The Dubsism Breakdown of the Colin Cowherd Firing
At last, our long national nightmare is over. The glorified windbag known as Colin Cowherd is finally off the American airwaves. This past Friday, ESPN announced Cowherd’s days at the World Wide Bottom Feeder were over after he finally crossed the “bigot” line with his exceptionally obtuse comments about Dominicans he made on Thursday.
This story evolved over two days, which explains why at first, the boys in Bristol started by slow-playing this on Friday.
“Some of Colin’s comments yesterday referencing the Dominican Republic were inappropriate and do not reflect ESPN’s values of respect for all communities. Colin’s on air response today addressed the importance of making sure his opinions are fact based and responsible for all people.”
That was a nice try, but the explosion which happened on social media told us all this was headed for an altogether different place. The “on air response” ESPN referred to was possibly one of the most ham-fisted attempts at an apology I’ve ever heard. It was clear he was trying to backpedal, but instead he managed to dig his grave just that much deeper. Rather than actually apologizing, Cowchip insinuated ALL baseball players are stupid by stating that only four percent of the sport has college degrees and that a third of the players don’t speak “the primary language of this country.”
I’ve never seen a better case needing the fire department’s “jaws of life” to get a foot out of a mouth. I haven’t seen a case of a guy given an opportunity to extricate himself from a jam only to make it worse since Al Campanis. But wait, there’s more.
Figuring his grave wasn’t deep enough, Cowchip kept digging. Again, rather than giving the Mea Culpa everybody wanted, he upped the ante again by saying “baseball is massive in countries where there are…third world living conditions. Rough academic situations. Where young people don’t have the opportunities American kids have. Yet they come to the sport and they flourish. They dominate it. Because it’s a sport on instinct, it’s individual instinct. You know, so stop the fake controversy.”
When Cowchip says “fake controversy,” he’s tipping his hand as to how he tried to defend his comments. It’s ludicrous. Instead of owning what he said, he instead tries to blame Deadspin for ginning up this whole controversy in a post they ran on Thursday by taking his comments “out of context.”
“I don’t think I should be defined by 16 seconds of a minute rant edited on a site owned by a blog company currently in a $100 million lawsuit for airing improper audio and videotape. I’ll run my 57 seconds that yesterday somebody edited, took a segment of, and said, ‘There’s institutional racism! That host should be fired!’ I’m not here to double down but I think I have a right to run the entire tape.”
That line of bilge only holds up until you hear what Cowchip actually said in the first place. Thanks to Deadspin, here’s the transcript of the relevant piece of the full 57 seconds. You can hear the full version as well by following this link.
“By the way, it’s not like Bill Simmons, he’s slightly altering his format. He’s not becoming a brain surgeon. He’s not, the difference between writing, producing, TV, radio, I mean, I’ve proven it by writing a book, and I’m not a writer. Okay, so, you’re just altering things a little. It’s still communication.”
“I mean, the Marlins put a general manager in their dugout. People freaked out. You know, like, “Whoa!” It’s baseball. You don’t think a general manager can manage? Like it’s impossible? The game is too complex? Like, I’ve never bought into that. “Baseball’s too complex.” Really? “It’s too complex? I’ve never bought into that ‘baseball is too complex.’ Really? A third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic has not been known in my lifetime as having world class academic abilities. A lot of those kids come from rough backgrounds and have not had opportunities academically that other kids from other countries have. Baseball is like any sport. It’s mostly instincts. A sportswriter who covers baseball could go up to Tony La Russa and make an argument and Tony would listen and it would seem reasonable. There’s not a single NFL writer in the country who could diagram a play for Bill Belichick. You know, we get caught up in this whole ‘thinking-man’s game.’ Is it in the same family? Most people could do it. It’s not being a concert pianist. It’s in the same family.”
Here’s the problem, Colin. You may have been able to get away with that stuff if you had dropped back 15 yards and punted. But you didn’t. Instead, you ran a fake and got sacked. In the most recent episode of Radio J-Dub, “Jason From Indiana” said “say what you want about Cowherd, but you have to admit he’s not stupid.” Well, there’s a reason I kept those analogies in the sports world, because after all, they’re just “instincts.” Think what you will, Colin…this was one of the stupidest plays I’ve seen in a long time.
You had a chance to fix this, and you blew it up. Your silly-ass attempt to cry “taken out of context” caused a host of Major Leaguers to take to Twitter to call you out. That lead to the final blow which came when Major League Baseball released the following statement:
“Major League Baseball condemns the remarks made by Colin Cowherd, which were inappropriate, offensive, and completely inconsistent with the values of our game. Mr. Cowherd owes our players of Dominican origin, and Dominican people generally, an apology.”
That’s pretty strong stuff. You normally don’t see a big-time sports league issue such a strongly-worded about a radio personality. It makes me wonder what sort of communication took place between MLB and ESPN which we didn’t get to know about. I’m guessing something went down, because only a few short hours later, we were treated to this little gem.
“Colin Cowherd’s comments over the past two days do not reflect the values of ESPN or our employees. Colin will no longer appear on ESPN.”
Honestly, it’s no secret that I’ve often been a critic of Cowherd and his style of windbaggery. But to be fair, there have also been times when I’ve defended him.
Let’s start with the fact this isn’t Cowchip’s first time down Controversy Street. One of my favorite example is the time stuck his foot in his mouth about the life of the late Sean Taylor.
Sean Taylor, great player has a history of really really bad judgment, really really bad judgment. Cops, assault, spitting, DUI. I’m supposed to believe his judgment got significantly better in two years, from horrible to fantastic? ‘But Colin he cleaned up his act.’ Well yeah, just because you clean the rug doesn’t mean you got everything out. Sometimes you’ve got stains, stuff so deep it never ever leaves….Just because somebody cleans the rugs doesn’t mean there aren’t stains. No matter what those commercials, OxiClean, tell you on cable TV, some stains you can’t get out. And if you have bad judgment for 23 years of your life, even if you clean it up, your judgment doesn’t get great over night.
On the one hand, what Cowchip said is true. but those comments get about a 9.7 on the Insensitive-meter, considering Taylor had just been murdered when ol’ Colin uttered that classic crock of click-bait. Then there’s what he said about Washington Wizards guard John Wall. It’s too long to block-quote here without losing context, but suffice it to say, Cowchiip does his best impression of that old guy who cuts up Nerf balls that land in his yard. Well, he’s got plenty of time for that now.
There’s one last point to make here. After all the twaddle you heard from Cowherd, the biggest joke in all of this came from the boys in Bristol. Just go back to their initial statement on all of this and keep the following excerpt in mind.
“…comments were inappropriate and do not reflect ESPN’s values of respect for all communities.”
So, ESPN…if that’s true why does Chris Broussard still have a job after he said this?
Lots of other people have been deep-fired by the PC police for saying stuff like this. So, why does Broussard get a pass? Then’s there’s the crap Rob Parker said about Robert Griffin III.
It’s pretty bad when Stephen A. Smith is the “voice of reason,” considering he’s the one who dropped the “N-Bomb” on live television, then tried to deny it.
Stop handing me that “respect for all communities” garbage. Admit it ESPN, you’re policy is to hire people who will say controversial things, and then run and hide from them the minute they get called “racist,” unless they are black in which case they can spew the vilest of slurs with impunity.
My instincts tell me something is not right about that.
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