logo and a collaboration credit. He thought it was “odd for me not to get a heads up,” and said it made him “quite unhappy” to discover that ESPN had no editorial control over the trailer.

Upon screening it, Skipper said he found the trailer to be “sensational.” He particularly objected to the tagline -- “Get ready to change the way you see the game” -- and to the final sound bite in the piece, from neuropathologist Ann McKee. Referring to brain injuries, she says, “I’m really wondering if every single football player doesn’t have this.”

Skipper said he found that comment to be “over the top.”

Eight days after the catalytic news conference, on Aug. 14, Skipper and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had lunch in New York City. It’s not hard to assume, as many have, that Goodell raised issues about the “Frontline” documentary and demanded that Skipper take some action to protect the NFL brand.

Commissioners are always trying to strong-arm or sweet-talk ESPN executives, especially Skipper. How well they succeed is a matter of constant speculation, both among Ombuddies and from some inside ESPN. Right or wrong, there is a perception that the company’s decisions -- both long-term and moment-by-moment -- are often made to promote, or at least not provoke, important “partners.”

When I spoke to Skipper on Friday and told him that my sources indicated he had discussed the “Frontline” partnership with Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, as well as lawyers at both Disney and ESPN, he confirmed that was true. Skipper noted, however, that he had made the calls to advise those parties of his decision to “remove the brand because we did not control the content.” He denied that anyone at Disney or the NFL demanded the action.

Said Skipper, “I am the only one at ESPN who has to balance the conflict between journalism and programming.”

ESPN’s public reasoning for separating from “Frontline” was tied to oversight, with the network saying “Because ESPN is neither producing nor exercising editorial control over the Frontline documentaries, there will be no co-branding involving ESPN on the documentaries or their marketing materials.” On Friday, Skipper released a statement of editorial support, saying “I want to be clear about ESPN’s commitment to journalism and the work of our award-winning enterprise team. We will continue to report this story and will continue to support the work of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. We have respect as well for the efforts of the people at ‘Frontline.’ ”

Which takes us back to the challenge of ESPN’s “dueling journalism and profit motives.” What exactly happened here, and how should we feel about it?

If, as Skipper told me, the ESPN-“Frontline” association was “a loose arrangement,” it seems an unusually sloppy execution for ESPN, an organization that is usually much more buttoned-up. (Raney Aronson, the deputy executive producer for “Frontline,” told me the arrangement was more of an “editorial exchange” and that “we were working on a piece of paper” -- meaning some legal memorialization of the partnership.)

Was attention not being paid at ESPN? Too much time spent acquiring tennis rights, the SEC, Keith Olbermann, Nate Silver and Jason Whitlock, and not enough on journalism?

Was ESPN naïve about the relationship with a hard-driving documentary unit whose viewership, not to mention its bottom line, was not invested in football? Was it also naïve to fail to anticipate the inevitable reaction from the NFL, which from the beginning had pointedly refused to cooperate with “Frontline” (no league footage, no Goodell interview, limited access to doctors who advise the NFL on concussions)? The league was not happy with a recent OTL report on one of its main doctors -- which ran on ESPN’s platforms just last weekend -- so why would it support “League of Denial”?

Or did ESPN cave in to pressure from the NFL or Disney or both? And if so, really, what was the point? It couldn’t have been to stifle interest in the project. The media coverage of ESPN’s decision to remove its imprimatur from the “Frontline” films will probably result in both a sales and ratings boost for the book and documentaries, respectively.

So what just happened? Beats me. At best we've seen some clumsy shuffling to cover a lack of due diligence. At worst, a promising relationship between two journalism powerhouses that could have done more good together has been sacrificed to mollify a league under siege. The best isn't very good, but if the worst turns out to be true, it’s a chilling reminder how often the profit motive wins the duel.

This is a dicey time for the journalism side of the ESPN bifurcation. For all the current fuss, an even stronger message than ESPN’s disassociation from the “Frontline” project was the network’s recent decision to reschedule the Sunday morning OTL show from 9 a.m. on ESPN to 8 a.m. on ESPN 2 during the fall. A justifiably proud show is being demoted … for more football talk!

I’ll be staying on this story, as circumstances warrant, but will leave you for now with both foreboding and optimism.

“It’s sad because it sounds like a terrible blow for journalism at ESPN,” Sandy Padwe, a Columbia journalism professor, said of ESPN’s breakup with “Frontline.” Padwe, who recently ended a hitch of almost 19 years as a consultant to OTL, added that many journalists inside of ESPN are “demoralized by the capitulation and so much fine work is being marginalized.”

But Bray, the producer who has been among several in the forefront of the concussion investigations for ESPN, told me, “This issue is about branding, not about journalism. We will still get to do the stories, and no one will interfere with that.”

Let’s hope so.

When I began writing about sports in the last century, women were not permitted in most press boxes. Press boxes! It was more than a decade later, in the late 1970s, that equal locker room access became an issue. A nasty skirmish in the gender wars erupted, mostly underreported, until this month’s airing of the splendid “Let Them Wear Towels,” the third installment in ESPN’s instant classic series, Nine for IX.

So how come the documentary’s debut was programmed against Fox’s broadcast of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game?

That confused me. Was it a mixed message, purposeful, accidental or, you know, dude, it is what it is? This was one of several confusing messages by ESPN in July, including the uncomfortably chummy spectacle of the ESPYS, the forced switch of the commentariat on ESPN.com to Facebook, and the trumpeted return of the former He Who Must Not Be Named to the network.

There was less confusion in the old days, at least regarding gender roles. The exceptions to the prohibition against women in the press box were revealing. In Los Angeles, for example, aging gossip columnist Walter Winchell was allowed to bring starlets into the press box at Dodger Stadium to watch him type. We all snickered, but didn’t much care. More threatening were the ambitious, talented, suppressed women writers who could take our jobs.

And they did. Many of them were hired to satisfy discrimination suits against newspapers and were determined to prove they deserved the jobs on their individual merits. Almost immediately, they smartened coverage by acting like journalists instead of fanboys. They found human interest stories, and they weren’t afraid of asking technical questions.

If those women could be stopped at the locker room door, thus stymied in picking up the quotes and the moods that are so often the heart of postgame coverage, they could be kept at a reporting disadvantage. The blame for that last stand has usually been heaped on players, coaches and officials, but male sports writers, jealous of their own access to the testosterone tree house, were at least complicit. I often wondered whether they were afraid the world would find out just how tenuous were their own relationships with the athletes, who often treated sportswriters as if they were, in the players’ phrase, “green ants at the picnic.”

The directors of the espnW film, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, assembled an all-star cast of sportswriters -- Melissa Ludtke, Robin Herman, Michele Himmelberg, Betty Cuniberti, Claire Smith, Jane Gross, Sheryl Flatow, Lesley Visser and Christine Brennan -- to tell their brave and harrowing stories. There are unexpected heroes (Billy Martin, Steve Garvey) and predictable villains (commissioner Bowie Kuhn, male sports writers).

The topic might not have gotten its due until now because women were humiliated (most of the pioneers did not stay in sports), men were shamed, and most academics writing about that era of major social movements dismissed it as merely sports -- although the issue proves again how sports were, and still are, a major definer of American masculinity and femininity.

There are still doors that need to open wider for women, including, as Herman pointed out in the documentary, the one that leads to the predominantly male play-by-play broadcast booth. That’s an ESPN issue, even with its fine roster of female reporters, producers and hosts. We will be returning to that topic in the future.

So, why did this terrific film have to go up against the All-Star Game?

According to Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and acquisitions, the Tuesday night airing was part of ESPN’s programming plan to create a consistent schedule to showcase the Nine for IX documentaries throughout the summer.

“It was not counterprogramming,” Williamson said. “It was part of a long-term strategy to create a flight for the marketing of quality shows -- not that all ESPN shows aren’t quality. But we wanted a window, almost appointment TV, for documentaries throughout the year. And Tuesday night was the night least likely to have a game.”

I like the idea of “classy Tuesday,” of a date with quality, but it makes me uneasy, too. Yes, the documentaries will air some 18 times each (on numerous ESPN channels, including ESPN Classic), and ratings indicate that the electorate prefers games and studio shows. But the word “marginalizing” still comes to mind. Meanwhile, no one has suggested that “Outside the Lines” should be a Tuesday night regular instead of making it even harder to find.

Even while we were talking about all this, OTL is being moved on Sundays from ESPN at 9 a.m. to ESPN2 at 8 a.m., coinciding with the football season, starting Sept. 8. Even with DVRs, that sends a message -- and not about quality.

Let Us Ponder the Pretty Ponders

One of the executive producers of “Let Them Wear Towels” is Robin Roberts, a pioneering reporter and anchor at, among other places, ESPN and ABC. The night after the documentary’s debut, Roberts was live on ESPN at the 20th annual ESPYS award show. She received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award and spoke movingly of her battle back from health issues, a segment that was the highlight of the show.

The rest of the broadcast, however, was mostly the implied daps and chest bumps we’ve come to expect, with a few surprises, especially the grace and dignity of LeBron James on the red carpet, as a recipient of a top prize -- male athlete of the year -- and as Roberts’ presenter. He obviously took it seriously and prepared well.

Seeing athletes in different clothes and without their game faces is a pleasure of the watching the ESPYS. I particularly enjoyed watching Christian Ponder, the Vikings’ quarterback -- ESPN’s Ron Jaworski has him rated No. 27 of 32 in his NFL QB rankings -- apparently auditioning for his next career as a broadcast jock. Supported by the former Samantha Steele, an ESPN reporter and now also his wife, Ponder interviewed the amiable likes of Houston defensive end J.J. Watt (by throwing little footballs over his head). Ponder is actor-cute in that indie-film- and-TV mumblecore way. If he doesn’t make Jaws’ top 20 this season, he should scramble for a role on a cop show.

I also enjoyed watching athletes in the audience guffawing, often a beat late, at dumb -- and sometimes mean -- jokes by host Jon Hamm, often at Dwight Howard’s expense. The message here is that it’s all entertainment, folks, as sports should be, whether Adrian Peterson is running long on his acceptance speech, or just running long.

But the ESPYS offer another message, much like the annual White House Correspondents' dinner: We’re all in this together. It’s fine for news executives, columnists and anchors to party with politicians and lobbyists, to get to know them as human beings, just as it is fine for ESPN executives, columnists and anchors, to party with athletes (and maybe not to feel like green ants.)

The concern, though, is that viewers might be getting the idea that they are the rubes at these circuses, that the jocks and the pols who show up can expect, in return, access and favors from the media.

This might be why the audience doesn’t always trust political reporters and sometimes wonders whether ESPN is protecting a pal -- an employee of one of its partner leagues -- when “SportsCenter” is perceived as late or timid in reporting an athlete’s latest DUI or sexual assault charge. Most of the time, I think the typical ESPN explanation -- “We were exercising responsible caution” -- is true.

Still, it’s hard not to get the impression that certain athletes, like certain politicians, get a pass because members of the media hobnobbed with them and expect to do so again -- not to mention the revolving doors in which senators, QBs, generals and coaches rotate in and out of studios and anchor booths.

Perhaps even more pernicious than the once-a-year ESPYS are those ubiquitous “This Is SportsCenter” commercials. The latest example has anchor John Anderson, an avatar of authority, gravely suggesting to golfer Rickie Fowler, blithe in his signature orange jumpsuit as he pours orange juice into his coffee, that he might be colorblind. I think it’s hilarious.

But do those entertaining commercials undermine ESPN’s attempt to balance its reputation for the creative celebration of sports events with a reputation for serious journalism? Just imagine Brian Williams and Secretary of State John Kerry in the NBC copy room, scanning each other’s butts.

You Talkin’ To Me?

The mailbag trembled with the announcement earlier this month that fan conversations on ESPN.com were being diverted to Facebook’s commenting tools.

Jeff Gilbert of Miami wrote, in a typical message, “I don't want my inane sports comments posted to my page -- I guess there's a way to prevent this, but I'm unclear how a future change in Facebook policy will affect my decision to keep these comments semi-private. Will I need to monitor Facebook policy to make sure new comments don't just start showing up for friends to see? …. what if those without shame keep posting idiotic comments in spite of having their name attached and we just lose the thoughtful commentary by those wary of Facebook or too casual to worry about changing their privacy settings but still don't want their friends seeing sports non sequiturs and so refrain from sharing?”

Added Brian Hansen of Chicago, “Especially in light of the recent revelations that the federal government is literally storing everyone's data/communications/posts what have you from Facebook, doesn't this signal that ESPN is not an advocate of privacy? Something just feels wrong compelling your readers to express their views knowing that the federal government is literally monitoring what they say. … I assume the answer is money, but I wonder what the decision says about ESPN and the changing society we live in.”

Yes, Brian, money -- or at least traffic -- is a factor. Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, told Marie Shanahan of the Poynter Institute -- and later me -- that the change was partially a marketing tactic that will further extend the reach of ESPN. By removing anonymity, he said, the change was also intended to improve the “civility” of comments on the website. Stiegman said ESPN executed “a tremendously smooth transition” for its 25 million active registered users, about 80 percent of whom already have Facebook accounts.

Stiegman also confirmed that certain sections on ESPN’s digital products -- including columns by Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, Grantland (except for its blogs) and the ombudsman -- don’t allow open comments.

ESPN is not the only media company to make this move. Steven Johnson, a leading media theorist and author of “Where Good Ideas Come From,” told me, “There is a general, and I think understandable, backlash happening now against open comment threads, particularly on sites with a huge amount of traffic like ESPN. There's everything from bot-driven comment spam to typical Internet flame wars to just weird junk that shows up.

“I can see why ESPN is doing it. And it's not like Facebook is the end of online discussion -- it's just anchoring all the contributions in a known identity.”

The Return of He Who Must Not Be Named

Hardly any ombuddies thought the announced return of Keith Olbermann was a good idea. (ESPN says the former “SportsCenter” anchor will host his own late-night show on ESPN2 starting in August). But being the ombudsman’s mailbag, with names and addresses and phone numbers, they were civil.

• Bill Dart of Caldwell, Idaho: “I have removed all ESPN channels from my channel guide. I have no interest in supporting in any manner a network that hires one of the most partisan, mean, bigoted, commentators to ever disgrace television.”

• Thomas Strickland of Olathe, Kan.: “WHAT were you thinking? Olbermann made his living as a Left-wing fascist nut job bomb thrower that routinely mocked HALF your viewing audience! Olbermann is divisiveness incarnate! I'm starting Facebook and Twitter campaigns to let everyone know about the obscene nature of your actions. Olbermann is the anti-Christ!”

Although responses to Olbermann’s return were predominantly political, Williamson and other ESPN executives will be tracking age demographics after the new ESPN2 show debuts Aug. 26. As Williamson pointed out, Olbermann left ESPN 16 years ago, which means there are viewers who don’t remember when he and Dan Patrick were the reigning stars of “SportsCenter.”

Olbermann wasn’t the only recent blockbuster ESPN addition. Nate Silver, the sports and political statistician whose accurate projections have been a feature of The New York Times, will bring fivethirtyeight.com to ESPN. In a joint interview, Silver and ESPN President John Skipper emphasized the importance of the Simmons-led Grantland site as a model for Silver’s future at ESPN.

Watching this play out should be fascinating. Will Silver extend the reach of ESPN into politics, weather, education, you name it? Will the Silver site become a duchy within the ESPN kingdom? Will it affect other franchise players? ESPN reporters often talk about chemistry when an athlete joins a new team; will this move make ESPN more like the Miami Heat -- or the Los Angeles Lakers?

After the Silver announcement, Marc Tracy of The New Republic called it “the juiciest free agent signing since LeBron James bolted for Miami.”

All of this didn’t happen in a Bristol bubble. In mid-August, a month after ESPN’s comments switch to Facebook and nine days before Olbermann debuts, Fox rolls out its new sports channel, the first potentially serious challenger to ESPN’s hegemony. These will be interesting times for ESPN viewers, readers and listeners, not to mention the company’s employees.

The competition for rights and talent will be fierce. Pioneering executives such as Williamson, who remember when ESPN was an underdog begging other networks for scraps of video, admit they will have to adjust to the reality of the World Wide Leader actually looking over its shoulder.

Meanwhile, much of the staff might not totally understand those early days, and the role Olbermann played at the time: Of the company's almost 7,000 employees, Williamson says, 5,000 have worked at ESPN for less than 15 years. That’s after Olbermann quit ESPN the first time. (A move that later led Mike Soltys, now ESPN’s vice president for corporate communications, to famously comment, “He didn’t burn bridges here, he napalmed them.”)

If you’ve gotten down to here, I don’t have to say: Stay tuned.

If you’re not of the hardwood hardcore, you might have thought last week that “Howard” was an extreme weather system originating in Los Angeles and threatening to head east. ESPN pro basketball cognoscenti such as Stephen A. Smith and Chris Broussard tracked every free-agent movement of Dwight Howard, the then-Lakers center, as if he were a storm center.

Would he stay in Los Angeles, land in Houston, veer off elsewhere? Citing their sources, ESPN reporters had him changing his mind all day and night Friday, even citing at one point the “50-50” odds of his uncertainty. Had he been a real storm, I would have stocked up on water and batteries just to be safe.

Some of the Ombudsman’s mailbag correspondents – I’m beginning to think of them as my Ombuddies -- thought it was too much Howard, too much NBA and too many unnamed sources.

I checked in with Vince Doria, ESPN’s senior vice president and director of news, about the use of anonymous sources. He emailed: “With a story like this, breaking on live television, you either make some decisions to trust sources that have been good in the past, or sit on the sidelines. Pretty sure we'd be equally criticized for doing the latter.”

Good points justifying the process. What about the rationale for flooding the zone on the story?

On to Barry Blyn, vice president of consumer insights at ESPN, who wrote: “Dwight Howard did more than join the Rockets. He joined a club of folks like [Brett] Favre, LeBron [James], Peyton [Manning], etc. A big story with a big star and the question is did ESPN cover it thoroughly or too much?”

Blyn and fellow ESPN researcher Kaylin VanDusen tried to answer the question: According to their research, the NBA is a 12-month sport now, not only on the rise but skewing toward youth and diversity, both prize targets at ESPN. There’s intense interest in offseason personnel movement that can change the direction of a team.

All of this bears watching for recurrent patterns. How often does heavy coverage spike the ratings and thus justify the heavy coverage? And what about all those anonymous sources? In situations like this, I’ll give reporters the benefit of the doubt; they are protecting useful insiders rather than interviewing each other or floating rumors.

But it does keep one glued to ESPN just the way storm warnings keep you following weather reports.

How dare Ashley Fox hold the New England Patriots culpable for Aaron Hernandez’s alleged transgressions? How can she accuse owner Robert Kraft and Coach Bill Belichick of enabling the tight end’s murderous runs? Why doesn’t ESPN release her?

That has been the tenor of the ombudsman’s recent mail, not to mention the more than 4,000 overwhelmingly negative comments trailing behind Fox’s Monday column on ESPN.com about Hernandez and the Patriots.

For starters, let me say that I’m glad Fox wrote a strong opinion in what has seemed like careful coverage of the Hernandez case. While I thought the ESPN crime reporting, often in conjunction with ABC News, has been good, I wondered if the sidebars were a little too concerned with how the Patriots’ release of Hernandez might affect the team and how quickly his jerseys were pulled off the shelves and became collectibles.

I couldn’t find much criticism of a Patriot Way that included dumping a productive star before the justice system declared him guilty. Should any comparison be made to the case of Ray Lewis, implicated in a 2000 murder? That case is still a mystery. But the Ravens stood by their man and they all went on to win Super Bowl rings. Lewis is now an ESPN analyst.

When Fox weighed in on the Hernandez case, I wished she had been a little weightier. Casting blame is a columnist’s game, but other than taking a chance on a terrific player with “character issues” who had fallen to the fourth round of the 2010 draft, and then re-signing him for millions a few years later, what exactly had Kraft and Belichick done wrong?

How about this: If you hire a guy to risk serious physical injuries by performing violent acts for you, don’t you have some responsibility for checking on his mental state?

Jim Stewart, a former NFL player and now a licensed therapist who works with combat vets suffering from PTSD, has been lobbying the NFL and various teams to “embed” therapists whom players can talk to privately before their lives take terrible turns. He thinks, for example, such an embed might have prevented Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs from murdering his girlfriend in front of their baby and then killing himself in front of his coaches. That’s about as obvious a cry for franchise help as one can find. Could such a person have helped Hernandez?

A case could be made that Kraft and Belichick -- that any NFL owner and coach -- are somehow complicit in a player’s destructive act if a series of behavioral signs were ignored. There were certainly signs in the Hernandez file.

Ashley Fox didn’t make the case, thus opening herself to a zone-flooding tide of unpleasant mail. But give her some credit for thinking about this awful story in a fresh and serious way.

Jason Collins' coming-out party was a historic and controversial story, feel-good for some, an abomination for others and an "uncomfortable conversation" on "Outside the Lines" that still resonates in ESPN conference rooms and in the ombudsman's mailbag.

More than one ESPN manager told me it was "a learning experience" and then couldn't come up with what had been learned. How about this: The tricky trifecta of religion, race and sexuality exposed not only the fault-lines in "OTL's" preparation but the inconsistent performance of ESPN journalism in general. The old story won't die because it brings up too many unresolved questions that we will be addressing in my scheduled 18 months as ESPN's fifth ombudsman.

• What are the boundaries of sports talk, and on which shows?

• What is the distinction between a reporter and a commentator? The lines seem to blur sometimes.

• How can ESPN balance the varying sensibilities of its audience? There are people who want the network to provide a safe haven from the real world. But Barry Blyn, vice president of consumer insights, tells me that he is finding in his research a "hunger for more challenging news." These people want information, they want to understand their world, including the world of their games.

• ESPN's resources are substantial, and as it continues to hire more experienced journalists, will it match their ambitions with a company will to give them reporting and commentating room?

• If it does, there will be another, more complex balancing act. What happens when ESPN's "partners" -- the teams, conferences, leagues whose games it airs and analyzes -- are made uncomfortable by tough reporting?

Let's start this journey back in April with the face of a seven-foot journeyman hoops bouncer, Jason Collins, smiling out of a Sports Illustrated cover online. It took most of sportsworld by surprise. The opening lines of his confessional essay, "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay," stirred the pro basketball, African-American and LGBT communities. It would stir Christians, as well.

ESPN seemed somewhat slower than the Internet to get excited by the announcement. A snide case had been made that it was, after all, a rival's scoop, that Tim Tebow was still adrift and that the NFL draft was looming. In any case, it was perfunctorily covered on early "SportsCenter" editions and briefly examined by ESPN NBA reporter Chris Broussard. He predicted, correctly, that the NBA and most players would publicly support Collins, who was a free agent. Whether Collins would sign another NBA contract, Broussard said, depended less on his sexual orientation than on whether any team needed an aging enforcer who averaged about nine minutes a game.

Some of those who had long hoped for a male active professional team athlete to come out were vaguely disappointed; as attractive and intelligent as Collins was, he was not a star and, as a free agent, was technically not even active. Also, there had been expectations of bigger names; ESPN's enterprise unit was one of a number trying to track down a months-old rumor that four NFL players were poised to come out together.

OTL was the first ESPN show to cover the story in any depth in its 3 p.m. airing. It had to shift gears from a planned Lakers dissection. LZ Granderson, an openly gay, black ESPN columnist, magazine writer and frequent TV commentator, came on by phone and celebrated a brave new locker room. He talked about the importance of Collins describing himself as black, thus eroding a stereotype of the African-American community as homophobic. He discussed the symbolism of Collins wearing No. 98 to memorialize the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student. Granderson also imagined all the young gay players who could now believe there would be a place for them on high school, college, even pro teams.

In his turns, Broussard, who had been on hand for the scheduled Lakers show, was just as thoughtful, declaring the climate right for acceptance, acknowledging the overwhelming support (Kobe Bryant, Tony Parker and Jason Kidd, not to mention Michelle Obama, had quickly weighed in with positive tweets). But tiny red flags popped up in Broussard's remarks. He wondered how much of the support reflected true feelings and how much "political correctness." There would be players, he said, who might be uncomfortable showering with and even just being around gays, but who didn't want to say so and risk being marked as bigots.

Granderson began to frame the story: He invoked his 10-year friendship with Broussard, back to their being colleagues at ESPN The Magazine and teammates in rec league basketball. He said he saw their relationship as an example of how people with very different points of view could have respectful and intelligent disagreements while remaining friends. Implicit was that this could be a model for NBA players.

Broussard broke in to "second" Granderson's remarks. He added "I am a Christian" and agreed with the idea that people can tolerate differing points of view.

The OTL host, Steve Weissman, asked Granderson whether there was a difference between tolerance and acceptance. Granderson said that there was, and he noted for the record that he was a Christian, too. He said that just as he and Broussard had had "this uncomfortable conversation" about gays and straights, as had the military before the end of "don't ask, don't tell," now it was the turn of the NBA.

'WALKING IN OPEN REBELLION TO GOD'

In a host decision, Weissman asked Broussard to comment on Collins declaring himself a Christian in his SI essay. Several ESPN executives, in casual, off-the-record conversations, attributed that decision to inexperience. Broussard told me later that he "was stunned when Weissman asked me a direct question," but said he felt he "needed to let the viewer know where I'm at for context and clarity."

Broussard said, "If you're openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality [but] adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals … I believe that's walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ." He added. "I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don't think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian."

At this point, as Weissman said to me later, the control room told him to let Granderson wrap up the segment.

Granderson's voice became passionate. He said that "faith, just like love and marriage, is personal." He talked about the unfairness of using the Bible to deprive others of equal rights. No one could define his Christianity. He declared that "Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior."

As both Granderson and Broussard would later say, they were sorry that the focus of the show had shifted from Collins' coming out to their personal beliefs. Yet both seemed to feel that an airing of those beliefs was intrinsic to understanding the scope of the story.

And in the context of the times, it was a big story. A few months earlier, ESPN had helped expose Mike Rice, the Rutgers men's basketball coach whose physical and emotional abuse of players included gay slurs. The use of homophobia to tyrannize and control straight athletes is an old-school tactic that can work only in a climate of fear and inequality. Rice was eventually fired.

A few months after Collins' coming out, when you might think we had all been sensitized, Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert, at a playoff news conference, described himself as "no homo" to distance himself from the praise he had just given another man. My email called the phrase no big deal, a jokey-jock throwaway. But I think it reflected an uneasiness about sexuality even among large celebrity athletes we might assume should be more confident of their manhood.

Personally, I was most surprised by revelations, in excellent Magazine and OTL pieces by espnW reporter Kate Fagan, about Brittney Griner, the hot new WNBA star. She said she had been forced to stay in the closet during her years at Baylor. Her coach, Kim Mulkey, was apparently afraid that any hint of lesbianism on her team would affect recruiting. I had naively thought we were past the dark days of the 1990s when coach Rene Portland of Penn State promised the parents of prospects that no "predatory" lesbians would darken her locker room. (Is this still a pervasive recruiting tactic? I hope ESPN's enterprise commandos are on it.)

In such a climate, I wondered why ESPN did not do more to advance the Collins story or at least connect more dots to other sports stories, perhaps even link to the gay struggle for equal rights and its push-back and to the spike in assaults on gay men. (The next day's OTL devoted half the show to a "Good Morning America" sit-down with Collins and a phoner with John Amaechi, an ex-NBA player who had come out after his retirement.)

On the day of Collins' coming-out announcement, OTL had at least four hours to put together a produced news package, to gather more talking heads, to be smart in its analysis. Just what does this story mean, if anything, to sports, to gays, to the perception of manhood in America? For a traditional broadcast or cable news operation, four hours is enough time to crash such a report, with lunch included.

When ESPN does respond well to a breaking story, it leans on its superstars. The superb work of Bob Ley and Jeremy Schaap after the Boston Marathon bombings is a good example.

So, too, the first-rate follow-ups to the Collins story by Bill Simmons and Rick Reilly. Simmons had two excellent podcasts, one a discerning discussion about the ramifications of Collins' announcement with Grantland writer Wesley Morris and one with Collins himself. Reilly came up with vintage columns, one in which he interviewed Collins' former fiancée, among other friends, and another with fresh material on flamboyant Dodgers outfielder, Glenn Burke, who was forced by baseball to stay in the closet, which eventually drove him out after a short, promising career.

More context would have made the OTL show far better. It was thin on the meaning of Collins' coming out and overly focused on two men discussing the differences in their Christian outlooks. And even the schisms in jock Christianity could have been made more pertinent. NASCAR drivers, who have incorporated religious services into their prerace rituals, are privately contemptuous of the "stick-and-ball" athletes who pray to "trinket Gods" to bring them luck.

Covering baseball in the last century, you would find clubhouses divided between so-called God-Squadders and Juicers. The born-again Christians, who attended pregame chapel, prayed that their teammates would find the path out of the barroom and show up sober for batting practice. The party boys expressed disdain for the "softness" of the observant, who, they claimed, didn't really need to win because religion forgives losers.

SAFE HAVENS AND SHOWERS

ESPN on-air coverage is driven by live games and studio analysis, and a Jock Culture hero-goat-scoreboard mentality prevails. By default, fault was found by some ESPN executives with Granderson, Broussard and Weissman, all of whom are otherwise generally well-regarded in Bristol. It was Granderson, it was said, who, knowing Broussard's religious views, led him into his remarks. It was Broussard who stepped out of his assigned role and went too far. It was Weissman who lost control of the show. The criticisms were casual and off-the-record; they seemed like a way to get past the show.

At the time, the company quickly issued a noncommittal statement: "We regret that a respectful discussion of personal viewpoints became a distraction from today's news. ESPN is fully committed to diversity and welcomes Jason Collins' announcement."

Two weeks later, ESPN President John Skipper told reporters, "I think we did great other than we made one mistake: The mistake was not being more careful with Chris Broussard, and there is a collective responsibility there." Answering a question from Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated, Skipper said: "We don't quarrel with his right to have any personal point of view, although we do assert as a company that we have a tolerant point of view, we are a diverse company, and that does not represent what our company thinks."

The attitude, as I read it, was that these were small, regrettable, forgettable mistakes. No major fouls. In fact, considering ESPN's "Embrace Debate" mantra, it could have been far messier. In other words, we can move on. This was a one-off.

You think? Or was it another example of that Jock Culture sensibility of not dwelling on an error, fine for the playing of games but not for the journalistic issues that affect our understanding and appreciation of those games. The ESPN audience was not so ready to move on. There were hundreds of emails to the ombudsman. They tended to fall into four categories.

1. About 30 percent of the respondents not only supported Broussard's religious views but applauded the emergence of faith as an antidote to the "pro-gay" agenda of the media. Jim Wesson of LaFollette, Tenn. was expressing the opinion of many viewers when he wrote: "If Chris Broussard had expressed a pro-homosexual point of view you would not have criticized him for expressing his personal feelings rather than simply being a basketball analyst. It's very troubling that ESPN is tolerant of everyone except Christians."

2. Another 30 percent supported Broussard on First Amendment grounds. He had a right to speak his mind. Many of these also complained that the religious beliefs he espoused do not get a proper airing in the media.

3. About 20 percent said they thought Broussard was way out of line and had spoken inappropriately. Some thought he should be disciplined or fired. The case of former ESPN commentator Rob Parker was brought up as a precedent. Parker, who is black, had wondered on "First Take" whether Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III was an authentic black or a "cornball brother" who was "not down with the cause." This was based on Griffin's lifestyle, hairstyle and white fiancée. Parker was suspended, and his ESPN contract was not renewed.

4. Another 20 percent thought any mention of homosexuality had no place on a sports network watched by families and children. They invoked the safe haven attitude about controversial matters that often includes complaints about commercials for male sexual enhancement drugs. Kerri Wittwer of Melissa, Texas, spoke for that point of view: "Very disappointed to walk into our family area to my elementary age sons watching ESPN and the coverage being a lengthy interview on being gay in the NFL. My sons love sports and ESPN. Just as I don't think that Sports coverage needs to include ball players and their romantic relationships with women, the same goes for a man's relationship with other men. Seems we have strayed from SPORTS coverage to relationship and political coverage."

By the time I started as ombudsman and got to talk to the principals in mid-June, the story had dropped off the table. No one at ESPN was particularly motivated to talk about it. But the audience, which I represent, was still interested, and so was I.

Granderson told me that "the conversation went too far - not too far for where it needs to go but too far for that news story. It was not necessarily a conversation for ESPN, which is not necessarily the place to examine theological differences."

Could he have done something differently? "I could have opted to put my ego aside and remember the purpose I was there for," he said. "I'm not backing away, but I'm disappointed to put Chris in a place to be defending his Christian views and values."

He had his parting shot: "What's heartbreaking is using God to spread hate."

COLLINS SEEMED OK WITH IT

A decade ago, Broussard and I were colleagues at The New York Times, where he was known for having given up seminary to pursue a career in sportswriting. He was forthright when we talked earlier this month.

"The media in general, not just ESPN, is lopsided in its coverage," he said. "It's a cheerleader for the lifestyle and same-sex marriage and puts those who disagree in an unfavorable light. You can see it in the eye rolling and body language of so-called objective journalists. Born-again people are made out to be bigots and intolerant even though there are Neanderthals present on both sides."

Broussard said he went on the show as "an objective journalist," but, because it was OTL, he was ready to let the host lead him. As it turned out, Granderson led.

"I was satisfied," Broussard said. "I would do it again. It was what I believed. It was not out of hate, not in a judgmental way. It was conventional Christian doctrine.

"I got a lot of support from players afterward, especially from Christians, who loved it. Others told me I had the courage to speak out. They said 'You got big balls, brother, you the man.'"

Broussard called Collins the next night and they talked for about 10 minutes. "I wanted him to know I wasn't trying to use his announcement for my own views. He seemed OK with it."

As was, Broussard thought, the company: "ESPN did not make me feel they were against me."

The third man in the ring, Weissman, who is being used more often as a host of OTL, knew nothing about Broussard's religious views, he told me. Nor did his producers. Should they have? In 2007, in response to Amaechi's coming out (his memoir, "Man in the Middle," was published by ESPN), Broussard wrote a column on the topic for ESPN.com.

In the piece, he maintained that although he believed that homosexuality, like any sex outside a male-female marriage, was a sin, he also believed that gay and straight players could be teammates. "If I can accept working side-by-side with a homosexual," he wrote, "then he/she can accept working side-by-side with someone who believes homosexuality is wrong."

He also wrote: "Granted, I don't shower with LZ after games like NBA teammates do, and I'll admit that if I had to, it might be a little uncomfortable at first.

The column was 6 years old, and was news to the immediate supervisors of the April OTL show, some of whom had been at ESPN when the column appeared. In fairness, Broussard was a magazine feature writer at the time, not lead NBA reporter for ESPN TV.

And would it have made a difference had they known? The big turning point in the conversation was when Weissman asked Broussard to comment on Collins' calling himself a Christian. Given that Broussard and Granderson had already described themselves as Christians, the host was tying up loose ends by asking a follow-up question. It was textbook journalism.

"At the end of the day," Weissman said, "I thought we had a respectful, intelligent and honest conversation."

I'm not so sure about that. The program was lumpy and unframed. A commentator and a reporter were put into a position of point-counterpoint. They went too far and yet not far enough. Granderson's concept of the "uncomfortable conversation" should be an aspect of ESPN's purported mission of injecting more journalism into its coverage. But it needs to be offered in a context that explains why you need to know about drugs, sexual abuse, money for college athletes, cheating, the topics that some in the audience will consider crucial, others alienating, still others just plain buzz killers. Maybe more of an effort has to be made to place these stories beyond a 13-minute, 46- second slot on OTL.

Nevertheless, that old coming-out story is constantly being renewed by the people it inspired. Two months later, in June, I noticed a new display being mounted in the ESPN employee cafeteria in Bristol. It was called OUT/field and was sponsored by the company's LGBT group. A series of panels honored gay athletes, including Martina Navratilova, Billy Bean and the man who sometimes got lost in this story, Jason Collins.