ESPN to Back Away From College Football Gambling Talk Amidst Backlash
This month, it was announced that ESPN would take a more aggressive approach in reporting on gambling point spreads as part of its sports coverage. Now comes word the 24 hours sports network may be reconsidering this approach.
From Sports Illustrated:
If you’ve watched ESPN’s College GameDay over the past few weeks, you have seen the on-set cast pick games against the spread as well as graphics highlighting some of the biggest spreads of the weekend. You also saw during ESPN’s Sept. 4 broadcast of Baylor-SMU a “cover alert” pop up informing viewers that Western Michigan had scored a third quarter touchdown to cut Michigan State’s lead to 17 in a game the Spartans were favored by 18. The Scott Van Pelt-hosted midnight SportsCenter has also embraced gambling content as well.
“We talked about doing this all of the past off-season and we’ve considered this for a long period of time,” Lee Fitting, the coordinating producer for College GameDay, told Sports Illustrated earlier in the month. “We recognize that fans are very interested in this type of talk. Our goal on College GameDay is to serve the fans and we believe by doing this, from time to time and when we feel it’s right, serves the fan.”
The Sports Business Journal on Monday was reporting that College GameDay will no longer use the “Covers Alert”. Reports suggest that university athletic executives expressed outrage over the gambling subject matter.
“We did it once. I didn’t like it, and we stopped it,” said John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and production, told SBJ. “To me, it was too overt. Part of everything we do has a little bit of trial and error.”
- Tyrone Black, Gambling911.com
